| Thursday, February 9, 2006 |
11:38 - Resistance is futile
http://vodkapundit.com/archives/008563.php
|
(top)  |
Stephen Green:
The iPod was great, but iTunes was a revelation. Either you use iTunes and you're already nodding in agreement with me, or you haven't and you don't understand. If you're in the first camp, then I don't need to detail the revelation. If you're in the second camp, then there's no point in trying. Just try the PC version of iTunes for a few weeks. It's free, and so is the revelation.
Therefore he's looking at the Mac with new eyes.
This is probably the very textbook definition of "halo effect". Apple realized it had a great opportunity to come up with a better software ambassador to the PC world than QuickTime, and so it sunk every effort into making iTunes so awesome that anyone who used it would be inexorably won over. Even to the point where now the Windows version is apparently less buggy than the Mac version.
Oh, sure, there were naysayers and detractors and those who misunderstood iTunes' mission, but there were also holdouts who eventually cracked. And now they're getting more and more numerous, to the point where people in malls are asking the inevitable question: If iTunes is so cool, maybe the Mac isn't so bad after all. And today, Apple products are sweeping the Engadget awards—at least, among the readers, with whom the site's editors are apparently woefully out of touch.
Just think: if Apple had caved to the demands of people who insisted that their only profitable path forward would be to become an all-cross-platform-software company and give up on the Mac, they probably wouldn't exist today. But because they didn't, they're here and whittling away at the reasons to hate them. Mac OS X made people start paying attention again; iTunes, the iPod and the Apple Stores in malls everywhere have primed the pump; the Intel switch has nullified the speed question; and now the only thing remaining is price. And the perceived stigma of being a boutique brand.
Well, and a lack of games. But it's getting harder and harder to ignore the hip market when it's ostensibly who you're selling to. The games will come, now that Intel is here. The games will come.
And the only remaining argument against Apple is that it's Apple. And I don't think that's a problem Steve is willing to tackle.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
