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| No more preaching to the converted |
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| Talk,
Graham Bower,
11 January 1999 | |
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Why do I always go on about Apple Computer? People ask me this all the time, or, more accurately, they ask me to stop going on about Apple Computer all the time. But I'm not alone in my obsession with the company. For whatever reason, people accross the world, from Japan to the USA and back have become obessed with Apple and its products.
There's even a market for books about the company - everyone got in on the act of telling the Apple Story. Even washed-up ex-Apple CEO Gill Amelio had a go. But these books were not marketed as stuffy industry journalism. They were glossy, coffee table consumer titles. Some people are so passionate about this company that they feel the needed to know the ins and outs of every board room tussle at Apple HQ in Cupertino.
Everyone who has a connection with Apple, even if they just use the computers, has a fascination with the company. It's ironic that Apple originally launched the Macintosh with the motto "the computer for the rest of us". It's nothing of the sort. A Windows PC is the computer of the common man. The Mac is a getto, occupied but a small but passionate clique who are locked in to the platform, and don't want to or can't afford to shell out for the hardware and software necessary to migrate to Window computers. Like Sophie Marceau in the new Bond film, Mac users tend to suffer from an advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome - sticking up for their captors and becoming apologists for Apple's every blunder.
So the last thing you need to do to these people is use marketing to try and sell them Apple computers. They'll buy them anyway - its like a reflex action. Yet despite, or perhaps because of the passion that Mac users have for their platform, Apple has traditionally been involved in an annual "Apple Expo" exhibition in London, where a good deal of preaching to the converted takes place. Apple tells its folk that Macs are the best and fastest desktop computers, and their faithful believe them.
This year, however, following a boot up the back-side from the guys who hold the purse strings back in California, Apple UK have pulled out of Apple Expo. They're saying it's time to take some tough decisions in order to grow the Mac plaform, and any money spent on preaching to the converted at Apple Expo could be better spent on TV advertising in the run up to Christmas. Of course it could! But while we're on the subject of tough decisions, isn't there a big one that Apple is forgetting? Now that Apple are finally acknowledging the need to sell computers to more people, and have returned to the marketing slogan "the computer for the rest of us", isn't it time that they made computer that ran the operating system for the rest of us? The satisfying ker-ching sound of a cash register springs to mind when one considers the sales potential of a Windows based iMac Pentium III.
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