Seth Godin, the marketing guru behind the interesting concept that is Squidoo, really nailed it on Apple:
When your entire culture is organized about being the other, the outsider, the insurgent, the one that’s better than the masses… (like Starbucks, btw), what do you do when you are the masses? ^
As some of you know, I dislike Apple for this same sanctimonious pretense. I dislike them for years of oddball machines that did not work better. Now that they’ve purchased a decent operating system (derived from FreeBSD, which I enjoy) their machines are stable and secure, but their hardware is still unreliable and the company, neurotic and mercenary.
Even more, I’ve become leery of user groups based on the idea of imagined supremacy for buying the “correct” product. It’s a computer. It’s not a marathon, or a genius idea. But people love their elitism, I guess, so the Mac becomes the Mercedes of computers, even if no Mercedes I’ve ever known broke down or flaked out like a Mac. It’s brand elitism.
That whole behavior reminds me of how Amiga users were in the 1980s, although Amiga users as a tiny minority using an arguably better machine actually had some claim to it. Regardless, it alienated others and made sure they’d stay a minority, in the same way that Linux users continue to not make friends by calling anyone who doesn’t use Linux a sheep or implying they’re too dumb or lame to handle Linux. It’s really high school, but I never said my species were mature, or that they had brains to speak of.
Godin’s point is a powerful one. When you make yourself into the Other, what do you do when you succeed? Apple’s original marketing strategy was to portray IBM as a big brother that ruled the world and therefore, Apple was a revolution… the only option for moral people, or something to that effect (think of the 1984 commercial). That worked for the last twenty years of making excuses for their lack of popularity, slandering others who don’t use their products, and so on.
What’s making Apple work? It’s simple: Microsoft’s mistake. Had I been CEO of Microsoft in 2005, 2006 or this year, I would have made my top priority fixing the security problem with Windows XP. It’s not a simple problem, since anything as complex as an operating system will have exploits, but it’s solvable. I would not limit it to people who legitimately purchased Windows, since those are about half of the Windows users out there. I would get to those machines that are spewing spam, and I’d stop them.
As others have observed, people expect technology to basically work, but they’re tolerant of some malfunction as long as it doesn’t create show-stopper disasters unexpectedly. Having to, as an average person, haul your machine in to Best Buy to get fleeced for $400 to fix what’s basically a gigantic malware infection is definitely an unexpected disaster. Microsoft has to realize that each time that happens, they bias a customer toward not going with what previously was known to “just work,” and to seek other options. So far the company seems unable to do much about this problem, probably because they are just too big to get accord between their divisions.
So Apple’s on the upswing, just like they were in 1994 and in 1987. Will it last? Possibly. Microsoft no longer has a vast lead in price, and they’re charging too much for Vista before it’s even ready, which is super-stupid short-term thinking, but Apple no longer has the lead in interface. Even a Linux or BSD machine running Gnome or KDE is “about as” comfortable as a Macintosh to the end user, and for most people, Windows XP does just fine. Many prefer the sleek Vista interface to Apple’s neurotic jumble. And so the contest begins again.