Macs are for those who want to get ahead Ping!
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Posted on 10/22/2009 9:05:04 PM PDT by Swordmaker
I've been ruminating the past few days on why Apple (AAPL) is doing so well with it's pricey high-end products and services during a recession. The answer came as I was reading Wednesday's New York Times column by Thomas Friedman, whom I deeply admire and read anything and everything he puts out.
Friedman points out that the winners in today's fast-shifting U.S. job market are the ones demonstrating "entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity." He says, "They are the new untouchables," in contrast to other still highly educated but less creative types.
Friedman cites Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz, who explains in the column that the now disadvantaged are "those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want. ... They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”
They are also more likely to be using personal computers with nine-year-old operating systems, with little choice but to take what their companies provide in terms of personal productivity IT. They are the 90 percent for whom good enough IT has made them as good as anyone anywhere.
In contrast, it's the "top half" of the labor pool, and more specifically the apparent 10 percent that are "entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity"-focused among them, that know to succeed and win they need the very best computer and associated services, even if it costs $500 more. Nowadays there's no better way to gain an advantage in business and life than to have the best technology.
The people who are succeeding are buying Macs, iPhones, iPod Touches and Apple's services and applications. A flight to quality is usually spurred by disruption and uncertainty. It's not about brand religion or pretty graphics. It's about survival and success when the going gets tough. It works for me, it has to.
A chef doesn't buy the cheapest knifes. A painter doesn't buy the cheapest brushes. A carpenter doesn't buy the cheapest hammer. And all the winners in the economy today -- those that have a say in what they use to do all the digital things so critical now to almost any knowledge- and services-based job -- need the best tools. And they will upgrade those tools just as fast as they can (hence the rapid adoption of Apple's Snow Leopard OS X upgrade in recent months).
So for all those millions of newly laid off workers who know that "entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity" is their only ticket to a new, fresh start -- those that no longer have an IT department to tell them what to do (at lowest cost) -- they seem to be making a new move to a Mac. I expect they won't soon go back, once they taste the fruits of heightened knowledge productivity.
Because when failure is not an option, you have to have the best tools, especially when the going gets tough. The sad part is that Apple does so well when so many are not.
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So it makes economic sense to buy something a little more expensive that is going to last much longer until it needs replacement.
All I know is that at work, employees were recently given the opportunity to get Macbooks instead of straight Microsoft Windows notebook computers. Now in the office, I see people carrying Macbooks everywhere.
It's great equipment and I'm glad to see another American company prospering in tough times.
"The sad part is that Apple does so well when so many are not."
Unless, you bought shares of AAPL 8-10 years ago.
Cheers, CC :-)
The writer has zero credibility if he greatly respects and quotes Thomas Friedman of the NY Slimes. Friedman is a shill for Hussein.
Oh how I wish I had loaded up on Apple when the shares were at $17!!!
I bought at $22 and some freepers thought I was nuts.......
"...innovation and creativity?"
Like preaching global warming to us, saying that we must cut back while he's living in an 11,400 Sq ft Maryland mansion on 7.5 acres with a very large pool including a poolside building. Why I'll bet a hundred illegal aliens could live there very happily.
And lets not mention the failure to recycle. He tore down and, presumably, threw away the home that used to sit on his home site.
Is THAT the "innovation and creativity" Thomas Friedman is talking about?
wow, I hope you held on! (she said by typing on her MacBook while listening to her iPod)
My lamp shade IMAC just keeps plugging away, nary a single problem since I bought it 7 years ago. OK, so it’s slower than the new duo iMACs but who cares? Mine is fast enough and with cable, I’m on the net so fast it’s scary. If it finally gives up the ghost in that smooth round belly, I’ll sell it to an ex-PCC owner and get an new iMAC .
I did, I kinda emotional about it,lol
I think the real magic of Apple is quality, both perceived and real. Before you open the box of a new Apple product, you KNOW that there is a quality item inside. Jobs learned this from his former employer, HP, when HP was HP. People WILL pay more for something that is of or is perceived to be of higher quality. The trick is in finding out how much.
Yes. As to calculators, HP was always more expensive than TI, but they were worth it. My HP48G, purchased over 14 years ago still works great. Cost to buy, expensive. Cost per year, negligeable. Actual value to me, priceless.
I still have some 14 year old data in it too ...
Well put.
A wise man one told me “there is nothing as expensive as a cheap tool”.
My Dell Quad Core 8GB with Vista Ultimate x64 has not crashed once in 13 months of use. It works for me, it has to. I used a Mac for 12 years. The high cost and finicky components of Macs got to be a hassle for my biz. Went PC and never looked back.
When I was a Mac-head, I bought 16 of them over the years. Every one of them was performance-obsolete within 2-3 years. This is not unique to PCs by any means. I have never--not once--had a "lemon" or dead PC that I had to dump. I have a Compaq x386 running Windows Server 2000 in my office right now that I bought in 2000. It has been running every single day for 10 years. Not a single component on it has had to be replaced.
My trusty HP41CX is now 26 or so years old. It sits on my desk as it has for all this time and always works. I have a cache of them from an office I closed down 22 years ago. Guess I am a Luddite.
I make a living with my computer and it has to work for me, not me work on it. Which is what I seemed to be doing all too often in a PC world. Strange things happen in spite of a plethora of security software. Google can’t be accessed, Acrobat just quits, the scanner just quits scanning, the video freezes and the thing flashes and whirrs and grinds. Honestly, how good can a device be that downloads patches weekly?
In the last ten years since being a free lancer I have purchased 5 laptops and two desktops. The last of each are less than 3 years old. The retirees were not really obsolete they just quit working for various reasons ...pollution of the OS, video cards, screens whatever.
I just reconfigured to all Macs and am having growing pains in the transition but think this will pass. File management is the biggest difference I see ...some things different some not as easy. I figure that I can pay twice the price if this thing lasts the way it should and still come out way ahead. Over the years I have seen too often that quality is remembered long after price is forgotten. I like stuff that I get tired of before it wears out.
My son has a MacBook that he bought used in 2003 or 4 that still chugs along without a quibble.
Windows 7 may work out but so far MS have over promised and under delivered too many times to be trustworthy.
Total BS article. Just more self-aggrandizing from Mac nerds.
“The high cost and finicky components of Macs got to be a hassle for my biz. “
Yep. Can’t even load a ringtone to an iPhone without extreme hassles or paying Apple more money. Blackberry loads ringtones, any ringtone or mp3 or sound file, with a single click.
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