Posted on 01/26/2005 5:22:19 PM PST by Vermonter
Limbaugh could sell new Mac
This week, Apple Computer is launching a campaign to sell a new product, the $499 Mac Mini, that portends to transform the world in a way the original Mac didn’t. But Republicans will be needed for the campaign to succeed.
To put this in context, you need to read Revolution in the Valley, Andy Hertzfeld’s new book about the making of the original Mac in the 1980s. Hertzfeld points out that the initial target price for the first Mac was $500. But by the time it was launched in 1984, the price had ballooned to $2,495.
Many of the Mac’s creators felt betrayed. All initial design goals had centered on Everyman, but instead of a computer that changed the world, the Mac became a niche machine mainly for artisans and limousine liberals who could afford one. The rest of us bought commodity PCs. Fewer than one in 20 computers sold or used today to cruise the Internet is a Mac.
The Mac Mini could rectify this. But will it? Will a low price tag and terrific design alone entice a mass market to buy this new product? I’m not so sure. Apple’s image may still be an impediment to Mac sales.
To research this column, I read lots of discussion boards all across the Internet, and it’s evident that politics still play a role in computer purchases. Just as there are red states and blue states, there are also Mac Democrats and PC Republicans. These battles were especially nasty after Apple went public with its politics and added Al Gore to its board of directors.
Apple’s leader, Steve Jobs, seems to have sensed last year that his company was getting too “political.” He backed off some of his campaigning for John Kerry and cryptically signaled to The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg in an interview that he understands the problem.
“People have said that I shouldn’t get involved politically because probably half our customers are Republicans — maybe a little less ... [but] I do point out that there are more Democrats than Mac users so I’m going to just stay away from all that political stuff because that was just a personal thing,” Jobs said.
There are, in fact, devoted Republican Macintosh users, but that is not the perception. So Apple desperately needs to introduce a replacement image to achieve the original Mac’s vision. There would be no better way to do this than to add a Republican or two to Apple’s board of directors. Mac users such as Karl Rove or Arnold Schwarzenegger adviser Mike Murphy would be possibilities, but Rush Limbaugh is the most obvious choice. Rush is an ardent Mac evangelist and knows a thing or two about marketing. Even if Limbaugh is not put on Apple’s board, the company should market through his daily radio program, paying Rush to tout his favorite computer the same way he builds mattress sales for Select Comfort.
Hertzfeld’s book says the team that created the original Mac had a spirit of “urgency, ambition, passion for excellence, artistic pride, and irreverent humor.” That sounds just like Rush Limbaugh to me. I know that if Rush had been a board member in 1984, he’d have had the guts to back the famous Big Brother Super Bowl ad that Apple’s then-timorous board abandoned.
Apple marketers also need to understand that restoration of their brand’s image in conservative and Republican circles can resonate with various factions of the party. I have already read favorable gun-owner comments about the Mac Mini on the discussion boards of Ted Nugent’s populist United Sportsmen of America website. James Dobson and his Focus on the Family might be intrigued by a computer that is affordable for young families and not subject to porno pop-up ads. And business Republicans will be impressed by the seamless integration of the Mac’s OS X operating system with corporate networks.
The Republican Party is a big tent. Apple should come on in.
You claimed Bill Gates owned 20% of Apple.
Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997 when Apple shares were selling for ~$6 a share. That means that MS probably bought around 25 million shares. Assuming (and it is just that, an assumption) that MS has bought no more shares since then, those 25 million shares are a little over 6% of the 404.55million shares outstanding of Apple Common stock... if MS still owns them.
Dude, say no to drugs...
Declining, but still profitable. In fact, even before the iPod, Apple had found profit -and a healthy one at that. The iPod has helped boost the bottom line while waiting on new processors for the PowerBooks. But overall, Apple is good at what it does - and that's keep it's installed base happy.
And what's really funny - the fact that Apple's core market for the most part, don't buy computers as often as the average PC buyer - in part because Apple's products tend to have a much longer useful life. Thus you could have approximately the same number of Apple users/customers - but it wouldn't necessarily show in sales figures.
I guess the Mac people are getting closer to what I want then...
UMIX is there for those who want to learn it as part of a CS course. It is also likely to be used by engineers, since UNIX is still popular in that field and they often have to write their own applications. Our best programmer here doesn't have a CS degree, but an engineering degree, and he's a UNIX guy. Cliff Stoll was an astronomer by trade, but also a UNIX guru because he needed that to do his job.
The game was delayed quite a bit, period, for both platforms. Carmack thought he was going to release it not long after the GeForce 3 cards came out, and he had this to say about the Mac version:
We do run a bit better on a high end Wintel system, but the Apple performance is still quite good, especially considering the short amount of time that the drivers had before the event.And that was in the days of the G4, not the much faster G5, before good Mac drivers for the GeForce3 were out. The context of this quote is a MacWorld expo for Apple's release of OS X and inclusion of a GeForce3 card in their systems. John Carmack came up to demo the first public showing of Doom3 -- on a Mac.
"It is also likely to be used by engineers, since UNIX is still popular in that field and they often have to write their own applications."
... you DO understand that 99% of the engineers in the world don't write their own programs ?
... are you talking about people with reseach grants, or in education who get to spend other people's time and money, or the real world ?
The Mac does more than that Dell, but your comment brings up a basic truth: get what you need. If you don't want do do any games, aren't going to do any Firewire, will use a free office package, can live with poor sound, don't mind XP Home Edition, and don't care about writing CDs or reading DVDs, then the Dell is obviously a better choice.
Apple has joined the low-end market, but not the totally cheap, barely functional crap market.
with hope that your favorite game finally makes it to the MAC even-though the experience will not be the same.
My favorite game is out for the Mac, but it won't work on these low-end PCs or Macs. However, Doom3 hauls ass on a G5. Besides, Carmack programs for OpenGL, and that's a core system of OS X.
I'm talking about people who historically work with Big Iron, or smaller Sun or SGI systems -- in UNIX. To send an engineer into the wild with no UNIX training is not a good idea.
Incorrect. iDVD allows you to save to image, meaning you can burn to any USB 2.0 or firewire external DVD burner using the included Disk Utility.
Point one: The purpose of a computer lab is not to teach kids how to use computers, but to use computers to teach kids about Astronomy, physics, etc. Sheesh.
Point two: Since Apple is MS's research department, anything the kids learn on Macs will be copied into Windows by the time they get out into the real world, anyway.
Yes, but it requires the Hurz and Pfurz hack. I'd still recommend getting the SuperDrive option if someone intends to burn DVDs with a Mac mini.
That's because Aspyr's business is to port PC games to the Mac platofrm. They evaluate which titles they think will sell well, buy the rights to port the game and then port and publish under their own name.
What I find really interesting is your rabid defense of the PC as the superior choice. Feeling a little defensive?
I just noticed that iDVD 5 does not require the Hurz and Pfurz hack to burn to an external drive.
iDVD 5.0, which is what ships with the mini, does not require the hack. Go to File and choose Save as Disc Image.
When your circus has a big tent you can fit a lot of clowns inside.
"Point one: The purpose of a computer lab is not to teach kids how to use computers, but to use computers to teach kids about Astronomy, physics, etc. Sheesh."
Thank you, I'm assuming that someone in the lab, must teach them how to operate the computers in order to be able to learn aboAstronomy and Physics. It appears that my friend on this thread believes that everyone learns UNIX programming in computer labs these days.
"I'm talking about people who historically work with Big Iron, or smaller Sun or SGI systems -- in UNIX. To send an engineer into the wild with no UNIX training is not a good idea."
Thats what I figured - What percentage of college graduates do you figure are "people who historically work with Big Iron, or smaller Sun or SGI systems " ?
How many engineers does, oh, say General Moters employ ?
How many would be fired immediately if they started monkying around with the inner workings of their networked CAD design programs ?
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