Is *everyone* buying a Mac?
At all the major tech conferences I attend, all the alpha geeks and the fashionistas are walking around with Mac’s (hmmm….am I a geek or a bon vivant? I know what my kids would say!). I often find myself in the front of an audience and scanning the crowd of people with their laptops is interesting…but there is an accelerating number of glowing Apple logos at these places where influencers meet.
I’m getting together with a friend and colleague tomorrow for one key reason *and* because he too took delivery of a new Macbook Pro last week. This is a guy that has used Windows machines his entire life.
Even the dyed-in-the-wool PC guy, Chris Pirillo, has gone Mac.
My 18 year old daughter works at a local Apple Store and we talk often about how busy the place is all the time. Whenever I go there, it’s a constant and steady stream of purchasers. She’s indicated that this back-to-school season is “awesome” with sales even though no analyst would buy more stock due to THAT recommendation.
It’s funny…when I bought my Macbook Pro some time ago I purchased Parallels and an OEM version of Windows XP for $49 (and I threw away the $10 sound card I had to buy to get it) thinking that I’d need to continue to run Windows apps. You know what? In six months I’ve opened it up about 10 times. I play with my install of Ubuntu Linux more than I use Windows.
Why is this happening? The platform works; it’s elegant and quiet; based on unix; secure with no spyware or adware; great user interface; perfectly positioned for user generated content; compatible with Windows in many ways; in short, about anything people want to do today (other than Windows-centric proprietary applications) can be done with a Mac.
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About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.
I’ve noticed this for the last year or two…more Macs in conference pics, and a larger percentage with each conference.
It’s kind of funny watching Prillo, he’s gone Mac (and iPhone) crazy. I think Vista put him over the edge (wasn’t what he’d hoped for).
I was meeting at one our local coffee shops this AM and every laptop in the joint was a Mac (one MacBook, the rest MacBook-Pros).
I have a feeling that Vista will coerce more PC users to go to the Mac platform. I’m seeing an awful lot of Macs being used in movies and TV programs. No iPhones spotted yet.
I really enjoy using my MacBook Pro 2.33 and when using either Parallels DT 3.0 and BootCamp 1.4 with WinXP, I feel there is nothing it can’t do. It’s the complete computer. I’m not a gamer, so I don’t have any experience on that aspect.
I seriously believe that Apple is reaching an important watershed, a ‘tipping point’ if you will, that will thrust it into the the forefront of personal computing again.
And, as someone who switched before the millennium, I say it’s about time!
In our county bar association, there was a plan to allow online filing of court papers. The software was Windows only. At the meeting called to discuss the plan and the software, a surprisingly large group of Mac-toting lawyers showed up to argue for a cross-platform solution.
The Windows-only plan has been shelved, and an open, web-based solution is in place.
You betta believe it. I’ve just returned from installing a larger Xserve/Raid/Xsan to handle a groups multimedia in-house needs. At the proposal meeting 2 years ago for the original Xserve set-up, the boardroom was full of Vaio and Toshiba laptops. It’s now 50% MacBook Pros and the difference in usage was astounding. The Mac users were more engaged and familiar with their set-up, had far more needs and expectations in terms of what they wanted to contribute – and these were department heads 🙂 Their IT staff had shrunk from 11 to 7 and support costs had almost halved – the network manager even joked he got a day off now. I seriously believe that if Apple had a cheaper desktop box, this company would buy 1700 of them tomorrow. Sigh…
It’s not just geeks and art departments anymore
I’m astounded by all the Mac laptops in an Ottawa coffee shop that I go to. My best guess is 3/5 of the computers are Macs….and this is a hardcore Windows town.
I’ve been a professional Mac user since 1986. I currently do video/audio and desktop publishing on a Mac. I have had both PC and Mac side by side in this organization for years and am cross-platform savvy. I also do Mac tech work and installations on the side. I started helping people switch to Macs back when the original iMac was released. I have helped so many I have lost track now. I can tell you one thing for sure, it’s never been so good as it is now since Apple went to Intel/Parallels/Boot Camp. The worry of losing Windows is now gone and gamers can even now use a Mac. There use to be a few reasons why I would recommend to others staying with a PC (ie games) in the past, well not anymore.
The next few years are going to be great indeed!
Hello Steve Borsch
Thank you for sharing this story.
I used to think that Macs will never go mainstream. I think I will have to eat my words as I myself is on the lookout for my very first Mac and have decided on a MacBook Pro.
With the promotions going on, Apple has made their line of Macs much harder to resist. Although I might give it a miss since I am not buying one anytime sooner.
Hope to hear more stories from you soon.
Regards,
Rezdwan Hamid
People are gradually discovering how much more productive they can be when they use Mac. It is all goodness, since the computer using community will have more enjoyable time using their computers.
Yes,I just bought myself my first Mac, even though my school district is completely PC based. I’ve installed Parallels in order to keep me up to speed with what I do in school. It’s been a long week of learning new programs, but it definitely felt like the right thing to do. My only second thoughts are wishing that I had chosen the MacbookPro…maybe next time.
Awesome! Macs work great with photos and video and music. Surfing the web and e-mail is a joy. 🙂
omg i hate it when i see the virus card played…. it all comes down to market share, no one wants to hack less than 10% when they can hack 90% of the world jeez. the virus card is out of the equation, and just watch out .. the more popular macs become the more virus’ will come out simple.
im seeing this and i think to my self … all these people sucked in. I use a mac for work, and i am surrounded by macs for most of the week … and I still say that the mac keyboard is horrible for any kind of word processing, so i must say that games are not the only draw card to windows for me, and in regards to vista, i find the security on leopard to be much more annoying.
“bob” or “alfredo”
You’re the same guy (your IP address is available to me when someone comments) and you certainly have issues with Macs. It’s OK….you can keep using a PC, I don’t mind.