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May 12, 2008
Notes from Ferdy - Why We're Not About to Buy a Macintosh Computer Any Time Soon
In the spring of 1984, while on the rebound from his third major career disaster, Bruce hooked up with a small software house in Chicago that was trying to create a new type of spreadsheet. They shopped the idea to several major software distributors, including Microsoft; however, at the time Microsoft was only accepting projects for the Apple Macintosh, and Bruce's friends didn't want to add a large learning curve to the front of the process. Eventually they settled on Lotus Development, and the new type of spreadsheet became the Lotus Solver.
I mention this because most Macintosh users think Bill Gates is the antichrist. Yet, the dominance of Windows machines over the Mac in the Eighties was not the result of a diabolical Microsoft marketing strategy. It was a result of the fact that a Windows laser printer cost $500 and a Mac laser printer cost $5000. The greatest desktop publishing software in the world is useless if you can't print anything.
No matter how rational a person is in daily life, once they've purchased a Mac they turn into an instant religious fanatic. A Windows user stays on Windows because they're more familiar with the tools, or they absolutely have to be able to use Netflix Instant and Amazon Unbox, or because they like having a lot of hardware choices. A Mac user stays with the Mac because only a crazy person would use anything else.
This is a very human psychological reaction. It probably stems from spending $2000 for a MacBook Pro that's almost as powerful as a $700 Toshiba Satellite. Worrying about that sort of thing is just silly. When you buy a Macintosh, you're paying a premium price to get a hassle-free machine. Some people would rather endure the hassle so they can keep the extra money. The whole point of capitalism is to allow people to make their own choices according to their own values, dollar values especially.
So if you're a Mac user, just relax and enjoy what you have. That's all us Windows folks are doing, and it's actually kind of fun.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Mon 3:50 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Notes from Ferdy | Tags: Bill Gates capitalism computers conservative economics Macintosh paranoia philosophy Windows
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