Will the Mac end up becoming un-cool?
- Thread starter Faustus
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And you've hit the nail on the head (at least the heads of those in this thread that are fascinated with trying to point out that OSX/Windows is better).
It's not the OS that's cool, it's the manufacturer. Stick windows on a Mac and most people wouldn't care (the mac would still be seen as cool). Stick OSX on an Acer machine and most people wouldn't care (it would still be seen as uncool). Stick either on a VAIO and people will go "Oooh"
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Caporegime
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Being common or not has SOME effect but the point is brand image.
Apple is a cool brand (currently) so its cool.
Dell is not a cool brand
Acer is not a cool brand
Hewitt Packard is not a cool brand
Windows 7 is not even a brand, it is a product; a product where its previous incarnations that has a history of crashing lots with a reputation and being unstable.
Cool is about brand image. You think the cotton used in a £35 Calvin Klein T-Shirt comes from a better plant than the cotton that is in a £10 Gap T-shirt? Quality is not everything, reliability is not everything, brand image is everything.
I think a better analogy is that a Ferrari can be considered cool, but that doesn't mean the driver is, nor does owning a Ferrari necessarily make you cool either.
Macs certainly have a cooler image and I think a lot of people think having one makes them cool, which is what was the case when people were posing in coffee shops with them.
Coolness != rareness
Different things are "cool" to different people.
Currently, a large portion of people do think they are. No doubt fed by their excellent design, overpriced status, and their placement in american tv / movies.
For as long as they are well designed as they are, and hollywood keeps loving them and using them on tv / film. They will remain cool.
Soldato
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I don't think Apple's ever gonna go the way of Burberry!
I don't mind Apple, but I'm just equally happy with PCs, mp3 players, mobile phones and so on. I don't have a use for Macs. I wouldn't mind a I-Phone though, but no I-Pads!
Being 'cool' is sometimes bucking the trend and being different, and Apple is becoming the trend. My instinctive natural reaction to 'buy this fully star out swearies in future if you want to be cool' is 'fully star out swearies in future off'.
Plus the Apple fanboyism, Steve Jobs, and their corporate attitude is getting tedious. But they're here to stay, they know how to market and design things.
Another indicator I'd say of people trying to replicate Apple's 'coolness' is the use of the word iSomethingOrOther.
It really grates me when people call their products or what have you an iSomething, it just stinks of copying Apple and lack of vision.
For example...
- That guy on Dragon's Den who made an iTeddy.
- KFC are currently advertising on TV the iTwist... which doesn't even fit in with the rest of their food line, why call it that at all?
- Milkshake bar down the road from me called iShake.
I really wish people would just come up with their own names.
It really grates me when people call their products or what have you an iSomething, it just stinks of copying Apple and lack of vision.
For example...
- That guy on Dragon's Den who made an iTeddy.
- KFC are currently advertising on TV the iTwist... which doesn't even fit in with the rest of their food line, why call it that at all?
- Milkshake bar down the road from me called iShake.
I really wish people would just come up with their own names.
Windows ISN'T the problem, it's the software written for it. I'll get app hangs every now and again, but Windows 7 is very stable and my only crashes have mostly been due to overclocking. When you get bad software however it can take out the rest of the system, although this is harder to do in W7 I would say.
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iPlayer
iPaq
etc...
Apple weren't the first to start sticking "i" in front, and if they were there are plenty of legitimate uses of "i" in front (for example iPlayer).
EDIT: I do agree though, there are too many companies using the "i" prefix now to make themselves seem "cool".
iPaq
etc...
Apple weren't the first to start sticking "i" in front, and if they were there are plenty of legitimate uses of "i" in front (for example iPlayer).
EDIT: I do agree though, there are too many companies using the "i" prefix now to make themselves seem "cool".
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Apple maybe cool now so that weakens discussions on whether OSX/Windows is better or worse or whether Apple hardware is better than others however both these were factors in making Apple cool and may well be influences on Apple becoming uncool again.
I disagree, are you seriously saying that if Apple sold a linux mac it would sell as many as an OSX one? it wouldn't because linux is considered nerdy by the masses.
Apple market the hardware and software as a complete brand, it's not just the shiny box, people think macs are cool because they look nice and they just work. One of my relatives has converted to mac in the last few years and when i saw them last all they did was rave about the virtual desktop implementation in OSX and how awesome the Apple Time Machine was, that's not just hardware.
Either way this whole discussion is semantic really, whats cool to you might make it pretentious and overrated to me,
Thats the whole point Apple aren't the first to do anything, its the way their products are re-packaged and marketed.
I don't know the history of it, and it seems hard to find, however I don't seem to recall there being anyone else doing it before Apple?
Maybe you know otherwise?
Correct, Apple beat Compaq to it by 2 years.
Associate
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Must be something wrong with my Mac then because my username isn't in the bar, I have to go Apple menu -> log off username -> then the same steps as windows
Or 99% of Windows and Linux based laptops have hardware switches, so it's just one press. The lack of hardware switch for radio is one of the more annoying features of my MBP.
Not necessarily, If Mac OS X was licensed out to use on any hardware you wish and was properly supported, I'd buy that and wouldn't likely buy a Mac, granted that would probably drive Apple hardware to be more competitive in prices and specifications and my decision would depend on how well priced and how powerful their laptops were, but Mac to me is OS X and that would remain "cool" and be more so if I could run it on any hardware with support and legality.
I wouldn't make the sweeping statement you're making. There are some of us who enjoy the Mac and regard it as "cool" with little consideration as to who makes it other than the fact it being a good product.
Personally I hate the idea of "cool" in a product, which is why I don't own any Apple products (yet, the 13" MBP may potentially be my next laptop because it fits all my needs without having the cost of a Sony X-series). However for a large number of people they don't care. They just want a mac to look cool and sit in coffee shops etc. All computers play media and allow web surfing pretty much as well as the next, most computers don't fall over every few minutes, most are stable.
You would be one of the few probably, I did say "most"... Most people (that we are talking about here) will buy a mac not because of the software. If the software works (ie OSX and Windows, with some Linux versions) out of the box and does the media playing and web surfing most people won't care.
You are both right though that Macs wouldn't have got this "cool" if OSX wasn't on them, the geeky people wouldn't have bought them in the first place, it's now gone mainstream however, those geeky people are in the minority and now people just care about looks and brand awareness.
What like ITV?