I sent him an e-mail. Here's a copy of it. I was kinda angry, so I'm not sure if it some of it made sense, or if it's actually correct, but I'm sure I did more research than him.
I feel obliged to correct some mistakes in your article "Macintosh: An acquired taste"
"Technically, it was fabulous--and completely impractical. Microsoft's PowerPoint exists for one reason: Sales representatives use it to lull their audiences into an agreeable mood before asking for money. "Your company is fabulous, but I can't stand that little man holding the stopwatch and scratching his head. We're going to go with the vendor with that Egyptian papyrus theme," is a statement that will never come out of a corporate buyer's mouth. "
I'm a student, and when I need to do presentations that catch people's attention, PowerPoint doesn't do the trick. The delivery of your sales pitch, if strong and attractive, can persuade corporate buyers from 'no' to 'yes'. Aside from Keynote costing less than PowerPoint, it is a much nicer application, easier to use, and packed with features. You forget that software doesn't only exist for the business world. If someone wants to show information about a piece of art, or do a presentation about the Civil War, PowerPoint makes it look less than real. With Keynote, users can easily build beautiful presentations made to turn heads.
"The uninitiated, though, saw something different: two notebooks. The elegant new PowerBook comes with a 17-inch screen, but it's not all that different than 16-inch-screen models from Sony and Toshiba. A nearly identically configured Sony Vaio, in fact, sells for $2,699--$600 less than the PowerBook."
Actually, it is all that different. It has a 17" widescreen display. Much different than the 16" behemoths on the Sony's and Toshibas. This computer is also made out of aluminum, weighs 6.8 pounds, and is only 1" thin, as opposed to being made of cheap plastics, weighing 10 pounds (yes, I have seen 10 pound laptops), and being 2" thick. There's a reason you pay more for a BMW than you do for a Ford. The quality of the craftsmanship is much better. Oh, and by the way, a similarly configured VAIO costed $3200 on Sony's website. (this is with 512mb RAM, a 60GB HD, a DVD Burner, and everything to make it as 'Mac worthy' as possible.)
"Apple's new mini-notebook, meanwhile, fits squarely within its category. It's not the thinnest or lightest model (that distinction belongs to the 2-pound Sharp Muramasa) or, at $1,799, the cheapest. It's good, it looks cool--but it's a mini-notebook. Outside of Japan, a depressed market, few people buy them. "
You obviously weren't paying attention to Jobs' keynote. It is the world's smallest full featured notebook. Your little 2-pound Sharp Muramasa doesn't have a built in optical drive, has an underpowered GPU, and a relatively small battery life (2 hours and 55 minutes is expected when you don't have an optical drive at all.) The 12" PowerBook G4 is the smallest full featured notebook available. There are smaller notebooks, all of which require a docking station or some other form to use an optical drive. And, as far as people who would actually buy them: Students. I have an iBook (one of the newer ones), and I love it. All of my PC friends envy it because it is so small, yet it can do so much. When I go to college, I plan on getting one of these 12" PowerBook G4's. The portability is unmatched, and it's ruggedness is outstanding. Besides, if mini-notebooks are a depressed market, then why to you hold your Muramasa in such high regards? Because it looks cool?
"More important, Apple partisans--and to some degree, the company itself--believe the public should care about things like pixel count, aspect ratio and data transfer rate. "
I don't know where you got this line from. If I remember correctly, it's the PC users who brag of higher clock speeds, greater resolutions, and faster networks. Apple just incorporates technology into their computers that make them more usable. The widescreen displays are easier on the eyes. Do a test for me. Put your hands together vertically in front of your face, and pull them apart to the left and right until you can't see them anymore. Now, put your hands together horizontally in front of the test, and pull them apart upwards and downwards. Now tell me, is your range of vision wide or tall? If it's tall, then I think you should get your eyes checked. Higher resolutions also allow HDTV editors to do their jobs better, and more precisely. And don't say that PC users don't care about transfer rates, because I assure you, they do. Apple is also much more than that. They are about the user experience. It should be simple and easy. A no-brainer. Their products are elegant, yet simple. They are intuitive, and to a degree, inspiring. You should really learn more about the Mac community before incorrectly describing it.
"This compliments the public too much. When it comes to discerning quality, we're simpletons. Instead, corporate buyers and individuals just want to know how much their computer will cost and will they get busted if they make one or two copies of their software. (Of course, think of the scary flip side. If Apple had changed the course of history in the 1980s and emerged as the guiding force in computing, we'd be up to our necks in graphic artists, freelance DJs and career temp employees.) "
If corporate buyers saw more than the initial sticker price, then I'm pretty sure that more companies would be using Macs. In the long run, the basic Mac that does everything a corporation needs it to do (networking and number punching) costs less than a PC considering maintenance costs, and the fact that PCs need to be upgraded more often. It's been proven that Macs are cheaper to own and maintain, and that they last longer than PC's. My dad still uses 6 year old Macintosh laptops. They worked when he bought them, and they still work today. As for being busted for copying software, what's that got to do with anything Apple? Did you know that licenses for Windows 2000 servers can cost a company thousands of dollars each year, while the Mac OS X Server with unlimited clients costs only $999, which is cheap in a large network environment. And for your artists and DJs, get a life. Other companies make software for business. As a matter of fact, Microsoft was one of the first companies to offer applications for the Macintosh. If Microsoft hadn't created windows, then Macs would be cheaper, they would run all the applications you could possibly need, and they would still work.
"Microsoft and Intel understand this completely. Standards exist in the industry not because of a secret, evil conspiracy. They exist because, in many circumstances, conformity is more important than perfection. That's why the two companies, and the rest of the PC market, spend more time talking about price and availability than anything else. No one will ever "woo-hoo" a speech by Intel CEO Craig Barrett, but his company provides the chips in most of the world's computers."
I can't believe that you actually wrote this.
http://www.apple.com/server Apple does adhere to standards, believe it or not. It's microsoft who decides that certain standards could make more money if they controlled them, and then create proprietary protocols and push them onto the windows world as standards, leaving the Macintosh, Unix, and Linux worlds on their own. Look at the MP3 and Mpeg4 codecs. Microsoft attacked them with their own proprietary .wmv file format. Microsoft is even trying to make the internet a 'windows only' thing by making each new version of Internet Explorer even more proprietary than the last. It appears that the 'conformity' that you see in the windows world is actually Microsoft trying to push all of their technologies all over everyone. Microsoft can't stand to not dominate any market that they compete in. If you read this article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/28724.html you will see how Microsoft will cheat and still, just because they can't stand to not be first. Another thing that is good for users is open source. It allows the best minds in the world (no, the best minds in the world aren't all at microsoft and intel) to contribute to a piece of software, making it better than any one company can attempt. Microsoft sees anything that can threaten their products as extremely hostile, and takes every measure to see that they end up on top. Tell me, if windows products were so much better than everything else, then why does Microsoft have to spend money to send teams of people out to persuade people to use their products? Can't the products speak for themselves? They spend all their time Unix and Linux and OpenSource bashing, yet their products can't compare to some of the things that other companies and open source programmers have developed.
to be continued...
