offwidafairies and MacBsct, specifically post that students buy Macs to look cool.
In my humble experience, coolness is a fringe benefit. The majority of folks I've personally converted were not impressed by the "cool factor" at all. In fact, the number one (empty) retort they would give is "I don't buy computers cause they look cool, I buy them to get the job done" etc., etc.
How did I convert these folks who thought macs were all flash and no substance? Easy. I loaned them my iBook for a week or so. (I have several computers between work and home).
My own parents are a perfect example. They are both older and the windows learning curve was not easy for them. They worked hard to understand this new technology and were downright put off at even the idea of having to learn a completely new way of doing things...at least in their view, it being a completely new operating system that looked very different to a computer amateur based solely on appearances.
When I moved further away and began working more, troubleshooting their windows machine was a huge PITA. Don't give them admin accounts? Their anti-virus wouldn't work properly, my father couldn't play the RTS games he'd become fond of, etc etc. I delivered an ultimatum: Let me buy you a mac or no more support. They caved.
3 weeks later my mother called and told me switching was the best thing I'd ever had her do. Said she always felt like she was struggling just to figure out how to do things in windows whereas in osx it seemed to work the way she thought it would. Now she has time to learn how to do things
with her computer rather then just learning her computer. She has her own blog, photo collections, downloads music instead of going to the store, the list goes on.
She still knows next to nothing about computers. But oddly enough, if you looked at what she does *with* her computer...you'd think she was solidly intermediate and almost geeky.
). Macs are very good looking...it isn't hard to imagine how their appeal lies outside of "the software."
