Why I’m An Unapologetic Apple “Fanboy”; And Some Thoughts On the Leopard Release Delay
Well, there are some of that sort in the Apple orbit to be sure, but my take is that they're a small minority. It's true that a lot of Mac-users (not least folks who have switched from Windows PCs) become vocal Mac evangelists, but their enthusiasm is stoked for the most part not by a Steve Jobs personality cult or the legendary Jobsian "reality distortion field," by the the actual reality of the Mac-user experience, which comes into particularly sharp relief (particularly appropriate word in this instance) when one shakes off the surly bonds of all the enervating baggage that goes along with using Windows - the malware onslaught, product activation, nagging "wizards", peripheral configuration hassles, and so forth.
In an essay entitled "The Secret Behind Apple's Loyal Customer Base" on SeekingAlpha this week, Carl Howe of Blackfriars Communications comments regarding Apple fanboys or more politely "Mac loyalists."
" What is it that drives their passion for most things Apple? Is it a deluded mind, warped by the Reality Distortion Field that Steve Jobs so successfully wraps every new product in? In short, the answer is no.
"The truth behind the scenes is not that Apple has a large group of customers that are too dedicated and passionate about their products, or the company as a whole. The reality is far more simple and obvious: Apple simply has a large group of very satisfied customers - and that's the secret ingredient left out of nearly every analysis or op-ed piece that mentions these 'zealots.'
"The obvious side to Apple's customer satisfaction lies in their attention to detail in every facet of product development. All their products are designed, at every stage, with the customer clearly in mind and each product is tailored to make it as easy to use as possible for the customer, regardless of how technically savvy or not they may be."
Well stated, and Mr. Howe has several other interesting observations about the reasons behind Apple's success in cultivating a happy and loyal user-base. I encourage you to check it out, (after you're finished reading this prose masterpiece of course) and he has captured the operative dynamic that energizes most of us "Apple fanboys." While using a Mac or an iPod is not entirely unalloyed sweetness and light, the overall Apple user experience in considerably more than extraordinarily satisfactory in the context of consumer products. The old Apple ad slogan, "it just works," is more often than not literally accurate.
Case in point; this 17" G4 PowerBook I'm using to draft this column. I bought it just over 13 months ago - an Apple Certified Refurbished unit that had absolutely no indication that it had ever been used. I partitioned the hard drive, installed OS X, ported my files and applications over from my previous production Mac, a G3 iBook, and after that, the story gets very boring. The big AlBook has just worked, flawlessly, in pretty intensive daily workhorse use ever since. Zero problems, zero hassles. no viruses, no configuration issues. All peripherals have been plug and play. No system reinstalls - just Apple's incremental OS X 10.4.x incremental updates, currently at 10.4.9.
Of course, that's just over one year, but the thing is, that old G3 iBook gave me pretty much the same dependability over the three years prior to that in the same role. There were a few kernel panic issues with some builds of OS 10.3 Panther, but it's been a rock running Tiger, and never had even a day of downtime in four+ years now.
Ditto for my PowerBook Pismo, which started out as a 500 MHz G3, and was upgraded in 2004 to a 550 MHz G4. Another solid performer, that has been essentially trouble-free since I bought it - used - in 2001. It remains my number two computer and main scanning and disk-burning platform as well as in daily use for drafting and posting articles.
My iPod is one of the very early 2001 5 GB original units. Still works great and has given no trouble other than needing a battery replacement last year. I did that myself with one of FastMac's TruePower extended life replacement batteries - a task that took me less than an hour and turned out to be pretty simple.
I could go on down the line back to 1992. The only major hardware issue I've ever had was a processor meltdown in my PowerBook G3 Series WallStreet at the 3 1/2 year mark. That was easy to fix with a scrounged processor daughtercard, and the computer is still in daily use as my wife's machine, now well into its ninth year of service. The original battery still holds a charge.
In fact, We still have every Mac (plus one non-Apple Mac, a UMAX S-900) I've ever owned in the family, and they all still work. Add to that the sheer pleasure and essential low-hassle nature of using the Mac OS (Classic or X) and you have the reasons why I'm an enthusiastic Apple "fanboy" with no apology.
From the time I first laid hands on my first (used) Mac back in 1992, I was conscious that this was something special, and the very cool thing is that I still get the same vibe when I sit down to do some work with this G4 PowerBook. The contrast with the travails Windows users routinely put up with is striking, and there's irony of late that if you want to improve experience running Windows, running it on a Mac is arguably the way to go as well. As PodTech's Robert Scoble notes in his blog this week:
"Walt Mossberg says his Vista startup experience was pretty horrid because of the tons of ads and other things that OEMs load onto the OS. They do that to try to make a few extra bucks on each machine sold. Microsoft can’t stop them because the DOJ made it impossible to push around the OEMs and keep them from ruining the startup experience.
"Solution? Buy a Macintosh. Buy Parallels. Buy your own copy of Vista straight from Microsoft."
Or just use OS X. It's a better trip.
Speaking of which; there's my segue into this column's second topic, to wit: Apple's announcement yesterday that the release of OS X 10.5 Leopard will now be set back to October from the originally targeted June. Apple released the following statement:
"iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can't wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is.
"However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price - we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones."
This development will no doubt elicit more grumbling and insinuations that Apple is losing interest in computers, but not from me. Personally, I'm quite happy to continue using Tiger for a few more months. There has been a pattern where Apple just getting the bugs wrung out of previous OS X versions and got them finally working well, then releasing a new version and starting the debugging process all over again. For example, OS 10.3 had some nasty bugs that affected me (modem related) until version 10.3.7. With Tiger, the sweet spot came around 10.4.6 or 10.4.7, and I'm perfectly content to use a stable and mature system for a while before starting my Leopard odyssey. I'd much rather they took the time to do it right rather than rushing it out the door unfinished in order to meet an arbitrary deadline.
One interesting question is whether there will be any more incremental updates for Tiger. They're out of numbers.....
Another is whether the delay will have serious impact on Apple hardware sales. I've lost count of people telling be that they're holding off purchasing a new Mac until they come with Leopard loaded up. The logical workaround would be to start shipping new Macs with a Leopard upgrade voucher.
As for angst over the BootCamp beta expiry date of September 30th, 2007, it shouldn't be too difficult to release a patch or version update with the expiry extended until after Leopard finally springs.
Meanwhile, Tiger is purring nicely, and I'm content.
Digg this
del.icio.us
Charles W. Moore
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
|
|
|
|
| |