[MacSpirit] 'Taking care of your own stuff,' taking the high road. Sounds like a plan to me.

by Rodney O. Lain

5/7/01

You may as well face it: If you have style, you are going to have enemies. There will be people who will resent you -- not for what you do, but for being who you are. Your very existence will be sufficient to arouse hostility. This is inescapable because any personality distinctive enough to attract some people is also going to repel other people.

Quentin Crisp & Donald Carroll, Doing It With Style

It has been less than boring to read the pundits and Pee Cee users weighing in on Apple’s plans to open a chain of stores -- downright boring, actually. I’m sure by now that you’ve read the opinions on whether or not it was a good idea to open Apple retail stores. I’m sure you’ve read the comments that say Apple will be out of the retail business just shy of two years, tail tucked firmly between legs.

Where have we heard this all before? Let’s see… was it in reference to Apple’s a) iMac b) iBook c) marketshare d) OS X e) the original Macintosh f) the move from the 68k processor to the PowerPC g) the jettisoning of the floppy drive…?

My hand is getting tired, and I’m running out of alphabets.

I honestly didn’t read any of the store coverage, even that at the Mac web sites. I merely browsed the headlines and looked at the pictures, which was enough for me. This is a new reading regimen for me.

In the past, I would visit Pee Cee sites like ZDNet, not only to read its Apple coverage, but also to read the reader comments at the bottom of the articles. It’s common knowledge that the best way to generate hits is to bash -- or to even casually mention -- a) Apple b) Linux or c) Microsoft. If you can do all three in one column, you win the John Dvorak Flamebait Award. Anway, I don’t even read the reader comments nowadays, because I already know what they’ll say. Ditto for the pundits. They keep saying that Apple will fail -- this time, for sure ;-) And it’s always because of some numbers that don’t add up, or because some aspect of the Pee Cee market isn’t just right for Apple to do such and such. Sure, there are always a few out there who will “get it.” But, by and large, they don’t. They always forget one, big thing: normal rules don’t apply to Apple and the Mac platform.

Things that Apple does can only be explained with the analogy of "defying gravity.” Sure, the law of gravity may work one way in the Pee Cee world, but Apple doesn’t have to follow those rules. You see, with Apple, up is down, black is white, beige is Flower Power.

“They” will never get it, so why do we try to persuade “them”? I hereby call for a moratorium on “correcting” the Pee Cee experts and the Wintel apologists. Just promote the Mac. Ignore the wind blowers.

I have said this before, but double up my efforts today. The problem before today was that Apple was always at the mercy of the retail chains (notice that I didn’t lump them with the independent dealers). Grandma always said that “nobody will take care of your stuff like you will.” Apple’s retail store openings are merely the logical conclusion of Grandma’s admonition.

I don’t have to tell you about the sad state of Mac shopping experiences overall. That's being detailed ably by Steve Jobs's deeming computer shopping as the worst shopping experience today. Amen, brother.

Nevertheless, the retailers keep wanting Apple to explain its actions. There’s a lot of whine and cheese being served lately. Again, Apple’s defying gravity. Study the company’s actions, which isn’t hard to do, and you'll get your answer: Apple is taking care of it’s own stuff, finally. Apple is doing it two ways.

“Take care of your own stuff”
I just realized that I’ve been selling Macs for a few years now, at one time or another, at Best Buy, CompUSA and now at Micro Center. Every time -- every time! -- I’ve had to deal with PC users’s hostility, cluelessness and total ignorance about the Mac -- and that was just the management. To fair, the fine folks at places like Micro Center deserve high praise, since they at least appreciate and understand that Apple products have a strong following, which translates into much cha-ching.

But, even they won’t take care of Apple sales the way Apple does. Apple products have style. I believe a consistent message and presentation of this style can’t be disseminated without the type of control that comes from having Apple in charge of the whole show from production to retail.
I should know. I've worked in Mac-friendly stores. I've worked in "anti-Mac" stores. I've worked in "Mac agnostic" stores. I’ve worked in stores where I was the sole “Mac guy.” And I only worked there on weekends. What goes on duing the other five days? And I didn’t work every weekend; I like the Mac, but I love my wife (even then, she’s been far too understanding of this Mac thing). With Apple in charge of at least this one percent (the percentage that Apple says its 25 stores make of the total Mac retail market), there will be some stores with 7-day-a-week coverage.

If you’ve ever been to Macworld, you can appreciate what Apple will be doing with stores. There have always been Apple employees who unabashedly explain and show how the Mac is a better total package -- let’s not play this Pee Cee-versus-Mac version of “mine’s bigger than yours.” The computer market will one day evolve beyond that. Once again, Apple is playing the pioneer.
With an Apple store, you won't need to belittle the PC across the aisle. Concentrate on what the Mac can do. And you don’t need to wait for Macworld to get this Apple experience. Now it will come to you.

We’ll take the high road; they'll take the low road
The age of Mac advocacy will draw to a close, one day, I hope, replaced by Mac retail. I see it in the tone that Steve Jobs has taken lately in response to Michael Dell’s public displays of emotional immaturity. It’s possible to promote the Mac without bashing the Pee Cee. Take a look at http://www.apple.com/retail. Pay close attention to the wording (no overt Wintel rhetoric, yet the Mac advantage is spelled out clearly). When you take the high road, people take notice. People are noticing. Even more will in the future, as evidenced by a CNBC broadcast this week where the news anchor was amazed by the BMW analogy. I haven’t quite climbed onto the high road yet, but I’m seeing the benefits of driving safely.

Pee Cee camps will continue to bash the Mac. But, who cares? I don't. I no longer care if the Pee Cee is dominant. As long as people know and understand that the Mac is a viable alternative and that it is as mainstream as any other box out there, there will be no need for the holier-than-thou platform wars in which I keep allowing myself to participate.

I’m still cynical enough to believe that “good enough” will maintain a majority of the computer marketshare, but I’m starting to hold out hope that we can stop living out the feeling that actor Robin Williams recounted to Rosie O’Donnell: “When you ask a sales person where the Mac stuff is, they treat you like you’ve just walked into Blockbuster and asked them for directions to the porno section.”

It will be nice to come back to this topic in six months or a year and see how things fare for us Mac users on the retail side of things. Here's my prediction: those who don't give a damn about the Mac will either drop Apple products, or Apple will drop them; those who do give a damn will make Mac shopping a better experience, following Apple's example and lead. That's the other big thing you're not hearing from the media din. This, too, shall pass.

Just like the iMac, just like the floppy drive, just like the <fill in the blank with your own Apple phenomenon>, in time the rest of the computer manufacturers will be attempting things like opening retails stores. And no one will mention who did it first. No one will make note of that Cupertino-based company with stores across the U.S.A. with several others opened in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

They’ll be too busy cooing at the Micro$osft Store, wondering why no one had ever thought of it before. So, don't get all worked up. Things are looking up. Dare I say it? I trust Apple.

Fini.

This column is © 2001 Rodney O. Lain. All rights reserved.

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About Rodney O. Lain

A former journalist and college prof, Rodney lives in Minnesota, where he freelance writes by night and works by day as a junior manager for a Fortune 50 company (daily he bemoans the fact that he was assigned a Gateway laptop by the IT guys). He has a soft spot for H. L. Mencken, Steve Jobs, Prince, Richard Wright and other well-known status-quo breakers. Rodney also writes "iBrotha" for Mac Observer and "Things Macintosh" for Low End Mac. Also, he writes about religion, race and culture at his website iBrotha.com.

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