Mayor Of R'lyeh
On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:01:48 -0400, ZnU <znu@fake.invalid>wrote:

ZnU
In article <0968c80d-c7e9-4d92-85b6-e9e8d50699a0@e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>, "Mayor Of R'lyeh" <mayor.of.rlyeh@gmail.com>wrote:

Mayor Of R'lyeh
On May 16, 6:16 pm, ZnU <z...@fake.invalid>wrote:

ZnU
[snip]

Reasons like "I'm going to buy another Windows machine because I don't want to have to learn something new". Or even "I'm going to go down to <local retail store>and get a new computer", with no particular consideration that a Mac (which <local retail store> probably doesn't carry) might be a better choice.

Mayor Of R'lyeh
So long as they're spending their money they get to to set their priorities. Its Apple's job to make them want to buy an Apple product. The consumer is under no obligation to give them any particular consideration.

ZnU
That's fine. I'm not saying the government make them buy something else. I'm just saying that "Consumers buy X, therefore X is by definition better" is not a valid argument in an advocacy group, because consumers are influenced by many criteria that, if directly presented as arguments for buying one computer over another in this newsgroup, would literally be laughed at, because they have no relevance to a *substantive* discussion of the merits of various products.

Mayor Of R'lyeh
Only if you consider the real world to not be substantive. Consumers have their own agenda. That it doesn't always mesh with more technical people's doesn't make the consumer's criteria 'wrong'. Actually the reverse is true. For products whose success depends on consumers buying them the consumer's criteria is all important. Take for example the oft cited BetaMax vs. VHS debates. Many technical people cite Beta's better picture as a reason why Beta should have won. Its become such a myth that many people believe that Beta was crystal clear while VHS was like looking through dirty glasses. The tuth is that early BetaMax was only marginally better than early VHS. THey were so close that most non-video professionals couldn't distinguish the difference. What put VHS over the top was a feature that consumers loved and most technical people pooh-poohed - the ability to record an entire movie.

At this point the entire debate is almost moot anyway. Macs and PCs are more alike than different nowadays. I have no trouble using my iMac and work and coming home to my Windows machines. Aside from a few quibbles the HW is identical. The main things holding Apple back are its pricing and its refusal to put out a machine that matches the most common type that consumers buy.