After a long period of being one of the great unwashed masses, I’ve finally ascended into a higher plane of being.
That’s right – I finally bought a Mac.
I’d been using a nice Compaq laptop, but lugging the damn thing through airports and long trips was getting to be a hastle. I need something that is light, has long battery life, and is easy to use. I don’t need to play games. I want something that will run OpenOffice, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver and let me upload pictures from my digital camera.
The new iBook does everything I need. When Apple dropped the price $100, added AirPort Extreme (Apple’s excellent 802.11g card) and bumped up the CPU speeds, well, that pretty much sealed the deal.
Those Apple people know how to hook you. First iTunes which lets PC users get hooked on Apple products. Then it leads to the iPod which lets you know that Apple hardware simply rocks. Finally, they sucker you into buying a Mac.
Now, we’ll see if I can manage to wait the week for that baby to ship…
Ah. Nice. Welcome to fun computing!
“Those Apple people know how to hook you.”
Well, that’s precisely why they will be in court soon: It’s illegal to sell tied products, or to prevent interoperability. But YOU think this is a cool strategy…
Vincent: Seriously, what the f*ck are you smoking?
Welcome! In case you have any questions, the ars technica mac ach FAQ will be helpful, especially this page.
Congrats! You’ll love that baby for sure! I so wish I could work on an Apple… but the industrial controls industry just won’t do anything but Windows. *sniff* *sniff*
Jared: Thanks much! That will be *very* helpful!
I’m not smoking anything I’m just reading the news!! As you rightly pointed out, their strategy is to hook you: if you want to listen to our music, you have to buy our player…and so on…but I mean, I’m not inventing it, YOU said it yourself:”First iTunes which lets PC users get hooked on Apple products. Then it leads to the iPod which lets you know that Apple hardware simply rocks. Finally, they sucker you into buying a Mac.” The only thing you don’t understand is that you don’t only switch to Apple products because they are powerful and reliable and cool and fun, but also because you don’t have the choice if you want to listen to the songs you’ve just bought on iTunes but to buy an Apple iPod. It’s not about being the best, it’s about being anti-competitive.
=> there has been an official complain (by consumers associations I guess) saying that they were just tying products (muci and music player for example) and making their products non-interoperable with other brands. I do think that they will have to -at the very least- change their business practices by court decision in the years to come.
If you still don’t understand what I’m talking about, take a good drag of weed, and read some articles: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2c04d39e-ec5a-11d8-b35c-00000e2511c8.html
I’m sorry I have to be snarky and disagree with you all the time, but you (again) have the opposite position compared to mine…I like Apple products (I don’t owe one, but I like those nice G4), but I think their strategy is unfair. You like it don’t you?
No one forces you to use the iTunes Music Store. If you chose to do so you can just as easily burn the songs you buy to a CD that plays anywhere.
If you don’t like Apple’s DRM, there’s nothing preventing you from using Microsoft’s version or just buying a CD. There’s nothing anti-competitive about Apple’s practices in the slightest. I didn’t have to buy an iPod, I could have just kept burning CDs with my songs. I didn’t have to buy a Mac, but I want a smaller and lighter notebook for travel and work.
There’s very little lock-in with Apple unless you choose to purchase music from the iTunes Music Store – and then you can just as easily burn your songs to CD and have them just as you would had you bought them from the record store. Compare that to Microsoft’s WMA format which *requires you to have a copy of Windows to work* or Sony’s ATRAC format which *nothing* but Sony equipment handles.
I got into iTunes because it’s by far the least restrictive service out there. If Apple were to do something as stupid as dramatically alter the copy protection on their music, all I have to do is burn all those songs to a CD and I still have them in a completely open format. So long as Apple plays nice (and they have), it’s a win-win situation.
Judging by that “great unwashed” comment, you’ll fit into the Macintoid community quite well.
Don’t worry… you’ll become one of US soon!
And yes, that comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.
Sigh… if I had any money, I’d consider joining you. Key word here being consider… 🙂