| Home > Technology > "Beleaguered" Apple gives way to Windows "refugees" - the new Mac evangelism |
| "Beleaguered" Apple gives way to Windows "refugees" - the new Mac evangelism | | Date Created: 15 Oct, 2004, 01:00 AM |
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Ellis Island.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
I have been using the Macintosh platform long enough to have remember when Guy Kawasaki evangelised DateBook/TouchBASE, as well as seeing him speak at Boston Macworld in the latter 1990s.
Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was known as a beleaguered company, with many tech. writers predicting its downfall. At least one website continues to record contemporary predictions of its demise, but I reckon business is slow of late.
Kawasaki became an Apple Fellow and developed email lists he called the EvangeList and MACWAY to keep the Mac faithful loyal to the platform.
In those beleaguered times, and one when I bought a Power Computing clone, Guy published a list of things to do:
9. Wear Apple garb all the time
8. Reaffirm people using Macintoshes in planes, trains, and coffee shops, etc.
7. Inform your friends and family about what's really going on
6. Get online and answer questions
5. Make sure the Macs on showroom floors are running properly
4. Ask store clerks why there isn't more Macintosh software
3. Write to publications that slam us
2. Donate your old Macintoshes to schools, churches, and other NFPs (not for profit
groups)
If you have a look at Point 5 above, it reminds me of what I wrote Tuesday in this blog, available here, where I took a PC friend and potential switcher to an Apple store.
Mac computing as we enter the mid-period of the first decade of the 21st Century - a pompous expression for 2005 - seems to have turned 180 degrees. It is no longer Apple users who feel beleagured, but our Windows-using friends.
I refer now to them as "Windows refugees", following the number who have reached sufficient levels of frustration with constant security threats and updates, malware, viruses, PC Zombie attacks and spyware, misinformation and FUD, and long-in-the-tooth Longhorn predictions manifesting as the Holy Grail of Computing, to consider switching or dropping out.
I am invoking Kawasaki's spirit of evangelism to convince Mac users to encourage Windows users to come into the fold, not only because of any perceived OS X superiority in terms of its useability, but because of a sense of genuine compassion for their refugee status.
Often how countries treat those from brutalising regimes who wish to seek a new home away from the horrors of their homeland informs us of that country's civility. America was built on its civility; Australia has lost much of its capacity for compassion in the last few years in contrast. It's not for me to say if that has happened to the US in recent times.
Now this may be a long bow to draw, but I have always seen Mac users as a compassionate lot, rooting for the underdog since survival has often been an important part of being a Mac user. Being in a constantly threatened minority is bound to have its effects.
How Mac users treat Windows refugees will be a test of civility. There is no longer a need to prove which platform is better for which job. I have always wondered why a platform Windows users conceded was better suited for graphics was therefore not better suited for gaming or surfing for that matter. And therefore word processing especially incorporating images should be a pushover.
But with news that so many people are experiencing hassles after they update with XP service pack 2, and there seems no end in site to Microsoft's path of security updates, I predict more than a trickle of refugees approaching the Mac version of Ellis Island - the Apple stores including those of Mom and Pop owners.
My work with those who have been traumatised actually lends itself to thinking about Windows refugees. What they are leaving behind in order to make a new life for themselves, yet plagued with doubts and uncertainty that perhaps the devil you know...
And long-time abuse at the hands of monopolies... er, dictatorships wears one down after a time into a sense of learned helplessness. Expectations are low, little room to maneouvre, accepting of one's lot in life with little hope things will get better.
Look, I don't want to demean the suffering of refugees but in the Western world where nearly half of family homes are equipped with computers, these pieces of technology have become quite central to our lives. It's not unusual to hear of people spending their working days in front of a computer screen.
So when I say it's time to hold out a helping hand to Windows refugees, I am placing helpfulness and compassion for fellow computer users in the context of being a Mac evangelist in the Kawasaki sense of the term.
As Steve Jobs has said in a recent Business Week online article, it's not about the money, but about innovation and designing the best products. It's not about market domination - but heck, look at those numbers for the iPod - but about offering users the best experience of technology. To enable people to be creative and solution-finders, not drive up the share prices of anti-virus makers, or be held to ransom by 17 year old script kiddies, or Russian child-porn merchants.
Look, I don't know if the Mac platform will turn out to be unattractive to virus writers if its market share continues to climb. One advantage of the myth of Mac being more expensive than brand-name PC is that it keeps them out of the hands of such sensation-seekers who can do their worst using a used $300 PC box or the latest $3,000 uberPC.
What I do know is that right now, I am feeling very safe on the Mac. And ready to assist in the work of helping Windows refugees ashore and starting a new life. It won't be easy, but I can't think it's not been a better time to do the right thing by one's fellow computer user.
I think it's time for those of us who give our time to help fellow Mac users - people who run Mac user groups for instance - to develop guides to help Windows refugees make the transition.
You can't just throw a new Mac at them and expect they'll instantly see its advantages. It's too rich an experience for them. Just like your don't feed a starving person a four course gourmet meal because their fragile system needs gentle feeding, new Mac users also need small manageable doses of gourmet computing; Small chunks of easily digested morsels until they stabilise and are ready for more.
Which is where Apple stores come in handy. Let them act as oases of safety where Windows refugees can get to learn about Macs in a non-threatening, go at your own pace way, but with sufficient firmness to move them along to full recovery. That's the role of knowledgeable sales staff trained to work with this population.
Yep, I'm available. (End of sales pitch).
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