*WEDDING.BLOG.LINK*

Okay, you had to know this blog was going to include some good old fashioned Mac Zealotry.

I just read an article by a writer in the states from a publication called the Herald Tribune. ("Southwest Florida's Information Leader", I'll have you know).

Contrary to what you may believe, and maybe even contrary to your initial interpretation of this commentary, I'm not actually being zealous as much as I am being anti-zealous in this article. People accuse Mac users (such as myself) of being overly zealous about computing platforms, often accusing us of extremism comparable to the FLQ or IRA or some other aggressive faction like that. Truth is, I have found PC zealots to cloak themselves in this accusation, and here to represent is a one Mr. Rich Brooks.

One of the wisest men I ever knew once told me "Saying something is wrong just because it's a Macintosh is just as bad as saying something is right just because it's a Macintosh". And I believe that he was entirely correct.

Fine, the guy's decided that the Wintel world has more to offer him - I don't fault him for that. Quite frankly I don't want him in "the club" so to speak. What I disagree with are his reasons for making said choice, which are not much less ridiculous than they are unfounded.

I want to hereby declare market share numbers to be a wholly inadequate way of measuring the usefulness, or general popularity of non-new products. Now some people are pissed at me already for saying this because market share is one of my principle defenders of iPods (along with the style and beauty we've all come to love) - but I have been careful to qualify my statement about market share.

The iPod is not only a relatively new product itself, the entire market it plays in is pretty new as well. Yes, Walkman's have been around forever (almost as long as computers) but digital portable players are pretty damn new, as is good jukebox software (a la iTunes) as is online music purchasing (a la iTMS) - all THREE of which drive the iPod, and right now, a vote for iPod is essentially a vote for all three. By contrast, a PC is a PC is a PC, and they haven't really changed all that much since about 1985 - they're still essentially the same product, just faster and (some) with nicer cases and (some) with better software. The market share numbers are pretty representative of people using digital music players because so many people are just buying into this market right now. By contrast, (Lindsay and Morgan will attest to this) I still have multiple computers that work fine that are nearly 20 years old, and pretty much everyone has at least one computer these days - they're almost as common as TVs.

Let's spell out the difference - market share numbers for a new product represent the number of people buying in (that's a pretty good measure of popularity - not difinitive but pretty good), whereas market share numbers for OLD products represent the number of people trading up (ie: they are unhappy with their current model for some reason - it's too slow, it's not cool, whatever)

Also, let's not forget that those market share numbers are including sales to grocery store chains, and pharmacies, and Wal-Marts and Zellers and Fed-Ex and restaurants (etc.) for POS systems, libraries for card catalogue systems, university research clusters that have 10,000 PCs all hooked up together to be used as a single machine.... They are not, as he calls them, "home computer market" numbers. The above list contains things that Macs will just not be bought for - they were not intended to be used for these purposes, and they would probably be a bad choice for most of these things. But these numbers only marginally represent what "home computer" buyers are doing with their money.
I think if you went out (I'm not insinuating that this is even possible) and counted up the PCs in people's homes in North America, you'd find that Macintoshes have a lot better than 3% of INSTAL BASE share. I'm not saying it would be mind blowing, but I'd be willing to be it's up around 25% - 30%.

So no, Mr. Brooks, not every office worker in North America has the advantage of working on the same platform at work and at home. I remember reading once that almost all the people who work at Sun have a Macintosh at home. Just because you have a Wintel at home and market share numbers say there's lots more out there doesn't mean that's the way it is for everyone. I will concede though, that Mr. Brooks' setup is probably the way things are in a typical sense.

Moving on, it's useless to contend that Macintosh machines are not "compatible" with Wintel machines, and it only exposes your ignorance of the subject. I don't remember where, but I remember reading that the open source Samba technology used to integrate Macintosh machines (and Linux and BSD machines too) into Windows networks is actually more compatible and reliable than the software Microsoft itself makes for the same purpose. Microsoft makes all of its popular Office suite software available to Macintosh buyers.
(It is, however, much easier to steal Microsoft Office for Windows - that may very well be what he is referring to when he says he expects students to be able to "transfer the projects to a disk and use the disk at his home computer." - without purchasing the application to use said 'projects' it's useless to talk about moving them from machine to machine, and every major application that most people would create projects with is available on Windows and on Macs - I don't see a platform compatability issue here. I do see a platform choice issue though - Mr. Brooks has made his, corporate America has made theirs, teachers and educators keep trying to make theirs but keep getting drowned out by ingnorance such as this)

In conclusion, there are some very good reasons to buy Macintosh machines, and very good reasons to go for a Wintel option. Market share numbers are not one of those reasons, and I hate that people keep this charade going endlessly. I have no problem with people making choices about life, but I do have a problem with them trying to stuff it down the throats of people who could make the decision themselves, and especially with those trying to stuff it into the education system.

Many people have decided that there is no such thing as natural selection or biological evolution - and they try to restrict the education system with their beliefs everyday.
GM has the highest market share of all vehicle manufacturers - does that mean some poeple won't like to use a Ford, or a Toyota? Does that mean GMs are inherently better than Fords or Toyotas? Does it mean that because I can't use last year's winter Volkswagen rims on this year's Kia car, the best recourse is to say "You should have bought another Volkswagen"?

I know these are exaggerated analogies, but I think we've got to be more careful when playing pin the tail on the zealot.