"If tomorrow nothing changed (let's say!) except that macs had 80% market share, would mac fans be just as fanatic?"
There is (possibly) a genuine reason for that. Macs have a culture which tends to be shared by people who use them. You can speculate about what that is (smug? aesthetic? gullible? quality conscious?) but it's a bit like owning a classic car: you feel a connection, however spurious, to other classic car owners.
If Macs go mainstream, it will be like Eternal September all over again. A lot of current Mac users would give up on them because they lost the snob value, but plenty others would find something else because Macs would start catering to the mass, rather than the niche it has at the moment.
(PS, I'm a Mac user, but I hope snobbery isn't what informed my decision. I was more interested in a Unix-based environment and a high resale value.)
I really don't think that-s very surprising - the people who buy Macs, instead of just going with the rest and buying PC's, are generally the type of people that would care more about technology (computer as well as 'green' and other) and the type that are closer to power users (so they end up knowing what they're buying, and liking it.)
Or maybe I'm just making all the wrong assumptions, who knows.
I've always thought the opposite. Mainly because I've always bought PC's because I could research and choose the parts appropriate to what I wanted to use the machine for. Then build it myself. Though this has most likely changed now that apple uses intel parts for their machines.
Has anyone been able to find the original "Mindset Profile" from "Mindset Media" about this? My searches so far have turned up a bunch of commentary but no original references.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadIf tomorrow nothing changed (let's say!) except that macs had 80% market share, would mac fans be just as fanatic?
There is (possibly) a genuine reason for that. Macs have a culture which tends to be shared by people who use them. You can speculate about what that is (smug? aesthetic? gullible? quality conscious?) but it's a bit like owning a classic car: you feel a connection, however spurious, to other classic car owners.
If Macs go mainstream, it will be like Eternal September all over again. A lot of current Mac users would give up on them because they lost the snob value, but plenty others would find something else because Macs would start catering to the mass, rather than the niche it has at the moment.
(PS, I'm a Mac user, but I hope snobbery isn't what informed my decision. I was more interested in a Unix-based environment and a high resale value.)
Or maybe I'm just making all the wrong assumptions, who knows.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant
It's pretty accurate psychology.
Now it's rising fast...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020712l.gif