TenoBell's Profile

[quote]So, creative pros everywhere, please take T.B.’s commendable proposition to buy every expensive MacPros, MB 17’s, the MacServer, and other super-high-end stuff that Steve’s got dangling for y’all to bite, at every possible chance your current Big Mac becomes a little sluggish. That always justifies the Big Boss into taking you to the Apple Store uptown.[/quote] Also its not like these people are just freely spending money. They are running businesses. The purchase of new machines is a business expense that must be justified with the need for faster more powerful machines. These new machine must provide more productivity which equals more profit.

[quote]What you are referring to are the creative professionals, which by the way, does not make up the majority of today’s Apple revenue. Important as they are to Apple for their influential appeal, they will forever be a minority. Apple would not be alive and thriving today because of these pros’ allegiances to the Mac platform.[/quote] Yes I was talking about creative professionals. I did not say they were the majority of Mac users, but they are a sizable portion who spend a lot of money on Mac products. From my life observation (I travel often) most everyone I know using a Mac is in the creative professional. Most everyone I know who has a general computer has a PC. I work in the creative fields and am around people who use Mac on a daily basis. Many of the creative professional businesses I am in contact with from New York, to LA, to Chicago and Miami. All of these businesses use Mac in some form and several of them are completely all Mac shops. From around mid 2003 to the end of 2004 they all changed from various flavors of PowerMac G4 to the PowerMac G5. Apple is rare in the computer industry to have loyal customer base that will spend $2000 to $3000 for an office full of new workstations. That loyalty is not based on price but on quality and functionality. The same will happen with the Mac Pro over late 2006 into 2007. Businesses will spend millions to transition from the old PowerMac G5 to the new Intel Mac Pro. Professional people will trade their old Power Books for MacBook Pro. [quote]Inside that 5% US share, you are saying over half of those are happily upgrading to the upper-end of the Apple product spectrum? Nonsense. Even if they are in the market, they are more likely sniffing the lower-end cuties - the Mac minis, iMacs, MacBooks[/quote] Honestly the far majority of people I know using Mac have Power Macs and Powerbooks. A few who have the iMac G5, I've only ever seen two Mac minis outside of an Apple Store. [quote]So, creativity stalls and you have crappy software.[/quote] I would disagree on this one, in many ways software development on the Mac is driving software development on the PC. In spite of the small marketshare Mac has very excellent software. Partially because Apple leads the way in its own software development to provide an example. I cannot count the times I've been able to do something simply on a Mac that was difficult to do on a PC. [quote]Macs can be used as P.O.S. computers now. I have seen trendy restaurants using them. [/quote] I did not not say Macs cannot be used for point of sales. There are small stores in my Brooklyn neighborhood that use Macs as point of sale computers. Largely this is because they are small record stores or book stores, and the Mac fits the artist mythos. What I was saying is that you will not see a major retail chain or grocery store chain buying millions of Macs to be used as their point of sales computers. That is the real point of sales market.

There is no real metric of how successful an ad campaign is. That pretty much can only be determined by the company. If the company felt money spent was worth getting their message out to the masses then it was a success. Most of the people I know with PC's don't really know much about computers and many really don't care. You could write COMPUTER in bold black letters on the side of a box and thats good enough for them. I believe Apple's best marketing tool are the computers themselves. The ability to walk into an Apple store and use the computer. As well as seeing people out in the world use them. Only certain types of people will buy Macs. People who feel the Mac will complement the way they work and their lifestyle. While the majority who really don't care or who are fans of Windows will continue to use Windows. I agree that this ad campaign will do nothing to sway a significant portion of the computer base to buying Macs. I don't believe Apple has any expectation of this. Apple likes being the small quirky boutique company.