http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug1998/nf80831a.htm
BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE August 31, 1998
COMMENTARY by Eric Hubler
THE iMAC AND I
One of the best things about being a freelancer for Business Week Online is
that I get free access to Business Week magazine on the Web. There's always
something interesting in there (not a paid endorsement...), but one
article, several months ago, actually changed my life. It was about the
supposed resurgence of Apple Computer. Yeah, I thought, how many times have
I heard that? But there was a picture of this strange new computer the clan
from Cupertino was getting ready to bring out, the iMac. I was in the
market for a new computer, so I read the article carefully.
My first reaction was that it was a horrible mistake, another nail in
Apple's coffin, because of the decision not to equip the iMac with a floppy
disk drive, even though other items we're accustomed to thinking of as
"peripheral" -- modem and speakers -- were built in. But it was a
Mac...Steve Jobs was involved...perhaps there was something I wasn't
seeing. Though there were any number of PCs on the market that would give
me oodles more computing power than I then had -- and would cost several
hundred dollars less than I had paid six years ago for my PC, with its 486
processor, 80-megabyte hard drive, and whopping 4 megabytes of memory -- I
figured if I had pent up my demand this long, I could pen it up a few
months longer and give the iMac a look.
I visited Apple's Web site and signed up for "more information" -- i.e.,
junk mail -- on the iMac. The mailings were like therapy by correspondence
course. As the weeks passed, I recovered memories of abuse at the hands of
sadistic PC designers -- the humiliating upgrade rituals, the bizarre
hardware they made me shove into my parallel port. And I built up the
resolve to take back my life.
I think I had always been a closet Mac lover. It started with some
experimentation by a college roommate. He had a Mac -- one of the first
ever made, I guess -- and I was mesmerized by the black-and-white icons; by
the first mouse I'd ever seen; by the warm, maternal hum of its fan. This
was just before computers became mandatory at many colleges, and buying one
was out of reach for me. It wasn't until two or three years after
graduating that I took the plunge, and by then I, like so many others, had
turned my back on the Mac and opted for the lower prices and (supposedly)
greater flexibility of the PC.
Two hard-drive crashes, two excruciating memory upgrades, one
nonfunctioning tape drive, one incompatible modem, one deep-fried power
source, and countless system crashes (and lost data) later, I looked upon
the iMac with a pathetic longing. I was accustomed to spending the better
part of a week wrangling with a new PC, even a "fully configured" one, to
get it to do my bidding. The iMac ads, by contrast, promised a setup
procedure that consisted of plugging it in and turning it on.
Still, my financial conscience needled me. Going Mac would cost $1,700.
That's for the iMac, an external tape drive (because otherwise how am I
supposed to get data from my old machine to the new one?), and a new
printer because the manufacturer of my PC printer -- boo, hiss -- didn't
include any Mac drivers. A new PC, on the other hand, with exactly the same
bells and whistles that Apple was gloating about -- plus a floppy drive,
plus a color printer -- could be had for about $1,000. This would make me,
in an economist's eyes, an irrational consumer.
Which may be the key to understanding how the human mind goes about making
a big-ticket buying decision like this. Irrationality was my rationale. A
friend derided the iMac as "cute." Well, why shouldn't I be entitled to a
little cute in my life? Cute is just another way of saying well-packaged,
and the iMac is nothing if not well-packaged, inside and out.
So I bought one of the first ones to hit the stores. Now, the New York City
subway is not the best way to transport a conspicuous, expensive item. But
I had no choice. So after making my purchase in Midtown, into the bowels of
Manhattan I descended. The bright orange and blue box caused almost
everyone in the car to crane a neck. The guy in a nearby seat leaned over
and studied the box as intently as Brooklyn rabbis en route to their day
jobs in the diamond district read the Talmud. While the attention made me a
little uneasy, I also enjoyed it. It was like traveling with a beautiful
woman or a celebrity (I assume).
After I got it home, my two-year-old rushed up to the box and demanded:
"Wanna toy in da box! Wanna toy in da box!" No way, Noah -- this toy is
Daddy's. I vowed to keep it away from him at all costs.
I plugged it in and turned it on. And knock me down with a feather -- it
worked. The software was a little unfamiliar after more than a decade of PC
use, but it worked. And that meant, so could I. For the first time, I
wouldn't have to lose a week of productivity learning how to use my new
productivity-enhancer.
I took the tutorial and immediately developed a sexual fixation on the
female cartoon figure that dispenses info. Transference, Freud called it.
She kept saying, "Do this," and every time I did what she told me to do,
she purred, "Good!"
More important, however, the reverse is true. When I tell my new computer
to do something, it does it. And I find myself saying something I didn't
say very often to my PC: "Good!"
--"Everything I know about Jobs tells me he's as passionate as ever about quality, ease of use and something that utterly eludes most of the Microsoft minions: a flat-out disgust with 'good enough'." Dan Gillmor's San Jose Mercury (21 December 1996):
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>
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http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug1998/nf80831a.htm
BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE August 31, 1998
COMMENTARY by Eric Hubler
THE iMAC AND I
One of the best things about being a freelancer for Business Week Online is that I get free access to Business Week magazine on the Web. There's always something interesting in there (not a paid endorsement...), but one article, several months ago, actually changed my life. It was about the supposed resurgence of Apple Computer. Yeah, I thought, how many times have I heard that? But there was a picture of this strange new computer the clan from Cupertino was getting ready to bring out, the iMac. I was in the market for a new computer, so I read the article carefully.
My first reaction was that it was a horrible mistake, another nail in Apple's coffin, because of the decision not to equip the iMac with a floppy disk drive, even though other items we're accustomed to thinking of as "peripheral" -- modem and speakers -- were built in. But it was a Mac...Steve Jobs was involved...perhaps there was something I wasn't seeing. Though there were any number of PCs on the market that would give me oodles more computing power than I then had -- and would cost several hundred dollars less than I had paid six years ago for my PC, with its 486 processor, 80-megabyte hard drive, and whopping 4 megabytes of memory -- I figured if I had pent up my demand this long, I could pen it up a few months longer and give the iMac a look.
I visited Apple's Web site and signed up for "more information" -- i.e., junk mail -- on the iMac. The mailings were like therapy by correspondence course. As the weeks passed, I recovered memories of abuse at the hands of sadistic PC designers -- the humiliating upgrade rituals, the bizarre hardware they made me shove into my parallel port. And I built up the resolve to take back my life.
I think I had always been a closet Mac lover. It started with some experimentation by a college roommate. He had a Mac -- one of the first ever made, I guess -- and I was mesmerized by the black-and-white icons; by the first mouse I'd ever seen; by the warm, maternal hum of its fan. This was just before computers became mandatory at many colleges, and buying one was out of reach for me. It wasn't until two or three years after graduating that I took the plunge, and by then I, like so many others, had turned my back on the Mac and opted for the lower prices and (supposedly) greater flexibility of the PC.
Two hard-drive crashes, two excruciating memory upgrades, one nonfunctioning tape drive, one incompatible modem, one deep-fried power source, and countless system crashes (and lost data) later, I looked upon the iMac with a pathetic longing. I was accustomed to spending the better part of a week wrangling with a new PC, even a "fully configured" one, to get it to do my bidding. The iMac ads, by contrast, promised a setup procedure that consisted of plugging it in and turning it on.
Still, my financial conscience needled me. Going Mac would cost $1,700. That's for the iMac, an external tape drive (because otherwise how am I supposed to get data from my old machine to the new one?), and a new printer because the manufacturer of my PC printer -- boo, hiss -- didn't include any Mac drivers. A new PC, on the other hand, with exactly the same bells and whistles that Apple was gloating about -- plus a floppy drive, plus a color printer -- could be had for about $1,000. This would make me, in an economist's eyes, an irrational consumer.
Which may be the key to understanding how the human mind goes about making a big-ticket buying decision like this. Irrationality was my rationale. A friend derided the iMac as "cute." Well, why shouldn't I be entitled to a little cute in my life? Cute is just another way of saying well-packaged, and the iMac is nothing if not well-packaged, inside and out.
So I bought one of the first ones to hit the stores. Now, the New York City subway is not the best way to transport a conspicuous, expensive item. But I had no choice. So after making my purchase in Midtown, into the bowels of Manhattan I descended. The bright orange and blue box caused almost everyone in the car to crane a neck. The guy in a nearby seat leaned over and studied the box as intently as Brooklyn rabbis en route to their day jobs in the diamond district read the Talmud. While the attention made me a little uneasy, I also enjoyed it. It was like traveling with a beautiful woman or a celebrity (I assume).
After I got it home, my two-year-old rushed up to the box and demanded: "Wanna toy in da box! Wanna toy in da box!" No way, Noah -- this toy is Daddy's. I vowed to keep it away from him at all costs.
I plugged it in and turned it on. And knock me down with a feather -- it worked. The software was a little unfamiliar after more than a decade of PC use, but it worked. And that meant, so could I. For the first time, I wouldn't have to lose a week of productivity learning how to use my new productivity-enhancer.
I took the tutorial and immediately developed a sexual fixation on the female cartoon figure that dispenses info. Transference, Freud called it. She kept saying, "Do this," and every time I did what she told me to do, she purred, "Good!"
More important, however, the reverse is true. When I tell my new computer to do something, it does it. And I find myself saying something I didn't say very often to my PC: "Good!"
--
"Everything I know about Jobs tells me he's as passionate as ever about
quality, ease of use and something that utterly eludes most of the
Microsoft minions: a flat-out disgust with 'good enough'."
Dan Gillmor's San Jose Mercury (21 December 1996):
<<> tbyars@earthlink.net <<>
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