In a tragic turn of events and in an effort to reinvent the Mac bringing it into a vicious circle of conformity, the Apple logo has been relieved of duty as the once proud symbol that graced nearly every Mac keyboard for the better half of 20 years in the form of the Command key. At the Mac event last week where new keyboards were announced, the awful discovery became a reality. I’m mad to say the least…
Over the years, the Mac has lost more and more of its identity in an effort to make the Mac more attractive to the dark side. While a lot of the change has no doubt helped, a lot of it has stripped the Mac of its once totally unique persona. Macs for years were considered more of a friend than a computer. Lets start with the startup sound, which I affectionately call, the Bong sound. You didn’t have a mundane beep like PC’s… You had a vast array of different sounds throughout the Mac line. Macs still have this, but this is one of the few things which still remain. Then the Happy Mac… For 18 years, it was a symbol of the joyful exuberance and personality that made the Mac the Mac. With Jaguar came a new symbol… A dull, gray, boring, emotionless Apple logo. And who could forget the Power key on the keyboard? What PC could do that?
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As I write this during the second week of February, I am truly amazed at the two great events of the last three weeks. First, my beloved Broncos win the Super Bowl. Then, Apple comes out with the best ad in years. Life is great from my perspective.
The snail ad is truly great advertising. The message is clean, simple, and powerful. Clean, because all the viewer sees is the snail with the Pentium chip on its back. Then, just the panoramic view of a G3 Power Mac. Simple, because the visual image of a snail crawling across a white background. No visual confusion to distract the viewer. Powerful, due to the straightforward message it creates: the Pentium is slow! The second area to examine was Apple’s choice of air time. NBC’s Thursday night lineup is a powerful one. The viewing age fit Apple’s target purchase audience nicely. I had been upset when Apple announced it wouldn’t spend the money to advertise during the Super Bowl, after all, over 1/2 of all televisions turned on would be tuned to the game. Many of the games viewers only watch to see the commercials. The snail ad would have garnered as much talk as the Bud frog ads around the water cooler that Monday morning. But, I digress too much. Apple has thrown down the gauntlet both for Intel and more importantly, itself. Keep pushing Steve!!!!
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The Challenge
Well, the news out of Macworld is heartening, Steve and the gang have managed to fool the “experts” by posting a 45 million dollar profit. And like most Mac fanatics, I was initially thrilled. But the underlying problem remains that fewer and fewer Macintoshes are being sold. Some in the Mac community failed to look at this fact and its long-range implications. Fewer sold machines means fewer new users to the platform. This in turn means fewer software programs are purchased, which in turn means a ever shrinking number of developers willing to write Macintosh applications.
Granted, returning to profitability is the first goal. But the focus must Continue reading »
include MARKETING. I use my hometown of Denver as a perfect example of lost opportunities. Denver is not only the highest educated city in the U.S.A., but the most Internet-connected city (per-capita) in the world. Yet, I have only seen 5 “Think Different” ads since the campaign began. That’s ridiculous under any circumstances. What’s even worse is that one of Apple’s biggest corporate clients, US West, is headquartered in Denver. There are well over 10,000 employees, with at least a third using Macs. These are potential customers not being recognized.
Happy New Year to all you Mac lovers out there! I happen to believe that it will indeed be a very happy New Year for Apple and all Mac users. I am extremely excited about the Macintosh and its prospects for 1998, and it’s because of something that some people thought Apple should have gotten rid of a long time ago: its hardware line.
The title of this month’s article is inspired by a song by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Another Drinking Song.” The refrain of the song says: “What you call the disease / I call the remedy / What you’re callin’ the cause / I call the cure.” In Apple’s case, I feel those lyrics fit the situation of Apple’s hardware line very nicely.
More than once, many people have recommended that Apple abandon its hardware line and focus solely on selling the Mac OS, much like Microsoft sells Windows to PC companies. This would theoretically allow Apple to cut a tremendous amount of operating costs and focus on expanding the market share of the operating system itself, regardless of what brand of computer it runs on.
Hogwash.
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(Re)Creating An Image
The “Think Different” campaign arrived on September 28. Its impending arrival was anticipated by almost all with anxiousness equaled to the birth of a child. In many ways the campaign is like childbirth; wonderment, doubts, anxiety, hope, and prayers. I felt all of those emotions as I watched the two spots unfold.
Below is my analysis based on some standards the advertising industry I’m sure asks itself.
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The idea of showing all of these great and or unique thinkers is a reminder of Apple’s past glory. Reminding everyone which company gave the majority of us the ability to use computers. I still shudder thinking back when I took a college computer course and trying to remember the various DOS prompts (by the way, I failed the class, luckily the four credit “F” never appeared on my transcript. A true Mac user before I even knew it.).
Lets get right down to it, shall we? I’m sick of the “Work The Web” television ads that Lotus Notes has been running for close to a year now. Sick and tired of it. Dennis Leary, who I used to really enjoy as a stand- up comedian, is really getting on my nerves.
Dennis, shut up and get a life! Or better yet, take a good role in a major motion picture rather than the lame seen-it-a-dozen-times-already roles you so much like to play. (Judgement Night and Two If By Sea) You want to pretend to be cool by wearing a leather jacket and smoking non-filter Camels, fine. But stay out of my back yard (the Internet) talking about that which you are completely ignorant of.
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Change. Tim spoke about change and its impact. Boy, have we had some changes thrown at us lately! The Evil Empire is now our ally in the fight for truth, justice and the Macintosh Way… isn’t it?
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
Words adapted from The Bible, book of Ecclesiastes Music by Pete Seeger
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Change is good, change is nice, change is necessary… but to change from having the “enemy” that Steve Jobs led the good fight against for so many years suddenly become one of the “meaningful partnerships” in the life of Apple is just too much for many people to suddenly deal with. Ok, Microsoft purchased $150 million dollars of non-voting stock and is committed to upgrading Microsoft Office for the Mac at the same rate that the software gets upgraded for Windows. Microsoft Internet Explorer will now become the default browser of the Mac OS although Netscape will still continue to be shipped with the system as part of the package, and all present and future patent disputes between Apple and Microsoft will be settled via a new patent cross-licensing setup. Microsoft has agreed to pay Apple an undisclosed amount to finally settle the issue of infringement claims that have been an ongoing litigation exercise for years. Mr. Jobs stated that he intends to have Apple focus on its two dominant markets: “creative content and education.”
Comments. Be heard!