Apples Are For Grannies? 432
RoboJock writes "So much for Justin Long — the young, hip 'n' trendy face of the Apple Mac (as seen in the 'Mac vs. PC' ads) is even further removed from the average Mac owner than everyone suspected... By three or four decades. According to research discussed at Silicon.com, 'nearly half of Mac owners are 55 and older — that's almost double the share for average home-PC users.' It seems the young guns don't have the extra cash to stump up for smooth shiny aesthetics." From the article: "For the digital youth, high-street box shifter Gateway is the brand of choice, taking the number-one slot among PC buyers aged between 18 and 25. Dan Ness, principal at MetaFacts, said in a statement: 'Apple can claim long-time loyalists but its future among the young technoliterati is an interesting dynamic.'"
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory part deux (Score:3, Funny)
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Microso$t just can't win around these parts. Can you imagine the hue and cry of MONOPOLY MONOPOLY if MS required hardware and driver certification in order for the product to run under Windows. 'Poor little so and so can't bring his new joystick to market because he can't afford the $25,000 cost of the "Microsoft Hardware Certification" - Isn't MS evil??!' and so forth.
Even more Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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Psssh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Couple that with the fact that that demographic has a hell of a lot of disposable cash, and Apple looks fricking brilliant.
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Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, although I've got Linux running on a box I assembled myself with some hardware attached that a hand built myself, I set up my mom (whose oldest grandchild is 26) with a Mac.
Didn't cost her a dime, 'cause it's the "kids" wh
Re:And just think of who fits that demographic (Score:4, Insightful)
Psst....hey, we are all going to be old one day. We might as well continue to enjoy ourselves, even you feel you have to buy a damn mac.
How did the parent get a +4 insightful? Wake up moderators!
Well as an older bleding edger (I'm 53) I say (Score:3, Insightful)
I feel that everything in my life has prepared me to enjoy life and to live well (the best revenge.)
And if some snot-nosed little git can't stand the pace, tough.
The characterization of 'granny' applies to everybody who kid has had a kid. I knew woman who was a granny at 32 (one oops after another.)
She wasn't old but the WAS stupid and so was her daughter, (and they were both very fertile.)
Eat my dust...
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Re:Psssh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Psssh. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Psssh. (Score:5, Informative)
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Have you ever noticed the age of the driver's for cars that are targeted towards younger buyers? Cars like the Scion "Clown Car" and the Honda "Element"? One of the big fears of Toyota is that many younger buyers consider their vehicles to be an old-persons car. Hell, my 70 year-old parents recently bought a Camry and I wouldn't be caught dead driving one.
I wonder how many younger buyers wouldn't be 'caught dead' using a Mac....
Re:Psssh. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Quick search and I found this article [theautochannel.com] from two years ago. Go down to the third paragraph. I have been reading auto magazines off and on for the past six years and Toyota has been trying to address what they believe is an 'image problem' for at least that long.
Re:Psssh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that mean I'll be lusting after 18 yr old girls when I hit 45?
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No. But, if you buy a Mustang, your penis will grow six inches longer.
More cash in a tighter fist (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd wager a guess that 55+ demographic is the one that has the most people using old iMacs or some Dell box from 1997, because "its good enough for them" or "it still w
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The former one.
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is when you do an apples to apples comparison (pun unintended), Apple's are not expensive. Go out and buy a dual woodcrest workstation from random PC vendor and see what kind of price they are charging you. What makes Apple seem expensive is that the average person will compare that against a desktop PC with half the power and think it's a valid comparison.
Generally speaking Apple systems are more of a long term investment and so it costs more. Overall you're probably getting better quality for your dollar, but if you only have a few dollars, that doesn't matter much. While the other PC vendors are fighting for every little cent on sub $400 PC's, Apple is selling $2500 PC's and making enormous margins.
I'd rather be in Apple's position than Gateway's.
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Oh bullshit, Satanic Puppy. See those cute little rectangular slot-like things on the side of my MacBook? They're USB2 ports. See the one right next to it that looks like an elongated capital D? That's a FireWire port. See how you can plug all kinds of goodies into them? Like this 320GB hard drive here? Or this card reader?
And when it comes to doing stuff like adding
I got my parents a mac mini. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I got my parents a mac mini. (Score:5, Insightful)
The opportunity here is getting to the point where it's as easy to give them Ubuntu.
Re:I got my parents a mac mini. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I got my parents a mac mini. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! Talk about damning with faint praise. Linux is pretty close to a state where a non-techie can run 2 applications?!?
Everyone I know who tries to use Linux (usually Ubuntu) for their desktop invariably tells me brief stories about how proud they are that they've gotten some aspect of it working correctly. (Some aspect that would just work on OS X or Windows.) Linux still has a long way to go.
I have a dumb question (Score:5, Interesting)
More on topic, it doesn't seem to me like Apple has much to worry about here, if the problem is not anything intrinsic to Macs, but rather the price. As the 18-25 year olds graduate from college, get jobs, and get promoted, the difference in price between a Mac and a cheap PC becomes less and less significant.
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Nigel Springsteen
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Gateway? (Score:2)
Re:Gateway? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure than when you consider the onboard GPS, the heated cup holders, high-end surround sound, leather interior, etc, that a BMW stacks up rather well compared to a Kia of comparable features (if Kia made such things
Look at Metafacts clients... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.metafacts.com/pages/corporate/metafact
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CSI: Mac (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, with Justin Long leaving. I'm waiting for the commercials where they have Wilford Brimley saying "hi, I'm a Mac."
- Greg
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... or Apple could get Benjamin Curtis (aka Dell Dude/Puff Daddy).
That would appeal to all the geezers smoking
'medicine' for Alzheimers and Glaucoma.
Dude! Your getting an iPod!
Justin Long is not leaving (Score:2, Informative)
Capitan obvious to the rescue! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Capitan obvious to the rescue! (Score:4, Funny)
Uh oh, I just had a thought. Maybe I DO have it but I'm just crazy enough to believe I don't. But wait, I'd be richer than I am now. Unless my wife is stealing from me!
Holy shit, I'm going to have to watch her a lot more closely from now on, and get the mail myself.
Has this happened to anyone else?
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$100k seems high. (Score:2)
Unless you meant the $100k figure as a per-student cost inclusive of what colleges receive from alumni donations, government funding, etc.; basically just dividing their total budget by the number of students. I suppose at
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Granny halo effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I know why this is the case... (Score:2, Informative)
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Were they that cheap to schools? Out on the street, Apple's cost from 2 to 4 times as much as similar competing machines (and this was both in the pre-PC era of the early 1980s and the PC era of the late 1980s)
"...impressionable children use to the idea of using Apple PCs"
Apple didn't make PCs during the 1980s, although their recent offerings might count as such.
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As somebody who was involved in computing before and during that time, I can assure you that this is utter balderdash. The term "personal computer" was commonly used during the 1970s and early 1980s to describe a business computer designed for use by a single person, hence the fact that IBM used it as a name for their offering to distinguish it from their larger systems.
"You might want to check the magazines and catalogs of the time, such as Mac Mall and
Apples are for Grannies... (Score:3, Funny)
In other obvious news... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Dunno why this is surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
My mom got her first Apple computer 24 years ago. When her current Compaq PC finally dies I know she will replace it with a Mac; she only switched over to the dark side because it looks like Macs were going the way of the dinosaur.
Also remember: Macs are ancient. If you started using one the year they came out and you were 30 that year, you would be 53 now.
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Try that with windows.
Well Of Course They Do (Score:5, Insightful)
Shit, when I get home I just want my computer to work.
Probably lots of reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
One reason is the Macintosh's dramatically declined role in education. At some point Apple got tired of eating computer loans and made them a lot harder to get, so students bought less of them. Around the same era, maybe a little earlier, Apple slipped in performance and Microsoft introduced educational pricing that made their operating system and office suite practically free, so the Apples aren't used much in classrooms either. Another good reason is that today there is very little important Mac-only software. Most of it is in the form of multimedia applications which have direct equivalents or even superior replacements on the PC.
In addition, of course, there is the pricing, which is only now achieving anything like parity with the PC. For the most part it has achieved it, which is a huge accomplishment for Apple, having been so much more expensive than the PC for so long. However, Apple computers are still more expensive and difficult to upgrade in most cases, and like Linux or the other non-Windows OS of your choice, driver support is still a sticky issue. There's lots more hardware supported on Windows than on OSX.
Finally, for people in the age range we're talking about, the lack of support for games is a killer. Of course, today you can use boot camp... But if you're just going to boot windows anyway, why not buy a PC clone?
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You're right that I misparsed your original comment - Another good reason is that today there is very little important Mac-only software. Most of it is in the form of multimedia applications which have direct equivalents or even superior replacements on the PC. - I somehow only paid attention to the second sentence (and I assure you I read your whole comment twice). For this I apologize. I am not out to find faults. If I simply wanted to distort other people's comments, rest assured I could have replied to
Games, Games, Games (Score:3, Insightful)
If price were the only issue I'm sure you'd see Linux based cheapo boxes in this demographic as well but I doubt they have any greater marketshare than other markets.
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And actually my parents have done quite well on Windows. My dad at nearly 70 went out and bought himself a laptop. It would be pretty easy for them to switch since they have no interest in games, but at this point they're getting along just fine with Windows.
--
Q
Well, it's all about User-Friendliness (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows was still relatively primitive and its major appeal was just to have a graphical shell on top of the then commonly-used MS-DOS. Mac OS was already graphical from the ground up, without the daunting command-line. Plus, Macs already came with the OS installed, so you didn't have to worry about first learning text commands and then installing the OS from a series of floppy disks.
That appeal still lives on with Macs as being user-friendly. The age range of 55 years and above is not as abundant with technoliteri (I LOVE that word!) as the younger ~25 year old group. Us younger people are, as the article says, budgeted. I myself wouldn't touch Gateway (bad experiences with them), but the point stands.
But to be honest, and not to be troll, I found Mac OS X to be relatively stupified in comparison to other OS's that I've used. OS X is pretty and all, but I prefer 'functional' over 'shiny' and I like to really dig into the inner workings of the OS that I use. OS X doesn't entirely appeal to my demographic for that reason, which is why it appeals to people who just want to use a computer and have it work without having to mess with it any more than they need to.
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I find it's both. It's shiny and pretty, and when you know how to use it it's insanely functional. There are all kinds of key commands that make productivity on OS X far surpass that on XP (for me). There's system wide automatic spellchecking, good window management, and I've yet to menti
Re:Well, it's all about User-Friendliness (Score:5, Insightful)
I've not the foggiest what you're on about. It's a freakin UNIX box with an open source kernel, that ships with a DVD full of developer tools! How much more functional do you want?
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It's a freakin UNIX box with an open source kernel, that ships with a DVD full of developer tools! How much more functional do you want?
For people who like to dig into their OS, the kernel is usually at a lower level than is useful. What is useful is being able to tweak iTunes to do something in a specific way, or change some Finder feature that you don't like. Very few people actually do this, but the people who do have created a couple of open source desktop environments that aren't too shabby. When someone else comes along with a need and the requisite skills to fulfill it, you've got a new contributor. The usefulness of an open source u
What Would You Give Your Mom? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no fscking way I'm inflicting Windows on her. System administration aside, she knows nothing about the social engineering hazards out there -- email scams, phishing scams, the vast cornucopia of malware...
Linux is an option, but it would take me weeks to build and tweak a configuration to the point that I'm happy with it and feel it would serve her needs, and I don't have that kind of time (although Ubuntu out of the box is darned close). Further, she has little interest in exploring computing for its own sake.
So that leaves Mac/OS-X. And, frankly, of the three, I think she'd be happiest with that.
So I don't think it's economic factors at work. I think it's because seniors have highly-developed bullshit filters, refined over decades of experience, and have figured out that Macs Just Work.
Schwab
Re:What Would You Give Your Mom? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the exception of malware, Apple is going to do nothing to help these issues over windows.
I think it's because seniors have highly-developed bullshit filters
Perhaps that is why I keep reading about seniors giving their life savings away to scammers over the phone?
"My bastard kids don't ever vistit. This is bullshit. You can have my money."
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I don't understand what would take weeks of tweaking here. I assume your mother is like my mother who needs email, web browsing, and word processing. If she's really "hip" and "cool", she may need a
Weeks? (Score:3, Informative)
Have you been to a MUG lately? (Score:2, Interesting)
We left afte
Re:Have you been to a MUG lately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. it's the same with most "clubs" these days (except for sports clubs). They are a thing of the past. Everybody has their club meeting on Myspace or Slashdot instead. Also, many younger people want information from their "clubs" - and online gives the greatest diversity of experience. Many older people go to clubs because they are lonely and use it as a social outlet - not necessarily to get information or help.
I'm calling BS (Score:2, Informative)
I'm currently the owner of a Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz MacBook Pro. I'm a 19 year old college student. My two 18 year old roomates have macbooks; one has a white one, one a black. My brother (16) has an iBook g4, as does his roomate, my cousin. One of my other cousins (14) has a black macbook.
Looking at sales figures, my school, which has educational purchase partnerships with del
Semi-Generation gap? (Score:2, Interesting)
hmm (Score:2)
That said, I'm thinking about buying a cheapish G3 iBook replacement... half just because I'm sick of PC laptops
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She hates her PC, just as she has always hated PCs.
See if your mom has hated her work machines - if so, you really ought to consider a mac.
After all, there are just about 2-3 programs they will use out of the box: browser, email, maybe a text editor to print letters.
Eventually they may figure out that there is also iPhoto, iTunes, and all that other cool stuff (tm).
Dude, I can only afford ramen (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash: youngsters don't have a lot of money, and don't really care about long-term quality. They are more impulsive and spend money all over the place because their interests have not settled down yet. They're more likely to want a hot new computer/iPod/phone/jacket etc long before their current one wears out. That means buying often, which means buying cheap.
Not many youngsters own new cars either, but I'd hardly say that spells doom for the car companies. People grow up, and coincedentally when they can afford nicer stuff, they tend to become more interested in quality.
iMac is perfect for grandma (Score:2)
My dad uses an "R2 unit" imac, OS 10.2, and the only helpdesk calls I get are when he forgets how to invoke the printer or he's accidentally collapsed a folder in his email client--he assumes things will be more difficult than they are, but is easily talked through the tasks.
Contra
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Spending a few hundred on a mini or used imac is well worth the piece of mind.
I'll second that. I convinced my parents to buy a candy colored imac about the time OS X was coming out. Since then I've answered about ten tech support for them. The answer to three of them was, "yeah you kicked the plug out again."
For what it's worth... (Score:2, Interesting)
anecdotal, I grant you (Score:2)
Its obvious (Score:2)
Maybe they need an ad that makes kids feel inferior to Grandma due to his use use of his cheap toy Gateway. I mean, they should try this instead, or in addition: PC's are inferior to MACs, and so are the people who use them.
This could also backfire as some people don't like to be insulted. I think those people are just pansies.
Stupid predictions (Score:2)
'technoliterati' (Score:2)
Perceptions... (Score:2)
Today we seem to have had two stories aimed at changing perceptions of Apple - one about security, one about the type of person who uses Macs. We've had others about the Zune, the last one of which seems to have the aim of changing the perception of the launch from one of failure to success.
Something about the way these stories
Other markets (Score:2)
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a friend of mine is a script supervisor for episodic television and she used to use a sony vaio. it died and i had to recover the hard drive for her. she then picked up an ibook and neo office/j to do her script prep and hasn't
Soem Mac ads are confounding (Score:2, Interesting)
Like the one where the new Japanese digital camera chic could talk to the Mac but no tto the PC. Huh? Show me one digital camera available at the time of that commercial that did not work with a PC. Seriously...
Or how they make the PC into some business-only thing that isn't any fun. Come on, show me how to run HalfLife 2 on a Mac... OK, I've seen Quake 4 and WOW retail boxes for Macs at the store, but that shelf is a great deal sm
British site? (Score:3, Insightful)
grin (Score:2)
Shenanigans (Score:2)
Shenanigans!
technoliterati isn't even a f'ing word...
Don't worry, this is already out of date (Score:5, Funny)
Whoever comes in last wins! (Score:2)
The PC industry has always been more about who was last to shoot themselves in the foot than it was about who had the best product. Lucky for Microsoft all of their real competitors had died of fatal wounds before they could hit themselves. Everyone except Apple that is, but they were in intesive care, barely hanging on when MS really started to hurt themselves. Of course now, Apple has recovered nicely
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Mac users upgrade within the Mac family, Windows users within the Windows family.
I suspect you'll find that if the Mac demographic skews older and more affluent now, it is because Mac users skewed older and more affluent then.
That the Intel Macs can dual boot windows is also a significant factor.
Not in the least. Vitalization is for the young. No one in the boomer gene