[Sigia-l] Just b/c I love a good Mac/Win flame war ... ; ) ... seriously though

[Todd Warfel]

On Apr 5, 2006, at 5:34 PM, Fred Beecher wrote:

> Why do people buy Macs? I'll make a reasonable guess that it's  
> based primarily on some aspect of "usage experience." It comes with  
> all this easy to use, simple software that facilitates your  
> "digital life," and it looks and feels slick and hip. It's just fun  
> to use a Mac. What holds people back from buying Macs? They need to  
> do stuff that there's no Mac software to do, or the cross-platform  
> stuff they use doesn't play as nicely as it should.

In my experience, most people buy Macs because the of the experience,  
ease of use and lack of security/virus issues. It's not the perfect  
OS, but it's currently the easiest to use with the lowest security/ 
virus issues and some great iLife products.

What's holding them back? Not what you'd suggest. If there's software  
to do it on Windows, there's the equivalent to do it on the Mac 99%  
of the time. And the reverse is true. In fact, in many cases,  
especially graphics software, the equivalent software on Windows  
actually lacks many of the keyboard shortcut commands that exist on  
the Mac side (e.g. Illustrator).

What holds them back, in my experience, is:
a) I can get "free" software from friends for my PC (yeah, pirated  
stuff). Of course they can also do that for the Mac, but it's just as  
illegal
b) All they know is Windows and they incorrectly think that using OS  
X is vastly different. The fact is that Win and OS X are very similar  
in many functions, so that's not a huge hurtle to overcome, but a  
hurdle none-the-less.
c) The cost of purchasing cross-grades or the equivalent for their  
Mac. They have the software at work and can take it home to install  
on their Win machine. Less likely with the Mac.
d) In the rarest case, sometimes the corporate environment they work  
in does require some things that don't work on the Mac (e.g. activeX,  
Access). This is extremely rare, but does occur.


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
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