The Halo effect: it’s alive!
by moose
Lots of people talk about the Halo effect, but I have witnessed it in action…
Some background first: I work for a UN Commission in a remote tropical island, and act as IT admin for want of a real one. The setup is the usual bunch of dull Dell boxes running XP/Office. Since we are heavy on data collection and processing we have quite a lot of computers around, usually fairly recent and top of the line, as well as a good bunch of laptops for duty travels (ThinkPad and Toshibas).
Let me add that the closest Apple dealer is 5000km away and that will give you a good picture of the situation.
When I took the job I came with my white 600MHz iBook which I use as a “chat” machine on my desk, sitting along my Dell Dimension whatever, and my 1G 10Gb iPod which I plug to the iBook and some external speakers to play music in my office.
My boss is a serious computer geek, with a background in math/modeling using UNIX stations and he LOVES gadgets. First time he saw my iPod he went “oooooo” and played with it a couple of minutes. Next thing he had ordered one less than a week later, a 2G 20Gb unit.
He received it and was plain ecstatic.
Then a friend of his saw the iPod and wanted one too, so he gave it to him and ordered a new just released 3G 30GB unit. Well, that’s no Halo anywhere yet, uh? Wait a minute. In the office we have a small WiFi network running on a Netgear access point, mainly for the numerous visiting experts that come here and also to provide internet access during our international meetings and workshops. Everyone has some form of trouble or another connecting to the wireless network, except me on my iBook, and now on my 15″ 1.25GHz Alubook. So, every time, I’m fine while people are busy trying to figure out how to switch profiles or whether you have to enter the WEP password or its hexadecimal value…
So my boss starts looking at my ‘book and asking questions… next Apple releases the Airport Express… And because he has subscribed to the Apple news when registering his iPod he immediately WANTS one. So he buys an Airport Express, and discovers he has trouble bridging it with his Netgear cheapo at home. So he buys an Airport Extreme base station and lives happy forever. Did I mention he owns 2 Dell boxes and a Toshiba laptop at home? That he is tired of reinstalling his machines from scratch every two month, having a 15 year old son who wants to be a hacker? And that now his 13 year old daughter has a pink iPod mini while his wife got his 3G 30Gb iPod while he bought himself a 40Gb unit? Hmm, now the Halo starts glowing a bit more fiercely…
Now and then he’ll stroll by my office and gaze lustily at my shiny ‘book with it’s gorgeous display, slim case and backlighted keyboard (told you he loves gadgets). Answering questions about OSX, I mention that it’s UNIX-based and open a terminal session, explain him about the built-in X11… WOW that does it and the *NIX geek in him awaken, stirred by a powerful wind of nostalgia. Now he positively WANTS a PowerBook. And there’s that really distracting shiny ring of light that suddenly glows sun bright around my iPod…
Here he goes for about a month, checking out Apple’s website, printing BTO configurations and repeating he’s going to order one…
Until he goes to Singapore on duty travel and comes back with a 15″ 1.4Ghz PowerBook, complete with tons of RAM, a SuperDrive, Airport and Bluetooth… And man does he love it! He bought a nice padded bag (a Crumpler bag, they are waaaay cool and their website is crazy as a mad cow) to carry it around, when his Toshiba laptop used to just be dumped in his briefcase and never knew the touch of a cleaning cloth.
So he loves the machine but he also loves OSX because 1) he doesn’t get tons of spywares/adwares/viruses/trojans when his kids use it to surf the web and check, erhm, educational content online, 2) “it just works”, especially on the networking side of things, 3) the iApps are great and switching from MS MovieMaker to iMovie changed his life and finally 4) he can use all these UNIX programs and hacks made by scientists for ultra-specialized data management and simulation.
Fast forward a few month and we find said happy boss in the hospital for a week… I go to visit him and there’s his old dusty Toshiba lying on the bed, playing some DVD. “Your PowerBook is broken?” I ask. To what he replies “No, it works fine but now it’s become the soul of the house and if I take it here for a week I’m going to cause a revolution at home”. That’s because it’s the only stable machine at home, and nobody wants to go back using the PCs, even the wannabe hacker son, who finds it ultra cool to do hacks using terminal, and better for boasting to his wannabe hackers friends that using command.exe
Bottom line: now my boss is considering buying another Mac for home, so he could enjoy using his laptop again…
By the way, it’s amazing the amount of positive comments from PC users you get when you have a Mac: lots of friends or people I meet during our international workshops keep saying how good it looks and are amazed by the applications and the “it just works” factor. Just last week I went on a dive trip and took along my old 366MHz clamshell iBook along with my digital camera, and iPhoto, although slow, handled perfectly my 4GB photo library. And on the 4 people carrying laptops during this trip, I was the only one who didn’t have some sort of problem. And they were all saying how great the Mac is and how iPhoto is a cool app.
Still. Apple remains at an extremely low market share (which is not necessarily a bad thing), and most of the people praising the Mac don’t consider switching platform.
The Halo effect lives, but the critical mass of PCs around the world generates a gravity force that needs a LOT of velocity to escape from… The iPod might just be the accelerator that will allow some people to reach liberation speed.
March 22nd, 2005 at 12:09 CET
My friend Moose,
only one word for this post : GREAT!
March 28th, 2005 at 19:59 CEST
Excelent post, really.
I wish it was like that here. I own a 3 year old Powerbook G4 and carry it around a lot, too. But at my university were laptops become increasingly popular, I mostly get odd looks for owning and using a Mac. Most people there comment that although it looks nice, “you can’t play counterstrike on it” (which is true), or that “there is no good software for the mac”. Yes, the same old bias, but I’ve given up arguing on that.
Don’t get me wrong, although I love my mac, I’m no mac advocate who walks around telling everyone to get a mac. Mostly I get those comments thrown at me without warning. The only time when I tell someone to get a mac is when some unexperienced computer user asks me what kind of computer he/she should get. Interestingly though, while the experienced users ususally know about the mac, and have made an informed decision for one platform or the other either out of personal preference or due to some forcing circumstances, the unexperienced users (which are those who turn to me for buying advice) are kind of windoze-centric out of dunno, missing knowledge or stupidity. Once I suggest to them to get a mac for reasons of safety and ease-of-use, up until now every single one of them told me they want Windoze ’cause their friends use it and everyone else, too, and they heard [insert stupid rumor here] about the mac. They won’t even listen to anything I point out, accepting Windoze as the one and only thing (Well done, Bill…) . Nowadays I usually tell them at that point to find someone else to ask. :) Well, I guess that is what you called the gravity force of the PC.
Another Issue I have is that although networking works perfectly fine as long as I use appletalk or TCP/IP-based services, as soon as I have to tap into a windows- (SMB-)network setup, the trouble starts. Connecting or finding hosts or groups is often next to impossible. And since I have to do this mostly at university, when some assitant professor is standing next to me waiting for something to happen this is kinda awkward.
And the last thing I have to note is that I know no one (Really, not a single person) here in germany who uses AIM or iChat. Everyone has ICQ or MSN here.
I don’t know, but I guess for the above reasons, somehow my Powerbook failed to create a halo effect …. :)
MacChemist
March 29th, 2005 at 06:01 CEST
Well, can’t work for everyone, and I said my boss is a serious geek, and a *NIX geek with that. Basically I’ve decided to do the same: I now refrain to telling anyone to buy a Mac, ‘coz I’m sick of hearing the usual “yeah but can I use [insert Win only app here] on the Mac?” or “but everyone has a PC”. So if someone is interested in Macs or in buying one, yeah, I’ll go and advocate. But if someone asks me what computer they should buy I just tell them to go ask someone else. Which is sort of sad, but then it avoids me being pestered by said people complaining later. Yeah, I know, chicken and all that.
That said, the simple fact of SEEING my various Apple products just WORK (yes, even with our badly setup Win2003 server network) is the best advocacy.
March 29th, 2005 at 23:41 CEST
I have no problem with SMB finding windows friends.
Also, iChat is compatible with AIM (mac and windows).
I have always had problems with windows wifi connection and none with Macs.
Jus a few comments … :)
It just works…