Oh Cult of Mac: Puh-lease!!!

26 Apr 2009

Read this article before you read mine, the spin cycle is out of control! Leigh McMullen has hit the fanboy All-Star team. My points of contention? I will never understand why the Mac die hards continue to fight against the notion that Macs are more expensive, they are. It’s just a fact. You can’t argue value this way. Let me break them down:

“In short utterly failing to recognize that premium brands don’t suffer the same wild swings as commodity players. Don’t believe me? 2008 was Ferrari’s best sales year ever. Don’t trust me on that –Google it.”

Excuse the pun, but this isn’t exactly an Apples to Apples comparison, the contention is that a premium brand will suffer in a poor economy. Less than 1% of the US population could afford a Ferrari, it’s not exactly a brand that has customers that are extremely sensitive to the economy. We are talking a $200,000-$500,000 car. That means a Ferrari starts just short of the price of the median price of a house in the US. Is Cult of Mac seriously so Apple blind that they would compare Macs to Ferraris? Ok, next point…

Does Dell offer in store support, migration assistance and training? Not just in a few big cities but even in places like Des Moines? They don’t, not at any price.

Apple has 211 retail stores in the US. If you figure out what cities they are in, and the populations, it’s all of the sudden a much less impressive number.

I will be completely nice and forget the fact that these “geniuses”, which are pretty much smug versions of the same idiots you get at Best Buy, are busy talking about iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs too.

If you are a computer buyer in the US, how much help are the Apple Stores to you? If you live in Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia or Wyoming you are out of luck. That’s 10 million people in case you are wondering.

So people in lesser populated states are stuck with phone support and mail order purchases, I get that financially, but all of those states have plenty of places to buy PCs, even Mom and Pop shops that support them too. (And yes, I know Best Buy sells and supports Apple computers too. But if they were good enough for you cultists, we wouldn’t be having this argument about why the Apple Store is the linchpin of the Apple value proposition.)

Think about these Apple Store statistics for a moment:

20% of all Apple Store are in California
50% of all Apple Stores are in 5 States (CA, FL, NJ, NY, and TX)
For states with stores, the average population per store is 1,371,261. That’s right, 1.3 million people per store.

Contrast that to the likes of Best Buy, which operates 1,400 stores in every state in the US, even Alaska. I will take on anyone who contends that the Apple Genius Bar guys are really anything more than glorified Geek Squad.

Now let’s say that you do live in an Apple Store area, how much help are they then? Here are a few experiences I have had in an Apple Store:

It took almost two hours to buy two iPhones. Only to have the Apple Store clerk argue about which phone number I had to use since the account is in my wife’s name. Obviously Dawn has to use the phone on the primary number? Why may I ask? (We didn’t of course)
On a current generation (at the time) Mac Pro Dual Quad Xeon, I was told I had to go home and get the serial number of the computer for them to be able to tell me what kind of Airport Extreme card I needed. Even though it’s the exact model on the showroom floor AND you would think since all of my Apple products are registered, they could look it up. Not to mention then having to carry an 80lbs computer 2 miles to get into the mall to get it installed, they wouldn’t sell me the part either.
As soon as the new models come out the showroom is purged of all accessories for your model, I wanted a hardshell case for my Macbook Pro, less than a month after the unibodies shipped, all cases in the store are for the new one, that goes for iPhones too.

OK, enough about Apple Stores, let’s move to my next point.

His big argument in favor of the Dell: It has HDMI. Which would be awesome, except I watch streaming TV on my laptop, I don’t watch laptop on my TV.

Ah, so since Leigh doesn’t use it, nobody does. I disable the ambient light display on my Macbook Pro, does that mean that it’s as pointless? In an earlier part of the story Leigh lists backlit keys, ambient light sensor and accelerometer as reasons the Macbook Pro is superior, then chides PCs for offering something as “useless” as HDMI? I love my backlit keys on this Macbook Pro, but I could care less about the other two.

The HP in question isn’t even a particularly good video gaming machine. Lets see what an HP made of similar components would cost shall we?

All Macs are notoriously terrible gaming machines, even when you install Windows on them because they all come with pitiful video cards, and the entry price for one with upgradable video? $2799. Meanwhile great PC gaming rigs can be had under $800.

This was of course the most egregious example of machine comparisons. Most of the time El Jeffe chose to just slightly spin the story. For example in evaluating the iMac versus the Dell, he equated the 2 machines as being “comparable” –in spite of the Mac being 33% faster!

Come on now Cult of Mac, don’t play the numbers game you always accuse other people off. a 33% faster CPU clock speed does NOT equate to a 33% faster computer. Especially when the iMac mentioned comes out of the box with half the RAM. Load up Photoshop on both and show me how that clock speed difference results in identical performance gains.

eSata – All Macs are all SATA all the time, eSata is just a card away

That’s interesting, and how exactly do I put this card in a Mac Mini, iMac, Macbook or Macbook Pro? The only computer with expandability starts at $2799. I would hardly make a blanket statement like that.

TV Tuners – Seriously? I only mention this because it’s the second time he’s brought it up, apparently it’s a big deal to the His Honor, but I’ve gotten my TV over cable since the 1980’s and since the 1990’s even that’s being supplanted by this thing called the Internet. Check it out Rog. One thing is for sure, I am absolutely not walking around the friggin airport with a set of rabbit ear antenna on my laptop.

Hmm, I have four in my computer, My dad has one, in team at work over half of us have them in our home PCs. Why? Windows Media Center, my home is filled with Xbox 360s that deliver DVR’d content around the house from my computer’s tuners. Again, apparently if Leigh doesn’t use them, nobody should.

All of this is forgetting for a moment that Apple was the first to bring you a Graphical User Interface, Firewire, Wireless networking, and continues to innovate things like multi touch, face recognition, streaming media – LOOK ROGER—NO RABBIT EARS!

So the key here is first to sell? Firewire, yea, Apple worked it out with Sony and co, but WiFi was available as an add in card for PCs before it was ever in a Mac. And Streaming Media? Really? Apple did that first? You might want to let Real Media and some of those guys know that, I am sure they would disagree.

Yes, lets. I’ll start now, with my working copy of OS X, and you can start whenever your vaporware Windows 7 ships. Let’s measure who has the highest productivity.

HAHA! Vaporware? I am running it on three computers right now, you might want to look up the definition of vaporware. Might I also mention that it’s rock solid, but then again so was Vista SP2 despite the media reputation…

Let me clue you into a secret “Jack”, we here in the cult, don’t really want you on our side. The proliferation of iPhones into the hands of Toothless Appalachian Hillbillies has reaffirmed to me at least that if anything we need to make these goddamned computers even more expensive. We need to get Jon Ive to design a Mac made out of virgin tears, and first kisses, for the explicit purposes of keeping it out the hands of the unwashed masses.

Ah, yes, that is the bullshit Apple Cult smugness I have grown to know and love. It doesn’t take long for the Mac to end up being deified and lifted to a place beyond the reach of us poor average computer users. Where does that leave me? I love both.

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