[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On Macs and PCs

[rfmcdonald]

The National Post has said, perhaps better than I would, what I find so offputting about Macintosh's "Get a Mac" ad campaign.

"You can't help but get sick of any ad campaign that's this ubiquitous -- it's on all the time," says Simon DuMenco, media columnist for Advertising Age. "Even Seinfeld ran out of steam."

What seems to be gaining speed on its hip American counterpart is a campaign for A&W shot in Vancouver with two Canadian actors. Like Apple, the A&W commercials feature two men -- a schlubby, heavy-set older gentleman and a younger, Gen-Y slacker designed to give the brand youth cachet.

"The last time I looked up one of those Apple spots on YouTube, I found more parodies than ads," says Bob Simpson, associate creative director of Rethink Communications, the advertising company that earned a silver award for their A&W ads. "Our humour is based on small human truths -- I don't think we've quite mined that into that ground yet."

Since both A&W characters are likable, the hamburger chain has dodged the problem that has plagued Apple since the start of their series: that John Hodgman's PC character is more popular than Long's Mac guy.

"I don't like PCs, but I like ‘PC' because Hodgman is so lovable," says DuMenco. "Lots of people think Macs are for idiots willing to overpay because people can actively dislike Justin Long."

(A&W, for the interested, is a global fast food chain that I love for its admittedly caloric root beer and even more caloric root beer/ice cream floats.)

"510 Spadina, south from Spadina Station to Front Street" (Watch on YouTube)

I agree with Dumenco: John Hodgman is so much more lovable than Justin Long.

All that said, I want to emphasize that none of my friends have, in person or online, haven't been obnoxious. Macs are a lifestyle choice, PCs are a lifestyle choice, and that's that, we respect each other's choices. It's kind of like handedness, really. My Mac-using friends do care very much about their platforms and their aesthetics, but I really didn't get it until I read this Business Week article about how Macintosh computers are crafted.

Apple is in every sense a mass marketer, but it has the soul and the strategy of a luxury-goods maker. You can see this in the design of its products, right down to the packaging. The appeal is visceral: To see the product is to want it.

I'm writing these words on a 27-inch iMac that is the most gorgeous desktop I've ever touched. In a world where the design esthetic is industrial blah, the new iMac ($1,999 for the 27-in. model, from $1,199 for the 21.5-in.) is a spare, elegant fusion of aluminum and glass that features everything you need and nothing you don't. The accompanying Magic Mouse is a curved sliver of plastic with a touch-sensitive top that lets you scroll with the flick of a finger. The wireless keyboard looks like something from the Bang & Olufsen store.

Luxury-goods makers are quirky, and Apple is no exception. It has a long-standing antipathy to multibutton mice, so the Magic Mouse comes with its right-click function disabled until you change a preference to turn it on. And the keyboard pointlessly embraces all the limitations of a laptop keyboard—no number pad, no keys for paging up and down. Fortunately, if you want to trade beauty for functionality, standard Microsoft (MSFT) and Logitech International (LOGI) keyboards and mice work just fine with Macs.

Apple also disdains the mass marketers' credo that there should be a product tailored to every taste. HP's U.S. online store offers 35 different laptop models, from a $300 netbook to $1,300-plus monster with an 18.4-in. display, each of which is available in multiple configurations. Apple offers just five laptops, and the options for configuring them are limited to disk size, amount of memory, and sometimes processor speed. Every computer Apple makes, from the $599 Mac mini to the 8-Core Mac Pro desktop, which approaches $12,000 when it's fully loaded, comes with the same version of the OS X operating system and the same set of preloaded applications.

Apple's approach causes it to neglect huge swaths of the market. For example, the company serenely ignored analysts' advice that it "had to" break into the hot netbook market. It has avoided the fast-growing segment of low-cost, lightweight consumer notebooks. Entering those markets could boost Apple's share even further. But the move would take a toll on profit margins and fight the company's commitment to choose what types of products it believes best serve its customers' needs. CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed the low end of the market, saying: "We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."

I remain fond of PCs, their quirkiness and all, and quite honestly I can think of better uses for money than to buy new computers with capabilities I likely will never use. Netbooks are widely used for a reason. Still, as someone who has looked upon the iPod and the iPhone with no smalll degree of admiration and even a little bit of fear (how did Jobs strike that technology deal with the Zeta Reticulans?), that experience and those of my friends and the above news article make me appreciate the Macintosh aesthetic that much more. If only Jobs lost his attitude and his company lost that ad series, my admiration would be complete.