It's been a banner week for garbage columns about Apple in the mainstream press. Some folks are just plain convinced that Apple has already lost the digital music market that it so thoroughly dominates, while others are equally as convinced that Apple's entry into the digital music market finally allows the company to ditch that silly old Macintosh line of computers that no one (other than 25 million apparently invisible users) uses anyway. Put all the nonsense together, and one might be tempted to conclude that Apple should ditch its failed computer line so that it can devote its efforts solely to failing with digital music. But one thing's for sure: Apple is failing / will fail / has failed. Right?
Give me a break. Anyone who writes such nonsense is is failing / will fail / has failed as a journalist. We can conclude this because every mainstream technology columnist whose readership is falling knows that he or she can attract an instant amount of attention, thus temporarily reviving the career, simply by throwing some random negative nonsense about Apple onto the page. Every Mac-related site will step up to condemn the nonsense, and as a result, Mac users everywhere will feel that they need to see the offending column for themselves. Several of them will write in to the author in order to complain, but that merely allows the offending author to brag to his boss that not only did his article attract a tremendous number of page views, he received a large amount of reader correspondence as well! It's a vicious cycle that seemingly never ends.
But the problem, of course, is that the Windows-using majority has encountered one too many of those kinds of columns over the years, and as such, their head is chock full of such nonsense when it comes to Apple. If you're a Windows user and you haven't at least one Mac user among your family or friends over the past decade, then you probably haven't had much of an opportunity to be exposed to the actual facts of the matter when it comes to Apple. For all you know, maybe a Mac really does cost three times as much as a PC, perhaps there really is no software, it's entirely possible that Apple really is about to go out of business, and it seems quite possible that the Mac is really "incompatible." I mean, if no one's ever tried to show you that nothing in that last sentence is remotely true, then why would you think any differently?
As much as we 25 million Mac users have been able to accomplish in terms of spreading the truth on a local level, and as much as sites like this one can do in terms of making sure that those 25 million Mac users aren't being duped by the garbage out there, it really falls upon Apple's shoulders to do the heavy lifting when it comes to dispelling the myths on a larger scale. And it's not something that can happen overnight. Unfortunately, you can't simply open up a Windows user's brain and surgically remove a decade's worth of myths. All you can do is work to gradually erode it. And with the advent of the Apple Stores, that's exactly what's happening.
Spend five minutes in an Apple Store, and you'll see that an entry-level Mac goes for a mere $799. Ask the salesman a few questions, and you'll find out that unlike every other sub-$1000 computer on earth, this one comes with everything you need, from both a hardware and a software standpoint. Spend another five minutes, and you'll find out that there really is a boatload of software out there for the Mac, either by asking the salesman, or by seeing that the display Macs are chock full of software, or by taking a look at the wall of available software titles that obviously must work with the Mac, or they wouldn't be there.
So within ten minutes of walking into an Apple Store, two of the four myths have already largely been eroded from the Windows user's mind. And that third myth, the one about Apple being in financial trouble and in danger of disappearing? Well, that one melted away the second he or she walked into the store. A gorgeous store like that, full of products and full of people, in a high-rent shopping district? Companies usually can't pull that kind of thing off if they're about to go out of business.
So the Apple Stores, along with all the things that lead up to a Windows user choosing to actually walk into an Apple Store when he or she passes one in the local shopping mall, act as a wonderful way of kick-starting the erosion of three of the four deadly myths that have caused so many Windows users to mistakenly dismiss the Mac as not being an option. But there's still that last myth, the one that Windows users don't quite know how to deal with, because none of them has any idea what "incompatible" even means! All they know is that it's a Very Bad Thing, an evil to be avoided like the plague, and that Apple has something to do with that evil.
Like I said, they have absolutely no idea what it means. Almost all consumers see compatibility as some kind of black-and-white issue: either something is compatible or it's incompatible, one or the other. And while they'll buy pretty much anything that falls into the former category, the latter is off-limits. Those of us who know a thing or two about personal computing (the majority of you reading this, but only a tiny minority among all consumers) know that compatibility is very much a gray area. In most cases, it has nothing at all to do with Mac vs. Windows. You can run into about 52 different kinds of incompatibilities without ever leaving the confines of the Windows platform, whether it be the six (seven?) different kinds of "incompatible" memory cards that are used by various brands of digital cameras, the three kinds of "incompatible" video formats that you'll encounter on the Internet, and on and on and on. Incompatibility is a never-ending saga, no matter which platform you're using. In fact, because Apple usually tries its best to adhere to open standards, Mac users are often subject to less incompatibility than Windows users.
But that's way too much information for the typical consumer to be willing to listen to. They only want to know "compatible" and "incompatible," and stop listening if we geeks try to go into any more detail. And it's so ironic, because that very fact is exactly why Apple is in no real danger of losing its lead in the digital music arena. The iPod (and by extension, iTunes) is considered the standard, and services such as WalMart and Napster are the ones that have been branded with the "incompatible" tag. Napster can spend all day trying to explain to consumers that its music format is "compatible" with a variety of also-ran second-rate digital music players, but it won't do any good. Napster isn't compatible with the iPod, and the iPod is the only digital music player they've even heard of. So Apple wins.
So what, then, of all these Windows users (well over a million by now, presumably) who have bought an iPod for use with their PC? Despite the fact that they actually went ahead and bought an Apple product, there still has to be some level of skepticism that their shiny new iPod won't be compatible with their PC. Until they connect the two devices and everything works perfectly, of course. But how can this be? How can this Apple product possibly be compatible, when we all know that Apple only makes products that are incompatible? Hey, wait a minute, maybe all Apple products are "compatible" now...whatever that might mean.
And thus, we see the fourth myth on its way to eroding. Getting consumers to understand compatibility, in all its many layers of complexity, would be far too much to ask. But getting them shift their black-and-white assessment of Apple products from "incompatible" over to "compatible"? Well, it's happening already. All you have to do is look around. The eternal hand-wringers, both in the mainstream press and within the Mac community, who are so sure that Apple is in trouble, just don't get it. They can't look beyond meaningless percentages, can't fathom the sheer number of people who have already mentally switched to the Mac, but simply haven't made their purchase yet, because their existing PC is still too new to be replaced. Anyone whose mind is so devoid of imagination that he or she can't see the degree to which Apple is winning the Switch battle...well, I almost feel sorry for them.
When you make a ridiculously superior product and the only thing that keeps more people from buying your product is a collection of well-worn myths, then your job first and foremost is to kill off those myths. And believe it or not, Apple has actually managed to find a way to attack the fourth myth, the one that I thought they'd never be able to overcome, because it's the one that no one understands or will ever understand. But somehow, some way, Apple is in fact killing that fourth myth. The myth of incompatibility, despite still not being understood in the slightest, is in fact melting away in the minds of the public.
I never would have thought that an MP3 player would be the way to do that, and I'm not entirely sure whether it happened through genius or by accident, but at this point I honestly don't care. Bottom line is, it's happening. Apple has already won the digital music war, and it's managing to use that victory to pry people's eyes open when it comes to the myths surrounding the Mac platform.
Oh, don't worry. The garbage articles never will go away, and the hand-wringers who can't see that 2004 is Apple's finest hour to date will continue the hand-wringing even as the Mac platform gets better and better, and even as the experience of being a Mac user moves even closer to perfect bliss. But watching them make even bigger fools of themselves is going to be more and more enjoyable, as more and more of the public chooses to dismiss such nonsense for the fiction that it is. As a Mac user, I've been waiting for the general public's grand awakening for a long, long time. And watching it happen over the next couple of years is going to be way too much fun.
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