Posted on 01/26/2005 5:22:19 PM PST by Vermonter
Limbaugh could sell new Mac
This week, Apple Computer is launching a campaign to sell a new product, the $499 Mac Mini, that portends to transform the world in a way the original Mac didn’t. But Republicans will be needed for the campaign to succeed.
To put this in context, you need to read Revolution in the Valley, Andy Hertzfeld’s new book about the making of the original Mac in the 1980s. Hertzfeld points out that the initial target price for the first Mac was $500. But by the time it was launched in 1984, the price had ballooned to $2,495.
Many of the Mac’s creators felt betrayed. All initial design goals had centered on Everyman, but instead of a computer that changed the world, the Mac became a niche machine mainly for artisans and limousine liberals who could afford one. The rest of us bought commodity PCs. Fewer than one in 20 computers sold or used today to cruise the Internet is a Mac.
The Mac Mini could rectify this. But will it? Will a low price tag and terrific design alone entice a mass market to buy this new product? I’m not so sure. Apple’s image may still be an impediment to Mac sales.
To research this column, I read lots of discussion boards all across the Internet, and it’s evident that politics still play a role in computer purchases. Just as there are red states and blue states, there are also Mac Democrats and PC Republicans. These battles were especially nasty after Apple went public with its politics and added Al Gore to its board of directors.
Apple’s leader, Steve Jobs, seems to have sensed last year that his company was getting too “political.” He backed off some of his campaigning for John Kerry and cryptically signaled to The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg in an interview that he understands the problem.
“People have said that I shouldn’t get involved politically because probably half our customers are Republicans — maybe a little less ... [but] I do point out that there are more Democrats than Mac users so I’m going to just stay away from all that political stuff because that was just a personal thing,” Jobs said.
There are, in fact, devoted Republican Macintosh users, but that is not the perception. So Apple desperately needs to introduce a replacement image to achieve the original Mac’s vision. There would be no better way to do this than to add a Republican or two to Apple’s board of directors. Mac users such as Karl Rove or Arnold Schwarzenegger adviser Mike Murphy would be possibilities, but Rush Limbaugh is the most obvious choice. Rush is an ardent Mac evangelist and knows a thing or two about marketing. Even if Limbaugh is not put on Apple’s board, the company should market through his daily radio program, paying Rush to tout his favorite computer the same way he builds mattress sales for Select Comfort.
Hertzfeld’s book says the team that created the original Mac had a spirit of “urgency, ambition, passion for excellence, artistic pride, and irreverent humor.” That sounds just like Rush Limbaugh to me. I know that if Rush had been a board member in 1984, he’d have had the guts to back the famous Big Brother Super Bowl ad that Apple’s then-timorous board abandoned.
Apple marketers also need to understand that restoration of their brand’s image in conservative and Republican circles can resonate with various factions of the party. I have already read favorable gun-owner comments about the Mac Mini on the discussion boards of Ted Nugent’s populist United Sportsmen of America website. James Dobson and his Focus on the Family might be intrigued by a computer that is affordable for young families and not subject to porno pop-up ads. And business Republicans will be impressed by the seamless integration of the Mac’s OS X operating system with corporate networks.
The Republican Party is a big tent. Apple should come on in.
Does the iBook have OS X? If so Safari will block popups, and so will Firefox, Opera, and many other browsers. If it doesn't have OS X, you really should get it; OS 9 is pretty much dead.
All current Macs - iBooks, Powerbooks, G5s,. the Mac Mini, the iMac, or the eMac, all run the full Mac OS 10.3, aka Panther.
There's a version of Firefox for Mac - but the reasons for *needing* Firefox doesn't exist on the Mac OS - they are'nt vulnerable to malware, viruses, trojans, pop-ups, spyware, whatever is lurking out there. The Safari web browser which is free with the Mac OS is very similar to Firefox, and has tabs and a built-in pop-up blocker, and will probably suit you just fine.
Hehehe.... We have been hearing the gloom-and-doom death-of-Apple forecasts for some 15+ years. The fact that Apple is turning a very nice profit must be a bad indicator too....???? Let's not even mention the major rise in Apple stock prices in the last coupel of years....
I have a Macally 'iKey' keyboard. It's a full size keyboard with 2 USB ports, so you could attach a mouse and a game controller, etc.
And I have something called the 'Dr. Bot T3-Hub'. It's about the size of a key fob, and it's phantom-powered!
I would have to upgrade from PC to Mac my Photoshop CS, Illustrator 10, InDesign CS, Dreamweaver Studio MX, and all my utilities. I've been working on PCs for the past 15 years and a Mac the past 5 months (on a contract). I can do with either but I'm content with my PC.
USB drivers? For what? I have yet to be required to load any USB drivers for ANY products...., and I use a lot of them....
This thread is beginning to confuse me, is Apple and Sleep Number Beds involved in some kind of merger or something, and Rush is going to buy them out or ...?
Introduced January 2002, Discontinued July 1, 2004... That's a good run of 2.5 years. Millions are still in use running OSX.
The original price of that iMac was $1295 - $1499 ... current used price $1000 - $1150.
Show me a 3 year old PC that has retained 75% of its value.
I run firefox on my Macs, it is noticeably faster than Safai and it has support for RSS feeds to be tracked as bookmarks, something Safari won't have until Tiger ships from what I've heard.
Better and faster? When it works?
I've been busy setting up a small computer lab for the past month - 16 PCs. These machines are not brand new, but I did go through and F-disk them all, then re-install the OS.
How much joy is that? After tracking down umpteen drivers for network cards, sound cards, video cards that the OS didn't include (or for some strange reason refused to load), and after troubleshooting strange missing .dll files and such that were there, but not....
Yeah - I loved that experience.
Give me a room full of macs and a day and I can have a networked lab up and running.
Here you go:
Current Price: 72.25
52 Week Range: 21.70-74.42
AAPL Analyst Opinion:
Mean Target: 81.29
Median Target: 85.00
High Target: 100.00
Low Target: 30.00
No. of Brokers: 17
There's a thing called a CD Single adaptor - it a plastic ring that snaps around the outer edge of mini-CDs. You might still find one in a music store. (I have a Sony one) I've loaded mini-CDs with the adaptor into my slot drive with no problems.
Arrogance does not belong only to MAC people. It's on both sides of the fence. Back in the early 1980's, I believe 1985, I tried to convince my supervisor of the merits of Apple's Macintosh mouse GUI. Our office had standardized on Intel PC's, with the Microsoft DOS text-based system. We were both IT engineers. I even dragged him to Macintosh computer shows for a look-see at the GUI interfaces. He was adamant that the use of a mouse was a fad that would pass quickly, that Apple was wrong in pursuing a GUI interface and that "I promise you that you'll never ever see a mouse used on an Intal PC platform!". I had the last laugh a few years later.
Back in the late 1970's, I belonged to the San Francisco Apple Core computer club, along with Andy Hertzfeld. He is a genius, but is modest and not arrogant. He truly wanted to share information and for everyone to have a better computer. One time I was talking about interfacing an electronic typewriter to my Apple II (in the early days, we built our interfaces). Andy sketched a diagram for me, on a matchbook cover, of a serial interface to the game-port that would cost under 2 bucks.
They want no part of him.
Apple is introducing the "iBed" - it is a select number bed that randomly shuffles the air pressure, each night you sleep at a different level of firmness.
To fight it, Microsoft is introducing Windows Bed, a bed that loses air-pressure for no apparant reason, requiring a re-boot of the air pumps. Also, it is known to be especially prone to bed bugs. :-)
You know whose REALLY got to be kicking themselves is Xerox! They did a lot of the R&D on GUIs in the 70's. (I even remember seeing their TV ads about GUIs on the evening news) And they ended up passing on the technology 'cause they didn't think there'd be a market for it!!!
I like my PC,but if mac can come out with something superior,and at a decent price,i may try it.I wasn't aware that mac is the choice of the upper crust.
This republican uses a Mac and would be thrilled to help :)
Much like many of the budget-priced PCs....
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