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.
The adapter that worked was made by Griffin, IIRC. It had DIP switches on the back and a big selector knob on the front. Back then various monitors had different sync pins and you had to get it right. I usually just used the basic adapter cause I had a lot of those and the software we were using worked fine at 640x480. I may be mis-remembering on the XGA support... that might have been one of the other II series... it's been a long time.
Yep - OEM prices tend to be through the roof - and Apple is not afraid to take a big profit in such upgrades.
Of course, anyone with even a tiny bit of brains can buy the 1gig stick and install it themselves for the same price that the same memory stick costs a PC upgrader....
Ahead of its time.
"Andy Hertzfeld’s new book"
I've not tried a computer-age topic book in a long time (the Jobs bio by, hmm, Levy? may have been the only one I've ever finished) but I've always liked Hertzfeld's 'tude about software engineering. I think it was AH who had an epiphany at home for how the original Quickdraw routines could be done to make them operate smoothly, having spent weeks struggling with it. He headed back to work at a late hour, was in a car crash, woke up in the hospital, and his idea for Quickdraw was still in his head. ;')
"not subject to porno pop-up ads"
isn't that a negative? Oops, said too much...
... and just try to load the USB drivers from those mini-CD's via the slot drive ...
umm my wife has never had to install a usb driver on their Mac, she plugs something in and it works.
Mac experts, can you help me out?
Your KVM is exactly what they are going for.
As with most questions like this, it depends on your needs. There's a detailed review here, which found performance to be good overall, with disk speed a possible issue. For most "normal" uses it should be more than acceptable.
The Mac mini's G4 processor is fast enough for a pleasant user experience with the Mac OS X operating system, especially with the "Quartz Extreme" technology that shifts most of the graphics processing to the video chip. It runs very efficiently.
All of the software bundled with Mac mini works well, including: iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, AppleWorks (word processor/spreadsheet/graphics tools), Quicken 2005, Nanosaur 2, Marble Blast Gold, Address Book, DVD Player, Font Book, iCal, iChat AV (text messaging and audio/video conferencing), iSync, Mail, Preview (PDF/graphics viewer), Safari (web browser), Sherlock (search tools), Chess, Calculator, X11 (Unix window environment), XCode (programming tools), and several other applications and utilities.
You can also download a bunch of free software like Adobe Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Windows Media Player, Firefox (web browser), Text Wrangler, Skype (free internet telephone service), RealPlayer, and tons of others.
Microsoft Office will work well on the Mac mini. Apple just released an $80 productivity package called "iWork" which contains the "Pages" word processor and the "Keynote" presentation software.
The list of programs above just scratches the surface. There is no shortage of software that will run well on the Mac mini. Later this year, Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" will be released and will include even more stuff.
I have an eMac that runs at a slower speed with less memory, and it's performance is more than adequate to run the software that came with it. If you want the ultimate performance, the PowerMac G5 and iMac G5 models are faster. But the Mac mini is fast enough for most home and office users. At $499, it's an excellent bargain.
One other note - you can upgrade the Mac mini's RAM to 1 gigabyte, and high-speed external disk drives can be attached to the Firewire interface. WiFi and Bluetooth hardware can be included as "build-to-order" options.
Adding one caveat about iDVD - it's useful only if the "SuperDrive" option is ordered for burning DVD discs.
bttt
If Windows PCs worked as well as Macs, you would be unemployed.
How much should we stress this quotation? "THERE IS ALSO A VERSION FOR USING VGA-TYPE MONITORS ON OLDER MACS."
Then we have YOU saying "...and frankly it didn't work so well..."
Why should I believe your assertion when I USED THEM AND THEY WORKED AS ADVERTISED! As for them being "obscure" they were advertised in MacWarehouse and other Mac sources. They were not hard to find at all.
I am still waiting to read why your experiences with a 15 year old Mac has anything to do with a modern OSX Macintosh. I doubt you can provide a coherent answer.
Not surprising. Apple was in the busness of selling their OWN monitors and did not officially support ANY other monitor. You called them with a display problem that was not a Mac monitor and they WOULD NOT HELP. IF you had called Griffin, they would have told you exactly how to set the DIP switches for that monitor to work. I will admit the setting of those adapters could be very arcane...
Multi-syncs came later dude. Your comment was that Macs were compatible with VGA monitors from the start. The fact that later monitors worked does not change the fact that they were not compatible. Further, you need a special cable. You were wrong.
So sorry, wrong again. The NEC Multisync Monitor was released in early 1986, the Mac IIsi was released October 15, 2000. By the time the IIsi was on the market, there were several manufacturers (including Sony, Thomson, and Motorola) making multiscanning monitors.
By-the-by, It was not I who made the comment that "Macs were compatible with VGA monitors from the start"... My comment was that IIsis could be hooked up to a VGA because I had done it.
(Come on, the toilet seat Mac really wasn't the greatest machine in the history of computing, and we can now admit those iMacs really were junk and the revolutionary cube and lamp Mac really didn't set off a new Era in computing?)
The first iBooks did look ridiculous... but they were solid and dependable. Ugly but they weren't the be-all and end-all of computing. The Cube is still one of the most elegant designs I have seen for a desktop computer that has to share space in living quarters and not look like industrial grunge. The one I had was quite unobtrusive and exceedingly quiet. It is still providing excellent service as a server in a medical office with two Cubes and seven "lamp" iMacs.
I still have my 2C. My grandkids get a huge kick out of playing games on it and using the joystick.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.