Mac- 
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.
Eh that argument died when MS decided to sell code to china, and when bill gates gave money to the UN and planned parenthood.
And yet we find you on this thread... interesting..
Its gotta be killing these schills that the mac mini is price competative with dell...
"And yet we find you on this thread... interesting.."
Only because it mentions Rush...I know he has both Macs and Windows.
I just have no desire to change systems.
I can do what I want with Windows.
That argument grew to incredible strength when China cracked the top 10 supercomputers in the world using their free copy of Red Hat Linux they had renamed Red Flag Linux.
And what of our gracious host, Jim Robinson, running Red Hat Linux/Apache/Perl (all free)? Communist sympathiser or useful idiot? And you don't get much more Right than Hannity, who runs Apache on Debian Linux. His status, please? What about the commies over at the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute (both Linux)?
The low end Mac if just a whiff of Mac crack.
It gets you going on the OS with the intention of sticking it to you down the road.
People who buy MACs are like those who pay someone $50 to carry their small bag, then brag about it.
I'm not going to insult Mr. Robinson, this is a great site and I greatly appreciate his willingness to allow me to share my views. But there is a definite difference along political lines with regard to foreign freeware like Linux.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1325512/posts?page=79#79
Mac-
The problem being that relatively few people are capable of building a quality dragster. The rest buy pre-built on the market.
The only exceptions would be high end custom music or graphics software that require an additional wrap-around API to function.
Huh?
PC's crash because people are too stupid to defrag
You do know that disk fragmentation rarely has anything to do with a computer crash, don't you?
egomaniacal, clunky, proprietary sludge
Egomaniacal, yes. It often takes ego to achieve excellence. Clunky? Sorry, they're pretty fast and designed better than any PC on the market. Proprietary? Depends on what you're talking about. Can I upgrade my RAM, hard drive, graphics, etc., without having to buy from Apple? Can I plug in any USB or Firewire device? Definitely.
but is that worth 4 times the cost because
You haven't priced Macs lately, have you?
BTW, the DNC got much better uptime from their Linux server than did the RNC.
Sorry, should have included you.
Not the same, since these are specific political party websites.
Convince me both parties don't currently kowtow to and extensively deal nicely with China and your point might be believable. They picked their OS for whatever reasons, but I highly doubt politics had anything to do with it, unless MS donated the RNC server as a political bribe donation.
The $500 price point definately helps... but the lack of Monitor Keyboard and Mouse, make that price point a bit decieving.
Yes, recycling some existing PC stuff will work, and CRT monitors sell new for under $100.. so realistically you could have an up and running mac with all new hardware for about $650ish, a far far far better price point than ever before for the Mac.
I think they have some potential for market penetration, as the CPU really is less and less relevant in modern computing... Doens't matter who makes the CPU, provided it can surf the web, email, word process, and play games (the vast majority of users, this is it).. the weakness is probably the games arena for MAC, as all other areas are now commodities and file format issues are no longer really there... but GAMES still are tied heavily to the OS/Hardware.
We shall see how it goes.
Reports are that the Apple stores can't keep them in stock, same with the iPod Shuffle.
but GAMES still are tied heavily to the OS/Hardware.
There are a lot of top-title games available for the Mac, like C&C, DoomIII, Alien vs. Predator, Civilization, etc., although the one any specific buyer wants may not be available.
True, but you're still wrong :) In 1997 Microsoft bought $150 million of non-voting Apple stock, which IIRC was about 5% of outstanding shares. They sold them a few years later for a rather large profit.
Most MAC games are DATED at best... the new release MAC games are often released long after their PC counterparts.
This might someday change if they get enough market share... but for the long history of the mac, it hasn't.
So MS doesn't currently own any significant share of Apple. But MS still makes a bundle on Mac Office. There is no particular reason for MS to fear Mac market share.
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