Go fix your pc, so you can play some games... I'll be using my 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.
It depends on the application. Games depend a lot on SIMD instructions and floating point math. These are areas that the PPC970 absolutely excels at, easily enough to be worth double the clock speed compared to a P4, especially since the P4 is hindered by a dearth of registers (as noted by the Unreal Tournament programmers). I'll grant the absolute speed crown if you want to talk integer performance or switch your reference chip to an AMD Opteron, but Intel is lacking.
Go fix your pc, so you can play some games... I'll be using my Mac!
It does not include a monitor, keyboard or mouse. Nevertheless, it's only 6 inches square by two inches high and would be great in my brief case, with a nice plasma 15 inch monitor and a mouse. I could get some more sales that way, perhaps. Snow them with the small computer and daze them with the screen showing my CD loaded with lustrous products. I can dream anyway...
Dell survives because people think they get a good bang for the buck. The fact you would have to go out and buy a nice video card to play games shows that..
You can order a Dell with a high end card.
At which point it is no longer the PC people can point at and say 'its so much cheeper than a mac'..
Oh no, does this mean that this is a hoax?
OpenGL is one of the core systems of OS X, that's what you write to.
A better video card isn't even an option for the cheap $400 Dell. But speaking of upgrade options, let's get that cheap Dell up to the abilities of the $500 Mac mini.
Any decent school will teach UNIX as it's still a very large part of our computer infrastructure, unless all you plan to do upon graduation is fix home computers and play help desk in a company. As I said, my school had dual Linux/Windows systems in the labs for teaching both.
If our schools are giving veterinarian or soil hydraulics engineering students coerces in UNIX programing that would explain a lot of why our educational system is screwed up.
Interesting you mention engineering, since UNIX is still extremely popular in that field.
"As I said, my school had dual Linux/Windows systems in the labs for teaching both."
... ah, you DO understand that the overwhelming majority of professions in this world, although many use computers, need absolutely NO knowledge whatsoever about how they work or what type of programming they require, don't you ?
Once again, you have no idea what you're talking about. It's very common for Mac versions of games to have different publishers, and no, it's not because they're not as good as the PC versions.
I comes with Safari, which is Apple's browser. I am using it right now, and not only does it block popups, it has tabbed browsing--once you have tried that, you will never go back.
I love my select number bed too. Just got it b4 Christmas.
It has really helped my arthritic body alot.
Then what is the problem? The Mac Mini does not come with a one button mouse... it comes with a NO button, NO mouse. Use the two button you already have... it will work fine.
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