Evangelistas de Mac

In a CNET post titled "Why do Apple customers care so much?" Tom Krazit explores why Apple users seem to be so committed to their computers.

I think it is pretty simple, Tom. There are two explanations. First, one could argue "They started it!" - Windows owners have made some pretty outrageous claims over the years including ones that Apple was just a "toy" that would get any reasonable person's dander up. But second, Mac owners knew full well that things like graphics and photos and document creation and even file nomenclature were superior on a Mac. The beauty of the Mac was its simplicity.

Krazit wondered why he was assaulted after writing an article about some initial problems with the new Mac OS. Some Mac owners take the support of their product to absurd levels. I was an early Leopard adopter and what I found was some things I like a lot (the better integration of wireless and printers is but one feature) and some things I do not (I found that a good many of the things I took for granted on the new have to be re-entered). But the fact is that as Mac has gone from the original OS X to all of the members of the cat family that their software had two characteristics. First, it was less subject to intrusion and second it was pretty damn stable. I keep looking at my Windows based colleagues and hearing about the "blue screen." At the same time Microsoft kept promising this new Longhorn (Bull vs. feline?) and then delaying it and in the end what became Vista was something that most of my Windows using friends thought was not that great.

But Krazit also gives a short history of the role of Guy Kawasaki and his work on cult of the Macintosh. And that story needs to be told. When Amelio and Spindler were CEOs of Apple (after Jobs was pushed out for the Pepsi guy and he failed) Apple became a plodding middle aged company. Their product line was a joke and their market share was shrinking. They had one good innovation (Newton) which was brought out before it was ready and then marketed poorly. Kawasaki got a small group of Apple fans together at that time and created something called the Mac Evangelistas. He started with fewer that 100 (I was part of that group) and in a short time built the group to more than 44,000. This was an original implementation of viral marketing - each morning one of Guy's people would create an email with every article on Apple (almost like an RSS feed now) with the URL or email of the correspondent. When someone wrote something nasty about Apple (which at the time could well have been justified) they would get a ton of emails. The group lasted for about two years and was remarkably successful. Walt Mossberg commented at one point that he would no longer write critical stuff about Apple because if he did he would get a bazillion emails. When Apple began to resurge - the Evangelistas were disbanded and Guy went on to form an Angel fund and to write a couple of pretty good books on venturing.

One of the key things which Steve Jobs has done in a number of areas is to simplify. My wife last night expressed frustration at being able to control our TV/DVD/Cable remote. It has a bunch of buttons which will allow you to scratch your back while looking for a program but most people don't actually want to be able to do that. The iPod was a classic implementation of that principle - even the Shuffle seemed to break through that boundary. There are things I do not like about some Mac products - Safari is not always as web compliant as it should be. But for the most part the reason I am a loyal Mac customer is not because of the cult but because of the simplicity. I can do a whole bunch of things which I have never seen Windows users be able to do. Indeed there is more software for Windows (although not necessarily for Vista) but I am not sure I really need the ability to analyze the mating cycle of a fly using some absurd statistical package. (and indeed if I wanted to do that I could use Boot Camp or Parallel).

Krazit's point is that it is time for the Mac-v-PC debate to move on. I am not sure I agree unless both sides lay down their arms. In the rare instances that I am forced to us PCs I cringe at some of the "features" that I need to work with. I am one of those people who has not even used Boot Camp or Parallel (which allows Intel based Mac users to run Windows in a native environment) for my laptop. Windows tried to make itself inevitable. It did not work. When Microsoft's supporters begin to think more clearly about a range of options (which is where I think the technology is actually going) then the Evangelistas will do the same. I agree with Krazit that the real point should be that all of us consumers should demand things that work for us.