As a Mac user it is easy to become blase about the volume of news and information we pick up on a daily basis. Every now and then it is interesting to take a step back and look at things from the perspective of a non Mac user – to see “what all the fuss is about”.
This article in The Sunday Times is excellent at providing that perspective. It covers the forthcoming 30th birthday of Apple, but take a slightly different angle. Bryan Appleyard presents the case for Apple inc. being a ‘Corporate Work of Art”, with a great line “Okay, is it art, is it culture, so what is it all about?” One thing adds an interesting dimension to the article. Bryan was a mac user in the ’80s, abandoned them in the ’90s, and has now returned.
The Sunday Times is one of the best national quality papers i n the UK, and tends to have the “heavier” articles, so this is really good coverage. If Mac has 3% of the PC market place, it must have significantly less than that in the UK.
As a Mac user there is nothing new in the article, but I love the reference to the tactile quality of the products. It reminds me of a conversation with my father a couple of days after I bought my own PowerBook. Totally unprompted he declared that ‘they just make you want to touch them”. I still feel like that!
For the non Mac owner I can’t imagine reading this article and not wanting to find out “what all the fuss is about”, and for the Mac user there are some good references to the last 30 years.
Reading this article in the same week as they have started to run the new intel adverts on British TV – I could almost be in America!