Selling Rebels: Apple's Marketing Techniques

Buying a new computer or upgrading your operating system is an exciting event: in some it produces feelings surpassed only by marriage or landing a dream job. And the excitement is increased when you make a major change, be it a brand new monster rig replacing your dinosaur that's been limping along for a decade or-in the most extreme of changes-making the switch from PC to Mac.

And I say PC to Mac because conventional wisdom holds that once you go Mac, you never go back. While you may find a few Mac users who have grown disgruntled with Apple or decided to adapt a platform that is almost one-hundred percent universal (Windows is pre-installed on every PC shipped by Dell, HP, Gateway, and Toshiba), for the most part the big switch is from the house that Bill Gates built to the small but sturdy home of Steve Jobs as opposed to the other way around.

Practicality is a major motivating factor behind the switch: Macs are routinely less susceptible to viruses. The Mac OSX operating system is more stable and updates for it are less frequent. It also allows users to do simple house-keeping tasks that require special downloads for Windows, tasks such as reducing deleted data to non-recoverable ones and zeros, a measure that helps protect privacy and boost hard drive space. This translates into money saved on anti-virus and maintenance software and more time spent doing things that don't involve waiting for a malware-killing program to run a full system check followed by a restart-or the most dreaded of all last ditch tactics, a clean system restore.

Of course, Mac OSX also comes standard with programs that let you create movies, make DVDs (with menus and everything!), edit photos, and even make your own music and record your own podcasts. Comparable programs are available for Windows, but they don't come standard. So for entry-level techno geeks that want to put their family vacation in a nice little package but don't want to buy one extra program after another to do so, a Mac is a wise choice.