The Blog Subscribe
The Emotional Investment
Like so many people I’m sitting here waiting for Lion to be released. I’m thinking to myself do I really need the head ache of an update. Do I want the hassle of waiting for fixes, finding out the glitches and then the self recrimination that I will undoubtably subject myself to when I am shouting at my mac at 2 am wondering why I just couldn’t wait a few weeks.
The answer is no I don’t need it but I will do it anyway. I’m lucky enough to have a number of machines and I will play with one of the less important ones first but for how long I don’t know before I take the plunge and install it on all of them.
A few nights ago some of us Bagel Tech gang with the kind invitation of the LMUG group met up for a debate in London. The obvious main topic was Lion. It was planned as a first look and response but inevitably ended up with what it will be as it hadn’t been released yet. The consensus was positive on the whole but an interesting divide became apparent between the everyday mac user and the design professionals.
The arguments were simply that the video folk were still upset about final cut x and the apparent condescending attitude towards the need to be able to import final cut pro 7 files. The photo people with Adobe problems when ever a new OS comes out plus the plug in issue with Lion not supporting legacy software and the sound guys with logic 8, an apple product not working with lion. This to me was the alienation of the core apple users and this leads me to my main point.
I have been struggling to understand why I have been so annoyed with this move from Apple in moving from a pro user based company to a mass consumer oriented retailer. I finally have it.
The people they are selling their new hardware and software to are not buying it because of an apple advert or even slick design. They aren’t moving over because of Microsoft are letting them down, lets face it windows 7 is a fundamentally good OS. It’s because the pro’s have been selling it to their friends and families for years. One by one we, as I count myself among them, have been nudging and coercing everyone we know to make the switch. It made us feel a little clever for being in the know and we praised the Mecca that is apple HQ for being the Valhalla of what is best in tech.
Now we have helped in no small way to make the ownership of apple products more than just a little cool we are being thrown to the side and we don’t like it. Hold on apple, didn’t we pay over the top for your products when it wasn’t the norm. Didn’t we work diligently in the PC stores and the social gatherings looking a bit odd but expounding the merits of the Mac over the other lot. We found it a personal issue and became slightly evangelical about your tech. In short we felt that we were part of it. Part of this shiny, fast, reliable and fashionable future. We were no longer geeky, we had become cool.
So there you have it. My bitterness is just that. I thought we were friends but it turns out you didn’t think we were as special as we thought you were. I know I will continue to be a user while you remain slightly more reliable than the others, though that is becoming debatable. Remember us when you have your party to announce your market share has over taken Microsoft. Though maybe by then somebody new will be out there that we can support and invest our emotions in.
Alex
Alex G Fox is a freelance photographer from London, Mac User and Educator
You Can Follow Alex on @AlexGFox on Twitter
Author
Ewen Rankin