Filed under: Hardware, Cult of Mac, iMac
BeLight announces winners of switcher contest
As you may
remember, BeLight software recently posed the question
to the Mac faithful: How would you
convince a PC user to switch? They held a contest to find the best answer, and today they've revealed the winners.
I thought the best advice came from Wesley D. Radcliffe, a contestant who said, "...Let them play. Sit your powerbook in your lap and use expose. Wait for them to ask how you're printing files, playing music, and using the internet at the same time, with not one cable touching it..." I recently had an opportunity to show off iMovie a bit, and after about 10 minutes I had sold a Mac to a long-time PC user. Another friend of mine (think of the most die-hard PC user you know) actually said the words "Macs are cool" after playing with a G5 iMac. The lesson: Never underestimate the power of the demo.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wesley D. Radcliffe said 1:54PM on 4-11-2006
Man, that guy is a tooly apple whore. Oh wait...
Reply
Victor said 2:01PM on 4-11-2006
The best way to convince me and switch to Mac is by donating to me a MacBook Pro!
Seriously, I believe Mac is a great platform (HW and SW), but it is extremely overpriced. It is hard to justify a basic configuration MacBook Pro versus a notebook that could include much more features for the same price, and with a great variety of free software to perform tasks that you would have to pay prime fees in the Mac world.
So, once Apple bring down their prices into more realistic ones, they will see hundreds of switchers and not only a few.
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Ted Walters said 2:11PM on 4-11-2006
I guess I am having a hard time understanding how printing, playing music and using the internet at the same time sans cable is a compelling answer. Expose certainly is, but the others can be done on nearly all current PCs. Prior to my switch I did all of the above on a 2001 Gateway WiFi laptop. Sometimes I think that this is the problem with some diehard Mac users: they don't always know what is available on the PCs and then they put their foot in their mouth.
Expose is one of the most compelling aspects of Panther/Tiger and one that has not been played up as well as it should.
Stability, security and ease of use are my number one reasons. All things being equal (which they are finally) Macs will always win out in the "cool" factor, it is just that you have to show them that all things ARE equal. With the Intel-based chips and bootstrap and Parallels, I think that for once Macs can compete on a level playing field.
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Jeff said 2:15PM on 4-11-2006
I have a Mac at home but I use a PC laptop most of the time because of my job. My PC laptop can also print, play music, and use the internet without any cables touching it... big deal. There is nothing that differentiates a Mac from a PC in that statement...
It's the software that makes the difference. Show a PC user how they can buy a new Mac and it comes with everything they need to manage their digital stuff: music, photos, movies, etc. It also comes with a very decent calendar, address book, email application, etc. I also like telling PC users that I've never had to worry about purchasing an antivirus application for my Mac.
About Apple commercials.... the iPod commercials are fine, but the Mac commercials suck. Apple would get way more mileage out of developing a series of "How to..." commercials that provided 30 second demos of how to perform cool tasks on a Mac. Show someone managing their photos, show someone making a movie, show someone downloading music, etc. And at the end of each commercial, use some kind of line like "you can do all of this and more with a Mac ... right out of the box". OK, my tag line might be cheesy, but you get the idea.
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T.D. Shadow said 2:28PM on 4-11-2006
Victor, Most of the software on my Mac is freeware. Check out these four sites, then come back and tell me there is no software for the Mac, or that one "would have to pay prime fees" for the Mac version of Windows freeware:
http://www.pure-mac.com/
http://www.versiontracker.com/
http://www.macfreeware.com/
There's also "MacUpdate", but TUAW won't let me put more than 3 URLs.
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GmanMac said 2:47PM on 4-11-2006
1.
They aren't overpriced at all. When you check a powerbook's list price against the XP notebook's, you are only checking hardware to hardware, you aren't taking into account the wealth of iLife applications that come with the powerbook.
With your standard notebook you get the hardware, and a mediocre OS to run the hardware, but little to no software. With the Mac, you get a comprehensive set of digital lifestyle software applications, tightly intergrated with Mac OSX.
Similar (and largely inferior software for the notebook ) would run you hundreds of dollars more. Sure there's plenty of free stuff out there, but for the most part it's very inferior to what what you get on a Mac, and none of the free or pay software is well integrated with either the OS or the other applications, cause it's a hodgepodge of design and themes.
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