Coding Horror: Screwdrivers vs. Couture

January 16, 2005

Screwdrivers vs. Couture

The appeal of the Mac Mini is totally lost on me. It's an underpowered, expensive box-- like every other computer Apple has ever introduced. And yet, a certain contingent of PC users are buying this thing on release day. I never understood that.

Ed Stroglio may be the best industry analyst you've never heard of. Check out the way he totally nailed the appeal of the Mac Mini: screwdrivers vs. couture:

For PCers, a computer is a tool, an animated screwdriver. You don't have an "experience" with a screwdriver. It either works well or it doesn't. If it does, you like it; if it doesn't, you don't. You don't admire its aesthetic features, or find one a reflection of your good taste, or a symbol that proves you're an {fill in the blanks: admirable, special, creative, artistic} person.
For Macsters, it's just the opposite. The object is an extension of themselves just as much as their clothing or interior decoration, it's a part of them in a way a PC never is for a PCer.
One might think case modders or overclockers [or developers] in general might be more prone to the Mac outlook, but that's not really so. What such people are proud of is not mere ownership of the equipment, but what they've done to it to make it what it is. It's a much more hands-on sense of accomplishment: what has been done rather than what it was out of the box.
For such people, telling them that a Dell is cheaper and better is like telling them that Old Navy overalls are cheaper and last longer than Dolce & Gabbana jeans. When you do that, what they hear is, "Be a common pig like the rest of us" when the whole point of the purchase is to prove the opposite.
If this is incomprehensible to you, well, that's why you own a PC and not a Mac.
But if this description sounds like someone you know who is already a Mac user, or is prone to becoming one, this is why the standard arguments for buying a PC falls on deaf ears. You're thinking screwdriver; they're thinking fashion outfit.

It's one of those "aha" moments, because the appeal of the Mac Mini really was incomprehensible to me. There's a bit more followup on Ed's site about some of the subtler points in the PC vs. Mac comparison.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

Those are some good points.

But I'm surprised that the "appeal of the Mac Mini really was incomprehensible" to you. A large proportion of Mac users are in it for the software as much as the hardware. The Mac Mini comes with iLife and other pre-loaded software. An estimated $450 worth of software if you look at individual retail price.

I honestly believe the appeal comes largely from the software "experience", it is this experience that Ed's comparison forgot to mention.

P.S. I don't own a Mac, never owned a Mac, but probably would if they weren't so expensive ;-)

Rob on January 16, 2005 03:07 PM

The fashion aspect is only one factor, but it seems to be the one upon which most PC users like to focus. This comparison fails to mention that for many people the Mac is a screwdriver. Out of the box, it will hop on a wireless or wired network. Driver issues are rare. Viruses are non-existant. I have no need for a program to search and destory spyware. And finding the software you need is no longer a problem.

I don't see how people can shrug at the Mac Mini. It's a notoriously expensive computer priced at $500. By the way, I am a Mac guy, but I wasn't always this way.

Adam on January 16, 2005 03:36 PM

I, too, am baffled by the appeal of the mac mini. First off, the chip is a previous gen G4 (1.42ghz). The memory is just 256 mb. Go over to fry's and see how the mac crawls with 256 mb. Maybe it's faster with the MacMini, I don't know. No DVD burner.

It's like Dell was selling a PC with 1.4 Pentium 3 chip and charging just $500. It would never fly.
They do sell a cheap Celeron 2.4Ghz for $399, but there is no hoopla surrounding this event.

rizzo on January 16, 2005 03:52 PM

I think Mac Mini will appeal to people who already have Windows workstations and who want to play with OS X. If you have $500, a KVM switch, and a tiny bit of desk space, you can have a decent second workstation (that can both double as a Unix server and make people go "Ooh! Ahh!").

(We're buying one for our entertainment center.)

Colin on January 16, 2005 04:24 PM

My thoughts here:
http://www.furrygoat.com/2005/01/pleasure_and_th.html

Steve on January 16, 2005 04:39 PM

> First off, the chip is a previous gen G4 (1.42ghz). The memory is just 256 mb. Go over to fry's and see how the mac crawls with 256 mb. Maybe it's faster with the MacMini, I don't know. No DVD burner.

- it's actually 1.25ghz unless you pony up an additional $100.
- the hard drive is a 4200rpm model.
- the lowest-of-the-low-end 32mb Radeon video card likely can't handle the heavy 3D OpenGL acceleration necessary for an OS that relies on OpenGL effects for a lot of its prettiness
- WindowsXP runs like crap on 256mb, I can only imagine how badly OSX will run with that

You could probably buy a wintel laptop for the same price with better hardware. And that includes the display, obviously.

Jeff Atwood on January 16, 2005 06:18 PM

> [appeal to people] who already have Windows workstations and who want to play with OS X

It definitely would appeal to me if OSX ran on x86.

Jeff Atwood on January 16, 2005 06:21 PM

If you want to play around, check out PearPC. I have Mac OS/X 10.3 installed (running in a window on my XP box) for awhile:
http://www.furrygoat.com/2004/06/macosx_on_windo.html

Steve on January 16, 2005 06:47 PM

I'm not sure I see Macs as underpowered and expensive. IBM compatibles are just overpowered and cheap. I mean, IBM compatibles have to be cheap - if they weren't, people would just buy the parts themselves and build them. And they really are overpowered - a lot of a computer's capability is wasted. I mean, it's okay if you're compiling code, or running through complex math, but is three and a half gigahertz really necessary for word processing? Web browsing? I imagine the clockspeed of a computer only matters to the enduser when they're waiting for Windows to load.

Oh, and OS X does not rely on OpenGL. Quartz Extreme is optional. Plus, most Mac games available are years old, so the video card doesn't matter that much. And OS X is not XP. It works fine with 256, IIRC. And if OS X ran on x86, it wouldn't run on yours; Apple wouldn't want to sacrifice stability by letting the user install their OS on just any computer. Plus, there's the profit to think about...

Dezro on January 16, 2005 06:50 PM

This is frickin' priceless:

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif

Jeff Atwood on February 27, 2005 12:24 AM

If you want to play with OS X, do what i did. I bought an older, used G4 Power PC for $200.

Jim on November 16, 2005 10:46 PM

I get it, macs are for the upper class snobs, and PCs are for us proles!

I'm afraid I don't have much respect for Ed Stroglio's analysis. He may be right about the snob vs. the proles aspect, but he doesn't have to sound so snobbish about it! :-)

Ben on October 29, 2007 11:34 AM

Right. I'm running a five-year-old 2.4GHz screwdriver. I've added some memory over the years (translation: resharpened the bit), and it still drives screws quite well. It doesn't fit some of the fancy new screws (games). It's not as fast as some high end models, but it does everything I need. If it didn't I'd be over at some big-box store looking for the cheapest machine that would do the job. I wouldn't care if it looked like a captcha.

Izzy on October 29, 2007 07:13 PM

Cool, I expect to see your next post be about how much fun you had tweaking your *nix box after dumping Vista.

puppet on October 29, 2007 07:15 PM