"Isn't this cool?"
Steve Jobs, announcing the release of a Windows-compatible iPod and other nifty new toys


Hot damn, it sure is!

"Jobs said Apple was cutting prices of two iPods -- offering a 1,000-song model for $299 and a 2,000-song model for $399 -- and introducing a 4,000-song model for $499.

All three will be available to run on both Apple and PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Although Apple has been waging an intensive "Switch" advertising campaign to lure users from Windows, a number of the new offerings were aimed to please users of both systems.

"We have a lot of clients that co-exist," Jobs said

I have to say, I can't remember the last time I have been so infected by an ad campaign. It's become an obsessive-compulsive tropism for me. The reason, of course, is that I was a Mac user back in the lab. Virtually everything we did ran on one Mac or another, from administering stimuli and controlling the orienting lights in the infant lab, to gathering the data from various input sources (including customized button boxes) and even performing rudimentary analyses. On-line!! Seconds after the kid has left the building, you've got your data! Even our 10MB infant database (that's a lot of babies, folks) was quick, easy, never broke down, etc. All Mac centered.


And check this out (link via davezilla): "Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings." It is very interesting how this positioning approach is unfolding. We have the sleek, sophisticated, trendy but not superfluous, intelligent but in a west coast jazz scene sort of way product attitude competing with the clunky, boxy, unreliable, common troglodyte attitude on the other. Of course the Mac users make more money -- the Macs tend to cost more. And they are more likely to surf the web because, as davezilla points out, they are writers and graphic designers who are constructing these web sites in the first place. But that's not the issue. These products very clearly are positioned to appeal to different demographics. And if you want to change your social standing, move on up...well, you know what you have to do. Gotta spend money to make money. Or something like that.

What's interesting to me is that my own response to this mirrored my approach to the business world after leaving academics. I'm a big science geek! I ran babies for a living! I used to teach undergraduates!! I don't anymore, but I used to! They hung on every pearl that fell from my lips (well, for the first two days anyway...and around exam time...). Now I'm just another cog in the wheel, doin' the 9-to-5 on a PC Clone! Shit! And you're telling me, if I switch, that all comes back? Talk about a judo approach. Sign me up.

Of course, the only reason I haven't already switched is because most of my favorite games (and proportionally, most of the games I look forward to owning soon) are not and will not be Mac compatible. Work applications, no problem. The transition is seamless, or so I'm told (and believe with an almost religious fervor). But I gots to play.

posted by MT at 4:28 PM |