Are Macs an Acquired Taste?

Dieter Glaser, in a testament to indirect knowledge gleaned from clever experimentation, has discovered that most of the animal world cannot discern the very useful, to humans, taste of artificial sweetener. According to Burkhard Bulger writing in The New Yorker, Dr. Glaser has spent a considerable amount of time offering sweet treats to a wide variety of animals only to discover that most of them could not appreciate the treats flavored with bogus sugar. Hence, if you ever see a dog drinking a Diet Coke you can be certain the dog is drinking the beverage out of thirst rather than ingesting the soda for the Aspartame rush (On a personal note, I avoid Diet Coke as it makes my back hurt).

Much like the craving for sugar substitutes is limited largely to Homo sapiens it seems that the enjoyment of the Mac is limited to just a further subset of bipeds. Should an anthropologist ever take up the question of computer preference from an evolutionary standpoint, I suggest the new tribe be named Homo sapiens sapiens emulatian.

Before venturing further, it is necessary to cast your mind back to last June. Standing in front of an audience of enthusiastic developers a thin, balding, bespectacled, yet somehow still enviably cool, Steve Jobs began selling the attendees on a radical departure for the Mac. The screen behind Steve said simply and cleverly: It’s tru_e.

What Steve was pitching to the developers at WWDC ‘05 was the switch from PowerPC based machines to chips made by Intel. Through various graphs and hand waving Steve, naturally, made the switch to Intel sound like the most logical thing in the world. Of course, that is the Steve Jobs’ magic, he could announce that Macs were going to be powered by vacuum tubes and make it sound as reasonable as saying that the sun will rise in the East.

Steve Jobs’ persuasiveness aside, the inclusion of Intel processors was a major change for Apple. Not only had Apple openly mocked previous Intel offerings, but a large part of the price differential between Macs and PCs was justified (erroneously) in users minds by the differences in the cost of the chips. As big as the switch to Intel was for Apple it was an even bigger deal for the technology pundits.

Those who expound incessantly about technology viewed the switch to Intel as everything from the beginning of the continuously inevitable demise of Apple to the catalyst that would finally vault Apple to its rightful place of dominance in the computing realm.

One thing that was widely viewed as a near certainty was a fierce battle against piracy. John Dvorak, to note but one example, saw the Intel switch as precursor to OS X for any capable machine. Mr. Dvorak reasoned, incorrectly it seems, that OS X would be cracked and the ensuing piracy would force Apple to release a shrink-wrapped version of OS X for anyone who cared to cough up enough of the green stuff to take a copy home.

The first part, the cracking of OS X’s anti piracy measures did occur. The developer versions of OS X that shipped with Apple’s developers only Intel boxes were busted wide open. A standard PC could run OS X for the cost of a big download and a little bit of time. There was a big hoopla, videos showed up, people wrung their hands and then something very surprising happened: nothing.

That isn’t to say that Apple didn’t respond. Later releases of Tiger didn’t yield to cracking like a piñata soaked in vodka for a week, but the genie was already out of the bottle. OS X for generic PCs is available and very few are taking advantage of the third party “try before you buy” program.

How can we be sure that there isn’t a secret society of generic PC users taking full advantage of OS X goodness? Pick any statistic you like: sales, browser share or OS share. What you’ll note when looking at said marvels of objectivity is very little has changed. The Mac is picking up steam, but there is no reason to attribute the uptick to anything other than increased sales, or Microsoft delays, take your pick.

The assumption implicit in the predictions of widespread piracy is the notion that people value OS X much more than they value Apple designed rectangles. A reasonable assumption after years of hearing the grousing about the “Apple tax” (a tax hard to find on the new MacBooks). Hence, we are left with an obvious conclusion: people buy Macs as much for the box as the OS inside.

That conclusion just raises another question. If people aren’t secretly after the OS, if people want the whole experience, then why aren’t Macs more popular? As noted previously, the trend is up but demand for OS X on any whitebox PC seems to be non-existent. Perhaps it is analogous to Dr. Glaser’s studies on artificial sweetener, it takes a different breed to appreciate the taste of the Mac.