“I don’t think there’s any easy way for Apple to overcome [the Windows] familiarity factor, and I think it’s the single biggest impediment to would-be-switchers. However, I do think this — those who are aware of the Mac and suspect it might be a better choice, but who are reluctant to try because they’re so familiar with Windows — is one group of people who are perhaps likely to switch because of the so-called ‘iPod halo effect.’ Through their iPods, they become familiar with Apple hardware and software (iTunes), and, in many cases, familiar with Apple retail stores. I think in some cases they just need to see existence proof that Apple kit isn’t ‘weird,’” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball.

Another “commonly-held knock against the Mac: …the Mac is controlled by Apple, that switching to it is risky because it puts your computing future in the hands of just one company. I.e. that PCs are open and Macs are closed, and open is somehow safer,” Gruber writes. “But while PC hardware in and of itself constitutes an ostensibly open platform, somewhere around 90-95 percent of all PCs sold are, in fact, Windows PCs. And while, yes, Apple controls the entirety of each Macintosh, both software and hardware, Microsoft controls Windows every bit as much as Apple does Mac OS X… If Mac users’ eggs are all placed in Apple’s basket, I fail to see how Windows users’ eggs are any less all placed in Microsoft’s. And which company of the two strikes you as more likely to abuse the implicit trust placed in it by the customers who have grown dependent upon its operating system: the one with less than three percent world-wide total market share or the one with a monopoly position which it has already been convicted of abusing under anti-trust laws? …The greatest trick Microsoft has gotten away with is convincing the public that the Wintel PC platform is open.”

Full article here.

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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Let’s give him a nudge: liberal blogger teeters on edge of switching from Windows to Mac – March 02, 2006