“We’ve been living, for the past couple years, in Apple’s world, a time and place in which the normal rules of commerce no longer seem to apply to the once much-beaten-down firm. The company has seen an extraordinary string of hits recently. The iPod is bigger than Jesus. Apple is literally selling these things faster than it can make them. Now, for the first time in almost two decades, there’s a good — great — feeling attached to the Apple brand, a haze of optimism that is unlike the sensation we feel for all but the most cherished of consumer tech products,” Farhad Manjoo writes for Salon.
“So, perchance to dream: After iPod, can Apple make a comeback in the world of personal computers? On Jan. 22, the company began shipping the Mac Mini, a diminutive entry-level machine aimed at Windows people. The computer is tiny, beautiful and, at $499, cheap; already, it’s receiving generally positive praise from reviewers,” Manjoo writes. “What happens now? The entire effort could fizzle, certainly. Apple releases nice Macs all the time that never spark in the Windows world. There is a theory, though, that this go-round might be different, that the moment may be ripe for the Mac Mini to take off. The landscape of the personal computer market has altered. In recent years, the home computer has increasingly become a digital entertainment center; people use it for the Web, they use it for e-mail, and they use it for photos, movies and music.”
“The Mac is not just good at these few tasks: It’s the best there is. There’s simply no arguing that Apple’s built-in software and operating system make for the single most powerful photo, music and movie system you can buy. But the things that the Mac is good at make up just one part of the story. There’s a flip side — the increasingly obvious failings of PCs running Microsoft Windows. Among Windows users, there’s a rising feeling — accounted for mostly by anecdotes and not all that well-measured, but nevertheless important — that the system is becoming too hard to maintain. Talk to experts at computer security firms and they’ll give you some pretty scary straight talk about how spyware, adware and viruses are just killing the user experience on an ordinary Windows PC,” Manjoo writes.
“It’s not unusual for people to throw out their year-old Windows computers because they’ve become just too clogged with bad junk, says Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at the anti-spyware firm Webroot. The Mac, in contrast, simply doesn’t suffer such afflictions,” Manjoo writes.
Full article (subscription required) here.
MacDailyNews Clarity Alert: We didn’t write the line, “The iPod is bigger than Jesus,” Farhad Manjoo wrote it in the Salon article.
I’m not even Christian and I find that headline offensive, or at the very least in poor taste.
Stuart
What are you guys focusing on! This is the gem in the article worth talking about:
Compared to Windows, the Mac is a Fort Knox of security. There are only about 200 pieces of malware known to attack the Mac platform, and security analysts could not identify a single instance — not one — of spyware aimed at the Mac. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the Macintosh operating system is inherently more secure than the Windows platform. As a technical matter, the Mac operating system, which is based on Unix, has a much smaller “surface area” for attackers to target, Stiennon says. Windows, by contrast, “is a really dirty OS that requires thousands of system calls to do simple functions — and every single system call is an opportunity” for an attacker to get at the system, Stiennon explains.
I don’t mean to start a war here, but the Shuffle is, like, WAY smaller than Jesus. You want to try tossing Jesus in your pocket as you dash out the door? I didn’t think so!
I am aware that they do make very small Jesuses, but they are not full-featured.
In addition, many people cannot hear Jesus as clearly as the provided Apple earbuds.
Yikes! Has anyone here actually gone to Salon and read this article in full?
The headline at Salon is “Hallelujah, the Mac is back”. The article has little to do with the iPod and nothing to do with Jesus. The bigger than Jesus comment was simply a cultural reference to John Lennon’s famous line, as others have pointed out here.
With the fretting displayed in this forum over the Jesus line, I have to wonder if you people in the US are living in a totalitarian theocratic state.
Anyway, read the article and enjoy the Mac and computer industry analysis and commentary.
Lee
Hey MDN you think just because someone else wrote the headline you’re not going to hell?
This is a mac site that you are turning into a religious debate site and for that…
Pretty meaningless headline just to catch attention … in the same way
when Lennon said it. Give the iPod 2000 years and then decide!
RhinoBladder
I thought I saw you at the Wookie convention last year. cool necklace, lots of Q-tips tho.
Thorpedo
Very if you are serious, BUT an amazing bit of writing if you are being witty.
I submitted the article to MDN last night. So sorry he thought to take one line out of context. It’s a fantastic story about the turnaround of Mac’s fortunes. Honestly, I would have headlined this:
Salon: Hallelujah, The Mac is Back!
Pssst… The article has nothing to do with religion. Read it why don’t ya?
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