Paleo Retiree writes:
Whenever I enter or pass by an upscale or hipster coffee shop these days, it’s not at all uncommon for every single person I see there who’s on a computer to be using an Apple product. Does the connection between “upscale and/or hipster coffee spot” and “Apple products” boil entirely down to “trendiness”? Or is something more than that going on?
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Any respectable coffee shop will block PCs from their WiFi. Once you let one in, etc.
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Best theory yet.
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Duh. They’re easy.
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I’m in a coffee place about once a year. But as Scott says, I use a Mac because they’re easy. I’ve tried to use a PC and I can’t. (I have also tried to drive a car–spent two years trying to learn, and failed). On the other hand, the cost of a Mac is, to my mind, ridiculously high (mine was second-hand). Maybe, if there’s a moral here, hipster coffee shops are packed with either the dumb and wealthy, the technologically challenged and wealthy, the too damn lazy to learn and wealthy, or people who can afford an easier machine, the same way they can afford those lunatic coffee prices.
It’s possible, too, that the glowing apple icon catches our attention so successfully that we don’t notice the humbler p.c.s on other tables.
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Mac is the platform for the serious media developer.
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Apple toys have immediate brand recognition, for the insecure who are looking to maximize the rate of recognitions-of-my-uniqueness per nanosecond.
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If you have a real job, the company gives you a PC.
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Steve, I bet it’s true that the overwhelming number of workplaces use PCs–but not publishing, which needs a Mac for graphics. So I’d agree with Karl that it might depend on the neighbourhood. My local Starbucks is close to several such enterprises. (Can “real men don’t use Macs” become a meme?)
I was thinking last night that not just students, but many people I know in their 60s and beyond use Macs. Why? Because they think the trademark makes them look young. Insecurity can last for decades. The band-aid? Pretension. I know that in my own case I’m anxious that young people don’t see me as befuddled by technology. (Which, of course, I am.) Many of my friends are befuddled the same way. And nothing says “with it” more than Apple’s icon.
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I suspect there is a neighborhood selection bias to your observation, too.
We have a couple trendy– for us– coffee shops in Phoenixville, PA. The laptop mix seems about 50/50 to me. Perhaps, per Sailer, our town has people with real-job PCs who *also* want to be in a trendy coffee shop.
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Could be wrong, but I suspect that Steve is slyly hinting that the kind of work that people with Macs who hang out in trendy coffee shops do isn’t real work. He may have a point.
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Is Mr Sailer saying that, unless people have laptops foisted on them by their employers, they prefer to buy themselves Macs?
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