Tony Wright

Alan Steele (ex-Jobster colleague) tweets:

“using a mac for the first time in many years. so far i don’t see what all the fuss is about. it’s just another desktop…”

I tend to agree. A computer is a means to an end, and an XP Windows box usually gets me to my “end” just fine.

There are certainly some differences among the platforms, but I think it mostly comes down to how the Mac makes the user FEEL (which is partially a UI thing and partially a marketing coup by Apple). [Note: During the writing of this meandering post, my PC made me feel pretty annoyed by popping up a modal window prompting me to restart my fooking computer *3* times.]

Which leads me to one of my favorite blog posts by Seth Godin.

Aren’t convinced that Apple can manipulate your feelings? Think you’re above all that? You should check out the priming studies done by John Bargh. Here’s a good description of one (some lazy Googling only yielded one good overview– from some Christian blog. Please note: I am a Pastafarian and do not read Christian blogs if I can help it):

Bargh and several colleagues chose a group of undergraduates as subjects and gave them two scrambled-sentence tests. The first test was sprinkled with rude words like “disturb,” “bother,” and “intrude.” The second test was sprinkled with polite words like “respect,” “considerate,” and “yield.”

In both cases, the tests were indiscreet. None of the subjects picked up on the word trend consciously. But it primed them subconsciously.

After taking the five-minute test, students were asked to walk down the hall and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment. An actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the experimenter when the students would arrive. And the goal was to see how long it would take students to interrupt.

Bargh wanted to know if the subjects who were primed with polite words would take longer to interrupt the conversation than those primed with rude words. They thought the subconscious priming would have a slight affect. But the affect was pretty profound in quantitative terms.

The people primed with rude words interrupted, on average, after only five minutes. But 82% of the people primed with polite words never interrupted at all. Who knows how long they would have patiently and politely waited if the researchers hadn’t give the test a ten-minute time limit. [Note by Tony: Those damn ethics committees... Milgram would never be able to get away with his experiment today!]

From a product/marketing point of view, I’m forced to conclude that we’re getting “primed” every day in thousands of subtle ways… And that I’m probably as susceptible as the next guy.

We’re definitely getting off-topic here, but there’s another pretty frightening study about priming ((source)):

In a separate study, when African-American students were asked to identify their race on a pre-test questioner, the simple act of checking the box next to African American was enough to prime them with negative cultural stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement. The number of items they got right was cut in HALF. Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong point that priming is a powerful thing. Personally I think this has incredible implications in our society. If ‘smart’ is really just a frame of mind, these social cues (such as African American=less intelligent) are shaping not only the results of standardized tests, but the way we interact with each other in business and other professional fields.

The idea that priming can actually effect performance on intelligence-based tests is pretty damn horrifying. Makes me think twice about the multicultural efforts we endured in school… Maybe we should be emphasizing our sameness rather than our differences (if those differences come with baggage that actually inhibit performance/success through priming)? Of course, it’d be better yet to get rid of the baggage.

So, er…. Returning to my original point, which was… Oh yeah! Something about Macs, right? Apple has invested considerable time and effort trying to understand how people want to feel and making damn sure their products (and their marketing) makes them feel that way. That (plus a marginally better OS with less legacy issues and less drivers to deal with) is what the fuss is about (IMO).