When the new iMac styles came out two months ago, the Mac community
was aghast. How could Apple produce 
such an awful
product? There were discussions about which hallucinogenic substances
were being used at Apple HQ. I, too, was unimpressed: I love my Ruby
iMac. Why would Apple want to drop such a cool colour?
But I must admit now that Steve Jobs was right.
Take a step back from the Flower Power back panel and put the Blue
Dalmatian's spots out of your mind. Consider the package that is on
offer. It's targeted at the computer-industries great untapped market:
middle-aged women. I know it's not very politically correct to say
this, but these iMac models appeals to women.
Why do I say this?
I was drooling over the G4 Cube in my local branch of PC World when
a middle-aged lady and a sales assistant came over to the Blue
Dalmatian iMac. They were trying to work out the difference between the
much-reduced end-of-run budget Indigo iMac and this new model.
Ever ready to step in and evangelise, I pointed out that the main
difference was that the newer model had a rewritable CD-ROM. Quite
by luck I picked the one aspect of the new model that really sold the
new iMac. I could have spoken about the increased speed or the
better graphics card. I could have spoken about the AirPort capability
of the newer model or the addition of a FireWire port. But I didn't. I
spoke about CD-RW and pointed to the iTunes alias on the desktop. "It
comes with iTunes. You pop in your CDs, put them on the computer,
select your favourites, and burn them onto a CD. You've then got a
compilation you can play in the car. Even better, it's easy to
use!"
Sold!
But there's more! Her next question was about which colours were
available. We started with Indigo, then Blue Dalmatian, and finally
Flower Power. There was no competition: it had to be the Flower Power
model.
This taught me three things about the new Macs:
Firstly, iTunes sells computers: particularly those with
CD/RW. People will buy computers to use for real-world tasks: not just
for the wow factor. I'm sure the fact that the iMac came in a bundle
with a digital camera helped the sale too.
Secondly, the new schemes are not designed for seasoned Mac
users. They're designed for people who are buying their first
computer; those who are definitely not Unix-heads or command-line
geeks. The new designs appeal to what is possibly the next big growth
market in computer users.
Thirdly, ease of use clinches a sale. Computers are notorious
for being hard to use. Keep it simple and those who wouldn't dream of
buying a computer are genuinely interested.
Yep, Steve Jobs was right. These new iMacs may not have 17" screens,
etc., etc. But they do seem to hit the spot for new users.
I just need to speak to Steve about my commission!
Stephen Ashton is a British Architect. He suffers a Windows PC at work
but uses a Ruby iMac at home. He considers himself an average user, but
is already using Mac OS X for 90% of his work at home.
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