Eating The Forbidden Fruit...

Finishing was interesting, I thought it was funny that the full title of this post was so long that I got errors while trying to post it. The Full title I intended was - Eating The forbidden Fruit: Five reasons Apple can take over the world. I guess that didn't work out. I also realized after I named the post "Eating the forbidden fruit" That the apple logo has a bite taken out of it.

Anyway unless you have been living under a rock, you must have heard the media waves made by Apple. This is a company that was saved by the revolution of the Ipod, taking the world away from portable cassette/cd players to pure digital (mp3) sound. Now Apple has revamped their computers (Their core product) changed their design pimped them out with the new core 2 Duo processors from Intel and now like the Ipod, the once obscure computer platform is becoming a craze for the young and old alike. Apple is not shying away from all the attention, in fact they are embracing it, and coming out with more cocky "Get a mac ads".

So I have sat down and analyzed this company, where do they plan to go? where is this hype going to take them? are they going to switch places with Microsoft? after a lot of thinking and research I came up with 5 reasons why apple has a chance of taking over the market.

1. The Cool Effect
The Ipod revolution created an effect where your not cool if you don't have an Ipod. That effect is beginning to migrate into apple computers. In high school and Universities all over America having a mac is personality statement, now macs are going mainstream having a mac means your either cool or your different in a good way. Everybody wants to be different in a good way well in other words special. So what do they do? go get a mac.

2. The Cult Effect
There has been a lot of talk about the Apple marketing strategy, Ilker Yoldas in her blog described the mac fan club as having cult like characteristics. I agree, there are the Mac Evangelist who spend time trying to convince people into using or buying a mac. This is very popular with mac fanatics and this has been used to convert many present mac users such as myself from windows. This tactic is very deep and creates brand loyalty which means most mac users will be mac users for life, which maintains the company at a certain level at all times.

3. They have the chicks
As a result of the cool effect apple has manage to get girls on board their fan club. This is a feat that the game industry has been trying to do for years. Companies like Nintendo has worked hard to break this barrier for a long time, because they know once you have girls interested in your electronic device you have won over the world (like in the case of the Ipod). There are even blogs like the macenstein that have girls (some of celebrity status) that pose every month (mac chick of the month) and say how much the mac has changed their life and the wonders it is doing for them. The apple store (practically anywhere) is the only electronic store I have ever been to where you see girls ranging from the age of 14 - 22 playing with the electronics and at the store and at the same time matching the number of males at the store at any given time.

4. Microsoft Messed up
Microsoft just recently released the a new operating system after 5 years, Windows Vista. There has been a lot of criticism on the software giant about how they have copied apple in the ways the operating system works. So the question if Microsoft are still the leaders in producing the best operating system arises. To me that is not where they messed up. Where they messed up was by them making the operating system so hardware intensive that anyone one who want to upgrade from Windows xp has to practically buy a new computer. What this does is that it lets consumers think. It lets them contemplate if they want to stay with Microsoft or use this opportunity to move to the coolest thing now (an apple machine). This lack of seamless transit to the new Microsoft operating system has been of benefit to apple.

5. They are good
This is last but not the least, in fact it might be the most important. Apple has actually done a good job in marketing, designing and Engineering their products. Without this all the above points will be futile because as soon as consumers use these products they will be able to see right through the deceit. If you have used their products for a while you will know that real thought has been put into every step of the design and it feels so intuitive, in my opinion they have giving us tomorrows operating system today as Steve Jobs will put it. Now with Leopard coming out in a few weeks, the iPhone coming out in June and rumors about all their hardware being redesigned they are increasing the barrier farther again from their competitors, lets just keep our eyes out and see what they have in store for us.

Watch out for part two or this post: 5 reasons why Apple should not take over the world