Hardcore Mac users hold on to the belief that theirs is the superior and only true choice, and any other choice is the false one. When you criticise that choice or even have the temerity to say it is not for you, these people for some reason feel it reflects on THEM personally. Like somehow you are saying THEY are not good enough for you.

This is, of course, irrational behaviour that points towards a type of insecurity. I think if other businesses want to enjoy the kind of devotion that Apple does, you need to approach it like a religion, not commerce.

But among the Mac user community there is a small and virulent subset that not only feels they don’t have to justify their choice, but that belittling others who’ve made a different choice is evidence of their superiority. I suggest two reasons.

The first is that, in commercial terms, the Mac is a loser. Worldwide market share hovers around 5 percent. That’s a very tough thing for some folks to swallow, especially when they’re smarter than the rest of us.

One of your responders mentioned that Apple was not number 3 in laptop sales, or something like that. That’s true, but ALL the other manufacturers make PCs.

It reminded me of a Cold War joke about a two-car race between an American car and a Russian car. The American car won handily, but the Russian headline read “Russian car second in international race. American car next to last.”

The other thing is that Apple seems to encourage the behavior. Note the recent Mac ads where a hip and competent Mac shows smug superiority to poor, plodding PC.

I have been a long time Windows user, going all the way back to the days when Windows was nothing more than a graphical interface for DOS. I played around with some of the earlier Macs, was unimpressed, and went back to Windows. I have recently switched back to the Mac and am now very happy with my decision. I’ll skip the pros and cons of each operating system that led me to my choice.

Here’s my point. I think the reason that your post raised the ire of so many Mac lovers really has nothing to do with Apple vs Microsoft, Mac user vs Windows user. The big red button that you pushed is the one where people never like to be told they are wrong or may have made a bad decision.

Let’s take the iPhone for example. Thousands of people lined up to be the first to own the iPhone. Many were willing to stand in line overnight and in bad weather, with little concern for the price tag. But when Apple suddenly dropped the retail price, the early adopters were outraged. Why? Money can’t be the issue, because at the time they made their purchases, they must have felt they were getting something of equal value. They were outraged because it became apparent that they had made a poor choice by buying too soon.

I suspect that if your blog had been written the same way, but with your choice being Mac over PC, you would have gotten a lot of negative feedback from devoted Windows users.

Something similar occurred when some Windows based magazines ran positive stories on the new Intel based Macs. Many readers were infuriated. Not because “Mac” was mentioned in a “Windows” based magazine, but because they had put their faith in these magazines and now had reason to wonder if they should have looked at the new Macs after all.

The problem is that, in the absence of a mass customer base, Apple has always opted for a “we’re above it all” kind of crowd as their customer base.

Trendy, hip, knows better than the rest of the world. You know the type.

It always reminds me of this SNL skit:

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1194172

In any case, for them to be better than everyone else, they have to belittle the rest of the world.

And so, they do.

Dan