Last week, Microsoft began flogging a report by an analyst whom the company had paid to document the "Apple tax" -- the supposed difference in price paid by an all-Apple household versus an all-Microsoft household. The report claimed an all-Apple household's costs would add up to an extra $3,367 over five years, which prompted Mac fans to dissect the report and highlight discrepancies between the two scenarios.
But the report has also fallen flat among the technology press outlets Microsoft had surely hoped would carry its message. Instead, tech reporters and columnists have slapped down the findings. A Google News search for "Apple tax" returns dozens of articles and blog posts deriding Microsoft's claims. The current top result is a PC Magazine column by John C. Dvorak. Instead of baiting Mac fans, which seems to be his favorite hobby, Dvorak dismisses the report as "propagandistic."
Why do I care? Because there's a huge disconnect between Mac fans' perception of the press as a Microsoft "partner" (as described by TheAppleBlog writer Tom Reestman) and the reality that the media as a whole has had a long-running crush on Apple, in part because Apple makes a great underdog story.
Take eWeek columnist Joe Wilcox. Reestman sees him as a Microsoft spokesbot, yet Wilcox was one of the first to pick apart the report's errors and deem the whole document "purposely inflammatory."
Fortune writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt was even more blunt: "No one would mistake Roger Kay’s white paper for objective statement of the facts."
Maybe what Mac fans are misunderstanding is this: Because around 90 percent of the world uses Windows, Office and other Microsoft software, nearly anything Microsoft releases or writes is newsworthy. But the Apple tax backlash proves that as a whole, the mainstream media aren't Microsoft's house organ. Apple partisans should worry more about Microsoft's new TV ads, which will have a much bigger effect among a much broader audience. Are the ads unfair? A bit. But they're good.
More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:
- Paul Boutin: Video: Microsoft's latest anti-Apple ads send Mac bloggers into overdrive
- Paul Boutin: iPhones at work? Forrester now says yes
- Special Feature: The iPhone naysayers, one year later
Comments
"the reality that the media as a whole has had a long-running crush on Apple, in part because Apple makes a great underdog story"
That must explain why the media as a whole has been publishing stories saying Apple will go out of business every year for the last twenty-five years.
Hmm. A "Mac Tax."
I am just about ready to get myself a new Mac. My current Mac, which I have owned since 1999 is now not able to efficiently run the latest Apple OS and some applications don't run on it. I paid the "Mac Tax" in 1999 and my computer has lasted longer -- by far -- than any of the laptops being purchased by any of those "I'm a PC" folks you see on television.
Oh, and I never had to pay for virus software. Oh, and I never had a virus or a worm or anything like that. Oh, and I was editing video on my Mac a good five years before anyone at Microsoft noticed.
Microsoft's applications are more expensive than Apple's. Compare their Office Suite at around $350 to Apple's iWork at $99. If you need a database application, you can use Microsoft Access, but it doesn't work well. Filemaker runs on both Windows and Mac.
Oh and where's Microsoft's media store? iTunes is free and it simply works. If you're a Microsoft family, I suppose you cannot have an iPod or an iPhone. Wouldn't that be a tax on productivity?
I like my Mac. I don't have to spend two hours weekly maintaining it. When I ran a Windows PC I did. My wife just got a Mac laptop. She switched from her worm and virus-ridden Dell laptop and now doesn't curse her computer.
Oh, and her computer backs itself up every time she starts it up -- in the background without any input from her. When your Windows computer crashes and loses all data, what kind of a tax would that be?
I was so ticked at that report I told my customers I no longer support anything microsoft. 2 of the first clients I told that to went out and bought a mac and i migrated there stuff for free. They where so dependant on me for keeping there PCs working with out my support they where lost. I wonder what will happen when I tell the rest of my customers I dont support Microsoft anything any more,
@Mark - I am a happy Mac user, but I think that some idea of a Mac Tax is fair. When I had a Windows box with XP, I never had to pay for upgrades that did add features. Even if you used iWork (which most Mac users I know don't), you have to pay at lease 250 to buy FileMaker new, which knocks out that argument. The fact that iLife is free is spectacular for those who use it, but if you don't, you're paying for stuff you don't use, which you can correct by buying a stripped down PC.
There are open source antivirus solutions, and you can avoid most anyways by not going to bad sites. Macs aren't invulnerable, they just don't get attacked. I just heard of a couple of Mac friends getting some kind of worm that totally messed up their system. I had a Dell and a Compaq, and I found that weekly automatic scans and reinstalling Windows once every year or two kept the machines running great!
Zune Marketplace is an option and, while it has DRM, offers subscription models as well as individual downloads. Otherwise, there's Amazon, which often has better prices than iTunes. And dude, iTunes is available for Windows anyways. That doesn't have anything to do with a Mac. You can use iPods and iPhones on a PC, you know.
Finally, Windows had backup options built in before OSX - System Restore. Time Machine is more elegant, but it was in response, not leading the way.
I love my MacBook Pro, but I realize that the great user experience came at a premium. If Ford went after BMW for the "BMW tax," BMW would say "Yeah, but we're a better brand, so screw you." I don't see any reason why Apple shouldn't say the same thing, except that they realize that Microsoft has struck a good chord in a recessed economy.
>>"Maybe what Mac fans are misunderstanding is this: Because around 90 percent of the world uses Windows, Office and other Microsoft software, nearly anything Microsoft releases or writes is newsworthy." <<
This is a logical fallacy -- an appeal to popularity. It is false.
What makes something newsworthy has nothing to do with how many people use it.
Each release made by any company made must stand on it's own merits. The same goes for the media.
Windows runs fine on my PC and it also runs fine on my Macs, I just don't use it because it's slower, hard to configure, and more of a safety hazard than using Linux or Mac OS X.
-G
I don't know why people keep going after this over and over and over again. If you want a high end machine for editing video, photos, or other creative art stuff I would say a Mac is your best bet. But if all you want is a simple cheap machine that will let you get mail, write something in a txt editor and surf the web you can't beat a PC for price. I know the apple fan boys would love to tell you otherwise, but I just build myself a PC for less than $175 and I got a Dell for my mother for x-mas for less than $350 with a TV tuner card, 500 GB HDD, 4gb RAM, I guess I could have saved a bunch of money (According to mac guys) and got her a MAC mini with fewer features for a starting cost of $599. Hmmm sorry I think I might have messed up my math there.
There is nothing wrong with the Mac, I would not call for a moment thier product better. Much like I would not call a BMW m5 better than my pickup truck. Just different.....
PC tax - I have 3 Mac's and one a Dell and an HP. The Mac's just work and one is almost 10 years old and all I have purchased is a couple OS and iWorks family packs over the last 10 years. I don't have 5 hours of maintenance in all the Mac's together over the last 10 years. Then there are the PC's, I have two dead PC's and a Dell notebook I just dropped foo at the recycling depot and I have a couple hundred hours of frustrating maintenance into them, as well as about as much time helping my friends and family with their PC's. I have two old Mac's we don't use that are over 10 years old, but they still work and I just keep them around, thinking that someday I will need to open MacinTax 1993 or something. One of my PC's has Vista and the other XP, but neither gets used much by my family, the Mac's are in constant use. My kids went through a phase where they told me PC's were cooler (kids at school used them), but that didn't last more than a month and disappeared completely when the kids friends were at our house and want to use the Mac's. I gladly pay what a Mac costs because they are easy in all ways and just work.
I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say that the press is a Microsoft "partner" and that it has a huge Apple crush.
The media love to talk about Apple as an example of consumer devices as art, because they are sexy and fun to use. They also love to talk about Microsoft because it is a phenomenally successful business and (despite what the haters say) well-run enough to post good financial news every quarter. That said, even after the Longhorn/Vista debacle (issuing a new press release to say it's the greatest thing ever and coming Real Soon Now every couple of months, when it took them more than half a decade to produce an OS that profoundly underwhelmed users everywhere), the media still reports on Microsoft's promises for future releases, functionality, and products without question or criticism. If you were a journo, and one of your sources had the reliability of MS's corpus of press releases from the last dozen years or so, you'd either be laughed out of the profession or you'd have stopped reporting it by now.
Of course, those interested in defending the integrity of journalists could argue that Apple is reported upon because it is popular, fashionable, and changes the way we use technology, and that Microsoft gets a lot of press because they are big and important.
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