My "Island of Macs" Post

A few years ago I wrote a very long response to someone's post in the QuarkXPress listserv. And through that I received my 15 minutes of fame that is every American's birthright.

The writer had asked for help in defending his "island of Macs in a sea of PCs." His company's IT people wanted to get rid of his art department's small Mac network, and give them PCs instead, because (they said) it was not cost-effective to support two computing platforms in one company. This was probably oh the 99,522nd time I heard of this situation, usually from my own clients.

So in my publicly-posted reply I wrote out what I had been advising those clients. (You can find it on the 'net if you google for it, or your can read it here -->)

Someone sent a copy of my post to Guy Kawasaki's EvangeList, a then-popular mailing list for "guerrila Mac evangelists." He reposted it in its entirety to his 40,000+ subscriber base.

Over the ensuing months it was posted and reposted and reprinted all over the place, I know because some of the people asked my permission first.

Here are a few of fan mails I received about it.

Subject: In Defense of the Macintosh
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 98
From: "George H"

Allow me to commend you on your recent letter published in Evangelist #1151

It is the best written, lucid, compelling, and logical defense of the Macintosh I have read. In addition the outlining of the techniques to combat the enroachment of Windoze was a superlative battle plan. Keep up the good work.

As ever...

George

At the time he wrote this, Don, who I knew from my days as an Apple Consultant, was a big corporate muckety-muck for Apple in Chicago. He's an even bigger muck these days (I believe he's in charge of all mucketing for the central region of the US), but still has time to take the occasional whining phone call from me begging for free "demo" hardware.

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 98
Subject: Anne - thanks for an OUTSTANDING POST!!
From: Don O.

Anne-Marie:

I read with GREAT interest, your post that was re-run on the EvangeList today. Great stuff! I've sent it on to the corporate marketing folks. We'll see what comes of it.

I've got some other info that will also push ahead this argument. I'm sorry for the size of the download, but you simply MUST have this stuff! The spreadsheets are the formulas that are discussed and proven out in the ROI TechBrief pdf. Just <tab> from field to field to show the actual ROI that is accrued or lost, due to using either Macs or WinNT machines.

Read the ROI TechBrief for more information on the methodology - this info is NOT provided by Apple's marketing group - it's an internationally-known consulting group that did the research. It's pretty much empirical data.

Anyway, take care, hope all is well with you, and KEEP UP THE GOOD FIGHT!

Warmly,

Dono

From: Tammy L.
Subject: EvangeList response

Anne-Marie:

Just some quick applause from a reader. I discovered your site as a result of the EvangeList posting, and I'm impressed with your matter-of-fact statement analyzing the ill-informed decisions made regarding the platform issue. (I used to work in television -- everyone except the accountants used Macs; my husband runs a Mac audio studio; my nephew does graphic arts on Mac. Now I'm in a Mac school district as campus tech curriculum support, & the new head of computer services is switching to a pc standard starting at the high school.)

Thanks for the great read!

Tammy

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998
From: Nick R.
Subject: RE: When The MIS Department Wants to Take Away Your Mac

Anne-Marie,

Hello. I just wanted to write to you and say great job. There was a post to EvangeList Mailing list by a Julie R., who I believe originally read your post to the QuarkXpress mailing list.

Your post was the best that I have read in a long time. For the past two years that I have been with this company I have seen the changes that you addressed in you post. I have been using macs since 1989 right up till now and will continue to do so. My G3 is the best machine to come off of the production line in years.

I support a mid-sized company with 300+ machines. I have seen in the past two years or so, about half of my macs have diappeared, and more as the time goes on. The one saving grace is that my main support goes to the in-house graphics department and a division, who is entirely Mac based. With the exception of our higher end web servers, which are unix. Our mail, list, intranet, WWW development, and DB servers are all Mac's. All of which are trouble free and very low maintenance from an administrators point of view. My upper managment and front office have no idea what goes into these things and what makes them work. As a matter of fact, they actually don't even know that they are opperating on Macs, I'm sure.

The rest of the company is on Wintel machines and our software dept's are using unix. I see the other two IT guys running around on a continual basis with never a dull minute. I, on the other hand, spend my time developing web solutions and other network management. Only about half of my time is support related, general maintenance.

The things that I have noticed is that I have had to learn more and more about MicroSoft tech related, problem soving issues. And there is always someone with more problems. I unlike my fellow tech support people have the advantage of knowing macintosh and they do not. And you have hit the nail on the head about them not wanting to learn the OS, the networking issues, color and font problems. All of which are rather easy things to solve.

I have had too, on the other hand, accept and put in place a PC or two for our customer base. They were not willing to go the other way and in order for us to continue working with them we had to make the comprimise. They do not know how to work with us just how they work. There willingness to learn is zero. They do it one way the way they know how, wether right or wrong and don't ask them to do it another way.

My graphics staff has the opportunity of working with both platforms and we generally eliminate any transfer conversion problems that we used to have. But if you were to put a Mac in front of a PC user, they have a much harder time learning and using the machine. My point being that PC users seem to be less willing to make changes and very narrow minded. Where as Mac users are more able to accept change and adjust to the situation. Keep in mind that not everyone is like this.

In closing, I just wanted to say that you article was great and I hope that everyone is able to use it in some way. I appoligize for taking up so much of your time and babbling on about meaningless non-sense.

Nick R.

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998
From: inhouse@
Subject: Macs isles in PC oceans

I read your article submitted to the Evangelista with great interest.

I would like to point out to you the April 1998 issue of Macworld where they deal with connectivity problems and solutions very in-depth.

You have cleverly mentioned the cost of upgrading software, especially small pieces no one thinks much about such as typography, even though they might represent the bulk of the software budget over the years. One other minor thing are plug-ins, such as XTensions. MIS may convince CEOs claiming correctly that Photoshop, XPress, or FreeHand are virtually the same cross-platform. But they do not work the same when people start depending on these small but vital additions which are usually Mac-only.

Thanks for your time in sharing your knowledge with us.

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998
From: Michiel
Subject: Your post to the Evangelist

WOW,

Your story is one of the best, most concise, clear, to the point and factual "touch my Mac and die" stories I've read in months!

Michiel

From: Stephen K.
Subject: Re: When MIS Comes for your Mac
Date: 10 Apr 1998

You'll probably get lots of email resulting from your Evangelist posting, so I'll keep it brief:

Excellent points! One of the best advocacy pieces I've ever read. No kidding.

No response necessary.

-=Steve

=- Still fighting back for the Mac!

Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998
From: Dave R.
Subject: Bravo!

AM-

Just an observation re: your extensive MAC/PC commentary on Friday's QuarkXpressList:

IMHO you should have been hired years ago by Apple. If they had more people with your astute sensibilities in their Marketing Department, perhaps they wouldn't be losing market share! At least you should be on retainer for your avidly convincing analyses. Your treatise ought be published in an easily found website, with links to the other platform comparison resources. You could sell ad space to Apple (*G*)

FWIW, I'm not a graphics professional, but live with 'em (agony), ( I monitor the Q-List to keep abreast of developments and pass on the news/tips) . I use both MAC & PCs personally, so the platform wars are often very amusing, lookin' from both sides of the fence!

In all seriousness, your commentary could easily be used as a marketing tool - It's highly convincing and totally without "hype".

JTYWLTK,
Dave R.

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998
Sender: The QuarkXPress List
Subject: Re: Mac to PC issues [TAN]

At 12:42 PM -0500 4/3/98, Anne-Marie Concepcion wrote:
Matthew, I've decided to send this to the list as well as to you personally. I get asked about this all the time and I thought others might >be interested in what I have to say. I hope the listies don't mind. --AM

<big ol' snip of the good stuff>

I just have to say, Anne-Marie, you rock. You made me count my blessings yet again that I work for an open-minded multi-platform company (SC, if you're reading this, I enjoyed your April Fool's joke about my new NT box, but if that ever happens for real, I'm siccing AM on you :) Thanks for the thought-provoking piece, AM.

moof!

kathleen