John Gruber on the Slow Decline of Microsoft
This sentence caught my eye, because it’s so reflective and accurate of so many markets:
The photo nerd who’s delighted with their $2,500 Canon SLR is likely to recommend a lot of $250 Canon point-and-shoots to friends and family.
(Be sure to read the full piece)
And it’s true in this context. The developers with their MacBook Pros will recommend a Mini or a lower-spec MacBook to their friends and family, and because they, y’know, work with computers, their opinions are held in high regard. What’s more, the friends and family tend to have no complaints after the fact. (Arguably, there’s also the “support” angle, too; friends and family are possibly less likely to pick a computer they know their “works with computers” guy refuses to touch with a barge-pole because he “doesn’t do Windows unless he has to”).
When the situations arise, the friends and family make the same recommendations to their friends. Word of mouth is a powerful thing.
From time to time I overhear my wife on the phone to a friend. She’s not a web developer. She started using Macs because I use them. We have a few around the house. “You should totally get a Mac”, I catch her saying to her friend, before launching into the sales pitch. She doesn’t care about the same things I do, and doesn’t pitch it the way I would to a fellow developer; she figured the highs and lows out for herself after using her (now-ageing) iBook for a few years. No non-geek ever recommends a Dell or HP to their friends except on the basis of price.
