Life in Parallels is Great… or how I learned to stop worrying and embrace the Mac

Friday, April 25th, 2008

I used to be a programmer. 

I used to be a programmer using only Microsoft tools.

I used to love those tools.

I now use a Mac. 

WOW.  After being a "Microsoft" programmer and a project manager for a good chunk of my career, I have now switched to Mac full time. 

If Microsoft can’t keep me as a customer, they are in trouble. 
Why did they lose me?  Simple. 
I want my computer to work – all the time. 
I don’t like it crashing.
I don’t like it going slow.
I don’t like having to learn how to fix problems in the registry.

7 month agos I bought a brand new HP Laptop with Windows Vista and Dual Core Intel / 4Gb of RAM.  After a few weeks, I realized it was pretty slow and clunky.  I’d even been using Vista since it came out so those issues were nothing new for me. 

Fast forward a couple months and my HP laptop keeps getting slower and was getting more and more buggy (even with the what seemed like millions of windows updates every week).  Every once in a while it would just crash.  Every time I closed powerpoint I would get an error.  Etc. Etc.  I’d had enough and wanted to find something better.   

So, I bought a used Mac on EBay, just to confirm that it would work for my needs.  It did and after about a month I bought a brand new MacBook Pro.  I was then able to install Parallels, install Windows on my Mac (for a few apps, namely Quickbooks) and have both on it  Guess what?  After a month, I only use the Windows side on Parallels for accounting or testing websites on internet explorer. 

I am a full convert, and unfortunately for Microsoft I’m not alone. 

My wife had never used a Mac and she isn’t nearly as technically educated as I am, yet I gave her my old mac laptop with no training.  Two days later I came home and she had printed about 20 pictures using iPhoto and our wireless printer.  It’s been a month and she loves it and guess what?  It’s never crashed, nor had any problems.  Another convert.

I’m the last person who would have expected to switch, but I did and I couldn’t be happier.  Macs used to have 3% of the OS market, now they are around 7%.  Why?  Because they work. Simple. 

What’s the lesson here?  I see two of them:
1. Develop a superior product, market it well (as opposed to IBM’s O/S 2) and even with a company that seems to have a huge monopoly over you, you can gain market share.
2. Rest on your laurels, release products that upset consumers, and watch your market share fail.

Why Not A Microsite?

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Hello.  As I type this I’m watching the end of the final round of this year’s Masters (somewhat anti-climatic this year, but I digress), and I keep seeing ads for IBM where instead of giving us a microsite to go to or a URL, they provide us with search terms.  The ad that I just saw said "search: IBM go green". 

I have no reason to follow this call-to-action, as I have no need to use IBM’s server products, but it stood out to me.  Why use search engine results in TV advertising when they are so subject to change or competitor influence? 

Last year some time, Pontiac was running TV advertisements with donuts for local markets, where the call to action for St. Louis, MO was "google pontiac st. louis".  Chris Hammond, a former co-worker of mine, thought it would be funny to try to take over the top spot for this term.  He did for a short time (I think, Chris if you read this jump in with what position you got up to). 

Regardless of who it is: WHY DO THIS???

Why not a microsite, (go to pontiacstlouis.com, go to ibmgogreen.com, etc.) where you can control the results?  Any SEO guru, competitor with an agenda or disgruntled former employee could throw up a site or blog post, an expensive PPC ad or something similar to get on the top page of google that could disrupt your best efforts for this TV ad.

Also, why make a consumer choose between 10 results (example: Pontiac St. Louis) when you can control the message with one?

Microsite’s are great for reaching specific audiences with specific messaging, but search engine algorithms are subject to change. 

If someone has a reason I’m missing, please let me know.  Until then, I’m rejecting this method in favor of microsites for my clients. 

College President’s Apparently Don’t Understand TV Viewing Demographics

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

On the way to the office at 5:00 AM this morning I heard a report that said over 100 college presidents signed a complaint expressing outrage at all the beer advertising during the NCAA tournament.  In theory, their complaints are valid, they don’t want all those innocent impressional students being influenced by the power of advertising.  All kidding aside, they are missing a large point.  Who is viewing the tournament?  Is it only students?  No. Without actually doing the research, I’m sure It’s a lot of males in the ages 21 – 49 age ranges.  Prime audience for beer commercials. 

So to the college presidents who are upset about this I say: "You worry about beer on your campus and let the advertisers worry about whats on TV". 

Cheers,

Brian Schwartz

Why a website – now?

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

I’ve been asked why I don’t have a website a lot recently. Since I’ve been able to do a lot of business with partners and haven’t really had the need to self-promote, I’ve never really cared.

So why this site and why now?

One important reason – I had to test out some functionality for a client (who will remain nameless until their microsite is launched) that required me to try integrate two technologies: typepad and facebook and make sure they placed nice together. So here comes Creative Reason’s TypePad Blog. I’ve been impressed thus far and this site now exists. It may even soon take over creativereason.com.

So, why not? I’ll give the ole blogging thing a whirl again. Plus, the collective work of myself, Dan Klein, David Meyer and Chuck Hart deserves to be told (humbly, of course). This isn’t probably the best or worst medium to do so, but it’s a start from my end.

I’ve blogged a lot in the past and I’ll do so here. Upcoming posts may include general musings on marketing, technology, my work and who knows, maybe this will go somewhere. If it doesn’t, oh well, that wouldn’t be a huge surprise, how many blogs were created in 2006 & 2007 that are still around? I would guess 20% of them or less are updated regularly. Let’s try to beat the odds.

Cheers for now,

Brian Schwartz