Date: Tue, 7 Oct 97 16:13:19 -0800
From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com>
Subject: Tidbit - The Education of a Mac Dad (USA Today)

Keyword: Advocacy, Why Macs Are Better

This tidbit is from:

Tony Chen

There's an article by Sam Vincent Meddis, on the USA Today web site 
called "The Education of a Mac Dad" 
<http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/cc.htm> He details what happens when 
his PC-using family, suddenly gets a new PowerMac 6500 to test out. An 
excerpt:

"Over the years, I've learned to live with error messages, the way 
certain agricultural societies endure periodic swarms of locusts. System 
SNAFUs, in fact, have a certain clensing, metaphysical value, a chance 
for me to relieve the general angst of modern existence by ranting and 
cursing the gods of Microsoft.

"I was starting to train Hannah in these ancient rituals, assuming they 
would serve as a kind of rite of passage for her into the cold, cruel 
world of computing.

"But then the folks at Apple several months ago sent over a Power Mac 
6500 for me to test. It soon became Hannah's computer of choice.

"Her time on our NEC now can be counted in nanoseconds.

"The bottom line, in Hannah's words, is that the Apple 'never has error 
messages.' Or, at least, very few of them, compared to our Windows 
computer. She can contentedly play for hours non-stop on the Mac, loads 
her own CDs and rarely gets frustrated by arcane commands.

"The one thing stopping her from firing up the Mac on her own is that she 
can't reach high enough on the wall to flip the light switch."

His daughter Hannah, by the way, is only 5 years old. Kids are a great 
reality check. They don't care about marketing hype, megabytes, or Mhz. 
All they know is that something either works, or it doesn't.

Sounds like Apple needs to send out those test machines more often. 
They'd be able to counter all the Microsoft hype with a few minutes of 
real world usage, side-by-side. Make sure the Macs are bundled with 
VirtualPC or RealPC and there'd be no reason not to keep the Mac.