Let's talk about Mac Life .... as a brand

Apple users seem to have a reputation for being insufferable when talking about the superiority of their products.

While I am appreciating my experience with the Macbook so far, I have no intention of turning into an Apple snob. I purchased this Macbook as a tool for my business, and as with all tools, I'm most interested in performance. I'm keeping this blog as a service to people who come after me in deciding they are sick of Vista OS and want to seriously look at the Mac (this is the blog I wish I could have read when I was deciding on buying a Macbook)

For example, for me a car is a tool to get me from location A to location B. I'm not interested in brand names or hype or empty promises or what my neighbors think about the car I drive ... I want a car that performs well and requires as little attention as possible. (I own two Honda, if you must ask. Very reliable. Drove Toyotas for years, but their quality control seemed to be slipping.)

From an organizational consultant's perspective, it is fascinating to witness the emotional engagement of Apple users. I wrote about the importance of emotional engagement in my book LEADING PEOPLE THE BLACK BELT WAY: CONQUERING THE FIVE CORE PROBLEMS FACING LEADERS TODAY. Essentially, emotional engagement recognizes that people make decisions (purchasing decisions in this case) based more on emotional connections that they feel then being the rational Spock-like characters that they would have you believe.

As a brand, Apple has done a superior job building emotional engagement with their customers. Emotionally engaged customers are far more likely to return again and again and again.

So, as an organizational consultant, I applaud Apple's ability to engage their customers emotionally. As a newcomer to Apple, I can see how easy it can be to be seduced.

There are far more important things in this world than computers and laptops and ipods and iphones, though.