The Halo – Effect

The Mac OS is an amazing feat of programming. The Os is a bit like a genie in a bottle that comes out when you rub the lamp – AND ONLY when you rub the lamp. Or maybe its like a friendly ghost that haunts your cool summer retreat home in Miami. All pervasive but never intrusive. Aladdin and Casper at your service. An example comes to mind. A friends daughters iBook had been acting up after 3 years of hard use. Since she was soon to graduate college, a winpc came to mind. In other words, is it time to join the rest of the world? She wanted to be a teacher and since most schools are Mac friendly, she decided to get another iBook. The compusa guy promised all she needed was something called ” a firewire” to copy all her files over. He said it was a “snap”. Uh, oh. I’ve heard that before. So mentally, a weekend was set aside for the process. When the iBook got home, the two were plugged together using the firewire and both were booted up. Up came a dialog box on the new screen that said something like ” Oh, i see another machine just like this one. Do you want to recreate that machine on this one?” Yes was checked and an hour nap later. Wa-la. It was up and running with even the same desktop pic. What does this mean? It means someone at Apple prewired these things to handle this stuff in a way that even a technophobe could understand. And i’m sure there are millions of stories like this. For example: People have been used to Macs having a one button mouse and windows users are accustomed to 2 button mice. so they go buy stuff they don’t need if they switch.  even though a 2 button mouse will work because someone in Apple again, prewired it to. Its called the “halo – effect”. Its when windows users get an iPod and then buy a Mac as an iPod accessory. An expensive accessory. So if you venture from the dark side. Don’t get things you don’t need.