Why bother getting a Mac?

When Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller stepped onto the keynote stage at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in early June, he announced that Apple has tripled its active user base in the past two years.

He produced a chart showing the number of actual active OS X users from the five-year period between 2002 and 2007. By the end of 2007, Apple listed about 25 million active OS X users.

From then on there was a huge spike of new OS X users, with the user base growing from 25 million to nearly 75 million users in mid 2009. That's thanks to the iPhone and iPod touch, which both run versions of OS X, of course.

iPhone and iPod touch aside, that also represents a considerable number of people using Macintosh computers.

It's not a massive number by worldwide standards, but represents a very solid group of dedicated Apple users. As TechRadar in Britain puts it, "Macs are beautifully designed and engineered, not simply from an aesthetic perspective but, more importantly for many, in usability terms too. The operating system is generally fast, elegant and - thanks to its Unix pedigree - secure and incredibly powerful as well."

Like many here, a lot of the British think they're paying too much for products with Apple badges on them.

But despite any real or perceived price differentiation, Macs still score very well on reliability, and that's even over here in distant New Zealand. The NZ Consumer Institute  recently found Mac desktops rated top for reliability with 91 per cent of NZ owners who took part in the survey reporting no repairs needed in the previous 12 months, compared to the next best, Dell, at 86 per cent.

The average across all represented brands was 81 per cent. Of custom builders of PCs, the reliability was reported at 82 per cent (this was from 477 custom-builders who took part in the survey). Under the NZ average of 81 per cent was HP/Compaq, Acer and Asus.

Once someone comes up with the money, they tend to keep sending it Apple's way. Strangely, even a search on Microsoft's new search engine Bing tells you to use a Mac if you type in "should I use a Mac or a PC?"

PC World writer Michael Scalisi has even been disputing whether Apples are more expensive at all. He recently wrote "... I've been playing with the numbers, and I've noticed something interesting: When the newest 13-inch MacBook Pro is configured with similar features and put head to head with a Dell XPS 1330 (arguably Dell's most similar computer), the two come within spitting distance in price." That's in the US, anyway.

Apple also polled best in New Zealand for after sales service. The average for Kiwis was 65 per cent, but Apple registered 84 per cent, followed by PC vendor PB Technologies, and then MagnumMac, the local independent Apple retail chain.

However, Sony, a one-time development partner with Apple on ventures leading to Apple being able to create smaller laptops and Sony launching the PlayStation, pipped Apple in the NZ laptop reliability stakes.

Sony's laptops hit 91 per cent in the reliability poll while Apple and Dell's laptops were both on 88 per cent.

Obviously laptops are more prone to knocks and damage from their very nature - that being portability. But I wonder if the increasing output of Apple's aluminium unibody laptops will change this back to Apple's favour in a year or two? I guess we'll see.

However, general owner computer satisfaction clearly went to the secretive Californian computer company - 99 per cent of NZ Apple desktop computer owners reported 'satisfaction' with their Macs.

In the Consumer survey, 'satisfaction' was the percentage of respondents who would buy the same brand again. So it's pretty clear that Kiwis who buy Macs keep buying Macs, as is the case overseas. That's brand loyalty for you, and not 'marketing.'

The next best in New Zealand was Sony with just over 90 per cent, then Dell, then HP/Compaq, Asus, Toshiba and Acer, in that order of decline.

But the figures show a few more twists. In the satisfaction survey, 713 NZ Apple owners responded to the poll, just 130 Sony owners, but 1092 Dell owners, 1317 HP/Compaq, 320 Asus, 426 Toshiba and 483 for Acer. That's 4481 computer owners polled, with over half of these being either Dell or HP/Compaq owners. But 15.91 per cent of the respondents in NZ owned (or used) Macs.

That doesn't mean, of course, that 15.91 per cent of NZ computer users have Macs, although I do think Mac use has edged over 10 per cent here. But it does mean that 15.91 per cent of NZ computer users who use Macs were motivated enough to respond to a poll on satisfaction and reliability. And all but 1 per cent of them would buy Macs again.

One way or another, that's really significant.

- Mark Webster mac.nz