Mac Evangelism and Piracy
As one of the more public Mac users, I have a lot of experience evangelizing for Apple and the Macintosh among my school community. I have come to realize that when I get into a conversation with a Windows user, they almost always end in one of three ways.
- I convince them and they agree with me that Macs have value and are worthwhile, and sometimes they even look into drinking the koolaid.
- They sort of grumble and walk away, realizing that I have beaten them, but refusing to admit it. This is generally the most common. What is unfortunate is that the following response is becoming more and more common:
- “Macs are overpriced and not worth what Apple charges because I can get any software for free.”
They make small developers struggle because people aren’t paying them, they make large companies (cough Adobe cough) keep their prices high, and they perpetuate DRM and license enforcement (cough Microsoft cough RIAA cough MPAA cough). Their stealing (yes, that’s right, folks. Software and media piracy is STEALING) ruins the experience for everyone else.
In addition, piracy prevention measures, like high prices, unfair licensing, and DRM don’t prevent piracy. People who are determined to pirate will find a way to do so, no matter what. The only ones who these measures inconvenience is legitimate, honest users, who have legitimately purchased the software and wish to use it lawfully.
Thus, these pirates ruin every legitimate argument for Macs either directly or indirectly. The argument that Apple charges fair prices and gives you what you pay for by including all sorts of high quality software like iLife, and many other features that you would have to pay extra for in Windows. This point doesn’t matter to them since they wouldn’t pay for the software anyway, so getting it included and integrated in the system is nothing but a minor convenience.
The argument that Apple’s prices are fair because they deliver high quality hardware and software with much thought and attention to detail put into its production, doesn’t matter to a pirate because of their outlook on computing. To them, computers and the software it runs is of little value. The value of a computer is purely the sum of its physical components, and software, quality, and a promise of support has no value to them. The fact that Apple’s products will last for a long time, and are backed up by a wonderful and free support system means nothing to them.
Finally, the fact that, although there is more software on other platforms, the software available for Mac OS X is of higher quality and at more reasonable prices doesn’t matter to them, since they can get as much software they want for free.
Due to the entire mindset of these pirates, I just give up. If someone pirates software or anything else, not only do I not care if they don’t use a Mac, I don’t want them to. I would never try to convince a pirate to use a Mac, because I don’t want them desecrating our platform, our community, and our wealth of independent software. Maybe I’m being selfish, but if that’s the value they place on computing and software, then they don’t deserve to be a part of our community.
