Erik Richard Sørensen <kml.ers@mail1.stofanet.dk> wrote:
> Hej Morten
>
> Det er meget muligt, man skal lytte til 'den anklagede', men nogle gange er
> 'den anklagedes' søforklaringer så langt ude, at man ganske udmærket er klar
> over, at det er et forsøg på en bortforklaring af kendsgerninger.
>
> - Og jeg tror ikke, at OWC med omgående virkning har stoppet samarbejdet med
> Sonnet, hvis det var det rene nonsens. - Jeg har altid haft en vis skepsis
> over for Sonnet, og alligevel har jeg overvejet at anskaffe et G3/350 kort
> til den ene af mine 76'ere, men den overvejelse er nu skrinlagt - for
> bestandig!
Kognitiv dissonans har du, Erik, ophævet til en kunstart. Flere tips i
de to links nedenfor:
<
http://www.uib.no/psyfa/studentinformasjon/Grunnfag/Grunnfag/Forelesning
snotater/raaheim/holdninger/sld005.htm>
<
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:FIhd0c2ohZkC:www.diskurs.dk/skaermk
ursus/skaerm2.pdf+kognitiv+dissonans+site:.dk&hl=en>
Og nu vi er ved det - bare så dette indlæg ikke er helt spildt - er en
artikel fra MacJournals der omhandler den kognitive dissonans 95% af
dagens såkaldte "IT journalister" lider under. Pinligt, men som med ERS,
let at sortere fra ...
Mojn, Thomas
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
MDJ 2002.01.11 (January 11, 2002)
=================================
Copyright 2002, GCSF Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Top of the Day
--------------
* The_ Weekly_ Attitudinal_ spent a week looking at the dozens and
dozens of articles about the new iMac, paying close attention to
those that you brought to its attention, and it finally has a
theory it thinks can explain all of them: cognitive dissonance.
Apple is showing signs of breaking out of the crate the analysts
and pundits have created for it. Cognitive dissonance explains the
series of somewhat-bizarre punditry and outrage seen in the
aftermath, everything from denying the iMac's appeal to the anger
that it's not all things to all people, and even some strange
journalistic attitudes that surfaced after _Time_ magazine's
exclusive. You likely knew there was _something_ wrong with many
of these criticisms, and after research, the _Attitudinal_ now
explains not only what's wrong but likely why it happened that
way. It was exhausting, and be warned: the _Attitudinal_ is
blustery and biting, so if the idea that pundits may be human and
defend their turf offends you, read elsewhere.
The Weekly Attitudinal: The return of cognitive dissonance
----------------------------------------------------------
**It couldn't be just a good thing, could it?**
To most people, it was apparent from Steve Jobs's keynote address
at Macworld Expo that the new iMac was a significant product. You
might summarize it this way: "The new iMac is a powerful and
striking computer that arguably fits better in most homes than any
previous iMac design. Its easy-to-use features make it a real
digital hub contender. Competing consumer computers with flat-
panel displays may cost slightly less but do not match the iMac's
G4 power, nor is there any competing product capable of easily
producing DVD-video at a similar price point. With a growing
number of US and worldwide retail stores where the new iMac may be
properly displayed and sold, it could be a major factor in the
consumer computer market."
The _Attitudinal_ has tried to be factual with these statements.
_Time_ magazine said you could get a Wintel computer that can burn
DVDs, but it will cost you about US$2200 and won't be a one-piece
unit. It is compact and a neutral white color that arguably does
fit in more places than the large snow, graphite, or indigo colors
of previous models (and please, let's not even discuss "floral
explosion" and "frozen wallpaper"). Apple announced that more than
800,000 people visited the company's 27 retail stores in December
2001, or nearly 1,000 visitors per store per day if it was linear
(it's not, but it's a reasonable magnitude heuristic), so people
clearly are interested in seeing how Apple products are _supposed_
to work. Nothing in the summary guarantees iMac success, nor does
it mean the competition couldn't catch up, but the _Attitudinal_
believes it's an accurate summary of the current market condition.
It is therefore problematic to certain analysts, reporters, and
pundits. These people had already staked out positions contrary to
something in the _Attitudinal_'s summary of the new iMac's
position and capabilities. If the summary is correct, these people
now have two opposing _cognitions_ in their minds - ideas,
beliefs, opinions, perceptions of fact - and that makes most
people uncomfortable, creating internal tension. In 1957, Leon
Festinger first proposed his theory of _cognitive_dissonance_ to
explain how people react to such incompatible ideas. Festinger
theorized that most people do what they can to reduce the
dissonance.
How that happens depends upon each unique situation. Conflicts
among lightly-held beliefs or among beliefs you haven't shared
with others are easier to resolve than deeply-held convictions or
positions you've staked out in public. The theory of cognitive
dissonance [1] grows rather complex, but the psychological
consensus is that dissonance increases depending upon your freedom
to enter the dissonant situation, the perceived consequences of
the dissonance, and some other factors that get too complex for
the _Attitudinal_'s X-addled brain (you know, there's a _reason_
the Finder never allowed multiple views of the same object
before...). Suffice it to say that the more you recognize that you
have freely chosen an action or position that conflicts with
existing cognitions, the greater the tension it will create and
the more you'll be motivated to resolve it.
[1] <
http://www.mindspring.com/~frudolph/lectures/SOC/soc1.htm>
Typical ways of reducing cognitive dissonance include changing one
of the conflicting beliefs, or adding more beliefs so the
dissonance becomes less relevant, or deciding that the dissenting
cognition just isn't that important (a trivial belief that doesn't
threaten your deeply-held predictions). But however it happens,
the dissonance must be reduced to make you feel more comfortable.
Or, more specifically: if you have publicly staked out a position
that Apple is a niche player, and Apple introduces a product that
has the potential to change that, you must either change your
position or make the product irrelevant.
The _Attitudinal_ has read through dozens and dozens of stories
about Apple's new product - its design, its features, its place in
the market, and its ability to meet the pre-show hype. At the risk
of columnar cognitive dissonance reduction to preserve its own
summary, the _Attitudinal_ shall now try to demonstrate where the
new iMac violates conventional wisdom - and how those who create
conventional wisdom are defending it.
**The design issues**
These pages have already taken on critics of the new iMac's
design, particularly those who argue that every other computer
integrated with a flat-panel display is somehow the same thing
(MDJ_ 2002.01.07). That takes care of the dissonance with the idea
that the new iMac is innovative, something that apparently
threatened many commentators (_Wired_ News even ran a story [2]
asserting that the machine, obviously well under development all
last year, somehow copied a crude sketch on some fan site, wishful
thinking in the extreme that Apple's designers aren't really
innovative). The _Attitudinal_ therefore ignores that issue, but
that's not the establishment's only quibble with the iMac's
design.
[2] <
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,49612,00.html>
Of course, this is not the first time conventional wisdom has said
a non-beige non-box couldn't sell. Just after the iMac went on
sale, MSNBC's Gary Krakow ridiculed it as "a toy" that wouldn't
fit in anywhere because "it's turquoise," a complaint he repeated
over and over even as he asserted it wasn't his main complaint (it
was, MWJ_ 1998.08.17). Inheriting his mantle for this evolution is
Jim Seymour of TheStreet.com, also a long-time _PC_Magazine_
columnist. Thirteen months ago, when Apple was in its money-losing
quarter due to a trio of problems (low Cube sales, a bad and
badly-timed education sales transition, and the tech economy
starting to tank), Seymour wrote for the site that "Apple's Long
Goodbye Continues." [3] He said the "magic" was "truly, visibly
gone," that Apple had "not much volume left" as Wintel forayed
into education, and that Apple's plan to return to sustained
profitability in the very next quarter was just about as likely as
Seymour's plan to "get about six inches taller and earn a Ph.D. in
Serbian linguistics by next quarter." (MDJ_ 2000.12.08)
[3] <
http://www.thestreet.com/comment/techsavvy/1200582.html>
Of course, Apple _did_ return to sustained profitability the very
next quarter and has remained one of only two profitable computer
companies through those quarters, though admittedly the profits
didn't overcome the losses Apple _chose_ to take to reduce
inventory in the December 2000 quarter. Seymour's tired little
screed defending conventional wisdom proved to be false, and that
creates dissonance. Seymour has responded to that with the new
iMac not by admitting a mistake and applying more sober analysis,
but by entrenching himself and eliminating any thought that his
existing cognitions might be wrong. His latest piece, "Apple's new
iMac drifts further from the mainstream," [4], is only available
to subscribers at present but should show up in a free section [5]
within a few weeks. To Seymour, "mainstream" means "good," because
unique products don't capture corporate buyers.
[4] <
http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/techsavvyrm/10006428.html>
[5] <
http://find.thestreet.com/cgi-bin/texis/author/?au=A0227789>
He calls the iMac "oddly unattractive," with a "nice" display
floating "above a bizarrely lumpen and oversized hemispherical
base." Seymour resolves dissonance over Apple's repeated evidence
that about half of iMac sales are to people who've never purchased
an iMac before by ignoring it, writing that Apple "continues to
sell to a relatively small circle of repeat buyers" and that "it
can't push the 'looks' envelop this far" to "break out into the
larger market." He reduces dissonance over Apple's profits by
asserting the company "built up a cash hoard of US$4 billion by
overpricing its products," ignoring that Apple's profits are
usually little more than 10% of revenue and how the company has
managed expenses to show profit at revenue of US$1.4 billion per
quarter.
The failure of the Cube doesn't cause dissonance for Seymour, but
the success of the iMac does, so to reduce it, he tries to make
the new iMac into a new Cube. He writes that the Cube "also had
design problems, such as its case cracking from internally
generated heat," a falsehood (the reports of cracked cases were of
cases cracked out of the box, not cracking with use). Therefore,
to Seymour, this is "not a machine with which to double market
share," but that shouldn't surprise you: Seymour declared 13
months ago that Apple couldn't grow market share anyway.
Oddly, Seymour does praise Apple for the iBook and its Maine
contract, calling notebooks sales in schools a "little-noticed"
trend, despite Apple having mentioned it publicly and repeatedly
in every analyst meeting for the past seven months. Apparently,
being an industry watcher is a lot easier if you don't actually
have to watch your industry to get published.
There are other design complaints as well, though Seymour's are
among the most blatant. So have you wondered why no one aside from
perhaps Rodney O. Lain has reminded people [6] about Intel's
"Concept PC" [7] initiative? That's the one where Intel paid
leading designers to make a better PC, showing the results on its
Web site. You'll see why if you go look at the concepts. Try
adding a picture of the new iMac in with those pictures and show
them to people who aren't familiar with either Apple or Intel
products, and see which design attracts the most positive
comments. The _Attitudinal_ respectfully suggests you can easily
predict the outcome of this experiment.
[6]
<
http://www.macobserver.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=3158&forum=1&17>
[7]
<
http://www.macobserver.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=3158&forum=1&17>
Also, please note that not everyone in the mainstream press is
speaking up in defense of orthodoxy. CNet News had more [8] on the
design details of the new iMac, including designer Jonathan Ive
saying he believes the new iMac is "less shocking" than the
original. Over at SF Gate, the Web site of the
_San_Francisco_Chronicle_, Mark Morford writes [9] of Apple, "No
one is supposed to be inventing bright clean outwardly dazzling
apparently very well-made, classy, innovative, unique appliances
in the vast teeming wasteland that is the electronics marketplace
right now. This is just wrong. No one is supposed to be caring
about the details, about fit and finish and footprint and
functionality and finesse, about elegance and subtlety and ease of
use, about cranking out a useful and genuinely graceful consumer
product that actually has personality and character and even a
little soul. ... people will love it or hate it or snicker at it
because some people just need to snicker at anything new or
unusual." Or something that threatens their worldview.
[8] <
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8408464.html>
[9]
<
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/01/09/notes010902.DTL
>
**The placement issues**
What's consonant for some is dissonant for others. It makes sense,
according to theory, that people who asserted the _original_ iMac
was out of the mainstream would argue that the new one is more of
the same, despite evidence to the contrary. The _Attitudinal_
notes a prominent pundit exception: Hiawatha Bray of the
_Boston_Globe_. Bray branded the iMac as "thinking too different"
due to its looks and lack of PC ports, but in the nearly four
years since, has come to see the elegance and practicality of
Apple's designs and software, though not to the point of being
fawning. Bray says the machine grew on him - in other words, by
adding more cognitions that recognized its value he diminished the
importance of his initial negative reaction and has now officially
changed his mind.
Some writers seem determined not to appear so flexible. Take Joe
Wilcox of CNet News, please. Although Wilcox started with a news-
oriented story [10] about the capabilities and presentation of
Apple's new products, within four hours he'd fallen back to his
pattern of reinforcing conventional wisdom [11]: interviewing a
group of analysts who never have anything good to say about the
Macintosh. This time, the "Wilcox Four" have changed a bit, but
like the McLaughlin Group, the tone remains the same. Roger Kay of
IDC, whose dissonance is so great the _Attitudinal_ will cover it
later, says the new iMac "may suffer some from its resemblance to
some desk accessory," but the main suffering comes in his own
mind. "Think of your desk lamp and how many times you have knocked
it over," says Kay, ignoring that by Apple's own specifications
the base of the 22-pound iMac must weight about three times as
much as the display portion. In other words, Apple's product may
suffer because Kay is a klutz. In this article, that's about all
Kay says, going out on a limb to note that the new iMac might or
might not succeed (there's a bold prediction for you), but Kay
says more in other articles the _Attitudinal_ will discuss
forthwith.
[10]
<
http://investor.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-8394595-0.h
tml>
[11] <
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8399483.html>
Wilcox didn't get quotes out of Chris LeTocq or Matt Sargent this
time, but he turns to Sargent's colleague at ARS, Tony Duboise,
who was "cautious" about a "really, really different" design.
Stephen Baker, a long-time Apple detractor, says it looks
"physically awkward" but would still sell to iMac fans "eager to
upgrade their iMacs into a bigger screen-size product." There's
some dissonance reduction for you: Baker has been predicting a
17-inch-screen iMac for at least two years, so how does he see the
new one? As the larger screen model he'd projected, even though
the screen size is still 15 inches and the top resolution is still
1028 X 768. This is the same guy who said the iBook wouldn't make
any difference in the consumer market (MWJ_ 1999.07.10), and with
the exception of finding Apple's US stores intriguing, hasn't said
anything positive about Apple in about four years - and yet Wilcox
turns to him on every major announcement for "perspective," as if
he has one. Making the iMac more powerful and focusing on what it
does best "seems like a winning strategy for Apple as a niche
player in the grand scheme of the Wintel PC market," said Baker.
If offering good products that customers want can only maintain a
"niche" in Baker's world, no wonder nothing Apple does can be
right.
**Corporate dissonance** -- Replacing LeTocq is Gartner Dataquest
analyst Charles Smulders, who is quoted as saying almost nothing,
making one wonder about both the context of the quotes and whether
he was just trying not to offend anyone. To wit, Smulders both
notes that an iMac update was "long overdue" and simultaneously
says it might not be a good time to launch new products. You can't
have that both ways, either.
But wait - that gets better. Gartner provides an entirely separate
commentary [12] for CNet News. Written by analysts Mark
Margevicius and Michael Silver, Gartner Viewpoint gives the new
iMac "mixed marks." Without any evidence, the authors say that
17-inch CRT displays are somehow a preferable product choice
because they're more affordable, even while admitting that
everyone _wants_ flat panels. The authors note with some clarity
that the new iMac may be too expensive for education markets, and
write, "it seems that Apple would be motivated to offer a CRT
version of the new iMac for the education market or significant
education market discounts." That would have seemed smart had
Apple not announced a day earlier it would continue to make G3-
based CRT iMacs for education buyers.
[12] <
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-201-8409254-0.html>
Then it just gets weird. Despite Apple's insistence for
_four_years_ that the iMac is a consumer and education machine,
Gartner complains that Apple is doomed because "the announcement
does not mark Apple's re-entry to the broader corporate market" of
commodity PC boxes, the market Apple nearly went broke trying to
capture in the mid-1990s when all the analysts were urging Apple
to dump the Mac OS and make Windows boxes. Never mind that the
same analysts say there's no room for more players in the
commodity PC market - Apple didn't actually try it and fail, so
they're not letting go of it.
If Gartner stopped there, they'd have no real arguments against
the new iMac, but Gartner can't reverse a decade of precedent and
recommend a non-Windows box, so there must be more strikes against
it. Otherwise there'd be cognitive dissonance! So Gartner invents
two more reasons not to buy the iMac. "Another potential problem
with the new iMac display," they write, "is that it is tightly
coupled ot the CPU, making reuse of the display with a new CPU in
the future impossible, and maintenance difficult." _Huh?_ It's a
one-piece computer! The iMac has _always_ been a one-piece
computer because that has significant implementation advantages
for consumer and education buyers. Gartner is still unable to
admit that one-piece design is a feature, despite six million iMac
sales as evidence, so they turn it into a liability to reduce
dissonance.
The authors also decry the iMac for corporate users in another
fact-free way: "For large enterprises using Power Mac G4
[machines], the new iMac is a lower-cost alternative, but iMac
comes with a limited one-year warranty." This would not be a
strike had the authors noted that the Power Macintosh G4 line
_also_ comes with a one-year warranty. Once again, actually
watching the industry is too much to expect from industry watchers
when a top-level glance creates lots of cognitive dissonance for
them.
The same goes for Cliff Edwards, a former AP technology reporter
who's covered tech companies for _BusinessWeek_ for a while now.
Last May, Edwards panned [13] Apple's US retail strategy before
the details were even announced, missing facts about sales, the
iMac, Apple's retail history, and pretty much everything else he
tried to use to back up his opinion (MDJ_ 2001.05.16). Now Edwards
wants Apple to make any consumer product he can imagine - other
than Macintosh computers, of course. Faced with the reality that
Apple's US retail initiative is meeting its goals (aside from
after-effects of 2001.09.11), including 800,000 visitors during
December 2001, and that people _are_ interested in the iMac,
Edwards wants Apple [14] to enter the consumer electronics space.
[13]
<
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_21/b3733059.htm>
[14]
<
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2002/nf20020111_8871.htm
>
Edwards quotes analyst Don Young who says Apple could have sold
600,000 iPods instead of 125,000 had they worked with Windows.
However, given that the iPod sells for US$399 and so does the hard
drive inside it when purchased separately, you'd think Edwards and
Young might realize the iPod is not a high-margin device - it's a
way to get people to buy a Mac. Recognizing that low-margin
devices can sell a high-margin computer would require accepting
that people both enter the retail stores and are interested in the
computer, positions against Edwards's previous public position, so
he denies them.
What does he want Apple to do? Make its own handheld despite both
Palm and Handspring losing buckets of money, compete with TiVo
(having financial difficulties) and Moxi Digital (Steve Perlman's
new company that hasn't even come _close_ to releasing a product).
Or maybe Apple should "team up with consumer electronics companies
to create Apple-branded digital gizmos with Apple's unique look
and feel." How does Edwards resolve his cognition that Apple makes
cool products with his public position that Apple can't succeed
and that only Windows will survive? By deciding that Apple is only
a design firm that has little to do with technology. It's nowhere
close to factual - in fact, Steve Jobs had denied to Reuters [15]
that Apple thought computers would merge with television, well
before Edwards's article had appeared - but it apparently makes
Edwards feel better. Gotta reduce that dissonance.
[15]
<
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-apple-jobs.html>
**More power to the iMac** -- In his second article, Wilcox quotes
a Mac user who is disappointed in the new machines because they're
not replacements for Power Macs. This is a strange one to the
_Attitudinal_, and is dissonance reduction in a different way:
people look at the new iMacs and think, "I want that," but then
they realize they need more professional-level features (like
slots and dual processors) that the consumer-oriented iMac does
not and, realistically, should not offer. Faced with two competing
cognitions - desire for the iMac and desire for more powerful
products - several people seem to be resolving the dissonance by
blaming the iMac for not being a professional product. It's really
quite bizarre.
In an article previously referenced, Jim Seymour of TheStreet.com
joins this professional bandwagon, complaining that the iMac
doesn't break the 1GHz barrier while "the Wintel market soars
ahead to 2.2GHz and beyond." He says the Cube was "not much
pricier than the high-end new iMac's price," another falsehood:
there was no Cube with an 800MHz processor, and even getting close
with a separate 15-inch flat-panel display (and no SuperDrive)
would have cost you US$2200, not US$1800. Previously, Seymour
complains that an iMac costing US$400 more than a cheap-o Wintel
box is too much, but ignores the dissonance in saying the same
price difference is irrelevant when comparing Macintosh models. It
doesn't work that way except when ignoring facts to reduce
dissonance.
In fact, this cost issue is one the _Attitudinal_ saw with the
original iMac: pundits fixating on the US$1299 price without
realizing - or accepting - that its 233MHz PowerPC G3 processor
was more powerful than any other consumer computer of its day. The
dissonance was so strong, in fact, that more than one "review"
tried to debunk the BYTEmark benchmarks Apple used since the
Intel-backed SPEC group wouldn't make PowerPC benchmarks that
might show embarrassing results. The mid-1998 attacks on iMac
picked one or the other: they attacked the performance by
comparing it to machines that cost more money, or they attacked
the price by comparing it to machines that were about half as fast
as the iMac.
Seymour's implicit attack on the price is just one of several,
most coming from analysts, that continues to miss the point lo
these many years later. You probably saw it in any number of
reports, and the antidote is David Pogue's article in the
_New_York_Times_. Pogue notes that price-watchers won't like a
US$1300 invoice, but lists exactly why comparable computers with
flat-panel displays don't match the iMac's features or power:
Gateway's identically-priced model has no Ethernet jack or CD
burner; IBM's basic NetVista model has no CD burner, half the hard
drive space, and costs US$1700. Pogue notes, "Apple has yet again
produced Macintosh polish and elegance at prices the Windows world
can't match." Pogue also addresses the criticisms that the iMac is
_too_ powerful, mostly coming from people who wish it was a Power
Macintosh G4 system: "That's Apple's worry, not yours." Well put,
Mr. Pogue. His assessment puts _Times_ technology writer John
Markoff to shame, as Markoff is quoting [16] unidentified "former
Apple executives," for reaction and mentioning the sexuality of
people who say they "lust" after the iMac (though the
_Attitudinal_ doubts that if the quoter had been other than Tom
Rielly, he would have been identified as "heterosexual").
[16] <
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/08/technology/08APPL.html>
**Great expectations** -- Dave Wilson of the _Los_Angeles_Times_
could use some of this dissonance reduction. A year ago, Wilson
dismissed Macworld Expo as full of Mac-fanatic crazies, provoking
an elegant response by Mitch Stone the _Attitudinal_ hopes you
saved (since the _Times_ now requires payment for you to see it).
Now Wilson serves as the poster child for another kind of Expo-
related dissonance: "I believed Apple's hype meant far more than a
new iMac was coming. I was incorrect, therefore Apple's
announcements are a disappointment." In other words, it's Apple's
fault that it didn't deliver the products Wilson imagined. The
dissonance: "I'm a knowledgeable tech person. I believe Apple
needs all of these products. Only consumer products were
announced." The reduction: either admit you aren't the expert you
thought you were or blame Apple for not meeting your expectations.
Take one guess which approach [17] Wilson chose. He quotes an
attendee who "kept waiting for the big announcement" (did he think
_Time_ would spend its cover on a secondary announcement?). He
says the new iMac is "the perfect system...if you're confined to a
hospital bed. You can set it next to the TV mounted on a swivel
arm." He says Apple can't fight Windows, that the computer is too
expensive compared to Windows competition, he quotes Roger Kay -
in other words, he pulls out _all_ the dissonance reductions to
minimize the iMac since Apple didn't meet his expectations.
[17]
<
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000002281jan10.story?coll=la%2Dhea
dlines%2Dtechnology>
Kind of sad, really, but not confined to Wilson. _The_Register_
fed the rumor mill about "G5" processors so skillfully over the
past five months that even MDJ_ staff completely believed new
minitower computers would be arriving at Macworld Expo, a mere six
months after the QuickSilver enclosure was introduced (hey, the
blue-and-white G3 enclosure only lasted eight months, so they
weren't totally suckered in, or so they believe). Dissonance: "I
expected super-powerful new Power Macintosh machines. None
arrived." Dissonance theory also teaches that the more publicly
and freely committed you were to the idea of new minitowers, the
more you'll try to reduce the dissonance by changing something
other than your own expectations. Architosh [18] is just one of
many reports insisting that the expected Power Macs, much like the
aliens coming to end the world, are really just around the corner.
"No, it'll be next month, we swear. It _has_ to be, it all makes
sense now."
[18]
<
http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-01/2002c-0109-fastermacs.phtml>
**The strange and personal sagas**
Two efforts to reduce cognitive dissonance brought on by the new
iMac are both personal and herculean, deserving special attention.
**David Coursey** -- The long-time industry pundit, protege of
Stewart Alsop, and current provider of inertia for ZDNet's
AnchorDesk, Coursey has long fancied himself a Macintosh "fan"
despite the small detail that he rarely gets details about Apple's
products anywhere close to correct. (Coursey just passed the fifth
anniversary of his declaration that Apple's purchase of NeXT was
"clearly ... a desperation move" that would never work, MDJ_
1996.12.27). "Praise" from Coursey in January 1997 went like this:
"If you don't require the latest and greatest applications,
especially games, Macintosh still has a lot to recommend it."
(MDJ_ 1997.01.31) He said that Apple's products were really a
secret conspiracy to benefit Oracle that would amount to massive
securities fraud if true (MDJ_ 2000.11.16), said that no
journalists should write about Adobe Systems until it dropped a
trade-secrets lawsuit against MacNN (MDJ_ 2000.08.01), and said
that Windows XP finally would eliminate "Mac snobs" with its
superior interface (MDJ_ 2001.02.14). All through this, Coursey
maintained that he really, truly loved the Macintosh, just that it
was doomed unless Apple followed his suggestions. It's truly
touching, a love as deep as that of Brutus for Caesar.
Coursey's dissonance is based on actions and his own ego. Three
days before introduction, Coursey asked Apple to see the new
machines so he could have some time to reflect upon them before
publishing the following Monday. Apple's PR department denied him
a sneak peek, and for whatever reason (perhaps to appease
Coursey's ego, perhaps because he wouldn't take "no" for an
answer, perhaps just for kicks) told him that _no_ press was
getting an advance look at the unnamed products. That was clearly
untrue, and _Time_'s Monday cover story made it clear.
The dissonance? "I am an important computer journalist. I deserve
to see Apple's products before they're released. I don't get to
see them because no one does. But wait, Josh Quittner of _Time_
did get to see them." Does he resolve this dissonance by accepting
that the cover of _Time_ magazine is more important than his
online column? Or by accepting that only _Time_ got the sneak
preview? Apparently not: he resolves it by rationalizing that the
iMac must not be a special product after all if he didn't get to
look at it.
In his AnchorDesk column [19], Coursey spends about _half_ of his
space complaining that _Time_ got a story he didn't, that he was
lied to, that it "jerked around" journalists (who, selfless lot
that they are, continue to publish stories about Apple even though
not as many people read them - an assertion almost every other
journalist who's discussed readership disputes), and impugning
_Time'_s motives with no evidence. "The cover looks to me like it
has more to do with AOL Time Warner wanting Apple's business than
anything to do with journalism." This, mind you, from a man who
_freely_admits_ his own perceptions would likely have been
different had he been allowed to see the new iMac ahead of time.
[19]
<
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2836842,00.html>
Coursey says it's "sad that I feel almost like I need to diss the
new iMac in order to offset the hype," but avers that he will "try
not to" judge the computer by Apple's mistakes. However, to
resolve the dissonance, he moves right along and invents reasons
not to like it - in typical Coursey fashion, he now complains that
problems he never listed as Macintosh issues before are now
Suddenly Very Important, and it's Just Too Bad Apple didn't have
his counsel in advance to avoid these disasters. For example,
Coursey writes, "Apple also misses the point by not allowing users
to have two drives. I find it very convenient to be able to copy
files from one CD to another without having to copy them to the
hard drive first. Apple's unwillingness to support this is a major
shortcoming."
Of course, this is patently ridiculous - if you want a second
CD-RW drive, grab a cheap USB or FireWire model and plug it in.
You've been able to do this with the iMac since day one, and since
mid-2000 for the FireWire models. Coursey so obviously invented a
"shortcoming" to fit his desire to downplay the new iMac that
AnchorDesk was inundated with complaints, requiring Coursey to
"clarify" [20] his position two days later. Once again protesting
that he is an Apple fan, Coursey responds to his obvious factual
error by asserting that it was not a factual error at all, but an
"editorial error - poor sentence construction and a lack of
clarity."
[20]
<
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2837702,00.html>
He writes, "When I complained that Apple isn't big on dual drives -
both CD and DVD - to support easy dubbing, some of you noted
that it was easy to plug a second drive into a Mac using the 1394
or USB ports. Perhaps it wasn't clear, but I was speaking of
internal drives. Of course, you can do this on both Macs and PCs.
But many consumer PCs provide both in the same box, and at a cost
significantly less than buying an external drive.
Really? None of Dell's recommended systems have dual optical
drives, though since they're all fairly standard boxes, they do
have two 5.25-inch drive bays. Gateway's S3 systems (the ones
glued to the back of flat-panel displays) do not offer dual
optical drives in any configuration. Gateway's US$1899 700X and
US$2999 700XL models both offer dual optical drives, though - a
DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive in the cheaper model, a DVD-RAM
drive and a CD-RW drive in the higher-end model (but it _requires_
Windows XP). None of Sony's VAIO desktop models are advertised
with dual optical drives nor do they have space for extra drive
bays. Although HP's Web site makes details about its computers
hard to find, there's no apparent evidence that any of its
consumer models can accommodate dual optical drives. And neither
the Compaq Presario 5000 nor 8000 offers dual optical drives in
any configuration the _Attitudinal_ could find.
So when Coursey says "many" consumer PCs offer these, he's
apparently talking about the PCs for sale only in Coursey-world.
Only one manufacturer, Gateway, offers dual drives and then on
only two models - both of which cost more than the most expensive
new iMac model. The assertion that "many consumer PCs provide both
in the same box ... at a cost significantly less than buying an
external drive" is every bit as provably false as the factual
error he wants to pretend wasn't a factual error. Nor does he ever
address the absolutely stupid concept that tens of thousands of
users should have to pay for a second internal drive so he can
avoid learning how to use a FireWire cable. Perhaps this is why
Josh Quittner got the exclusive.
Coursey also invents a port problem, writing that the new iMac
doesn't offer the easy accessibility to USB and FireWire ports
that PC users get on front of the big ugly boxes that go under the
desk (Coursey says that two-piece design "isn't a big deal" for
him, and that's fair - it's no big deal for lots of people).
However, since merely standing up in front of a desk holding the
new iMac gives you easy access to all of its ports - they're not
recessed or hard to see in any way - the _Attitudinal_ has
difficulty seeing this is a real problem either. He had to
"clarify" that, too, because his original column implied there
were _no_ ports in his haste to condemn the machine.
ZDNet has even taken the unusual butt-covering step of editing the
_original_ column, albeit with editor's notes confirming the text
has changed. That's incredible - Coursey is so embarrassed by his
words that "clarifying" them isn't enough, he had to go back and
have them changed to say something closer to fact than what he
originally wrote, all the while saying these "factual errors" were
not what they are.
Coursey's jealousy of the _Time_ story is palpable. "_Time_, for
its part, will live to regret its 'Flat-Out cool' headline and the
fawning 'Exclusive'," he writes, in his own article entitled "Why
Apple's new iMac _isn't_ 'flat-out cool.'" He says, "Apple ... is
famous for ... hurting its friends more than its enemies. And
these are people Apple will have to deal with, long after the
world realizes that the new iMacs, while interesting, will never
be 'Flat-Out Cool.'"
Make sure you read that - Coursey is implicitly threatening Apple
that it won't receive favorable coverage in the future, just like
it didn't now, because it had the _hubris_, the _gall_ to think a
_Time_ cover story was more important than Coursey's online gift
for imaginary defects. He mentions _Time_ over and over again as
if to make sure Apple gets the point - give me what I want or I'll
bury your products, just like I did here. That preserves Coursey's
central cognition that he is a Very Important Technology
Journalist. It also makes it clearer to everyone else that he's
not.
**Roger Kay** -- The second saga belongs to the International Data
Corporation analyst who has been trying to analyze Apple right out
of the computer market for years. Apple refuses to cooperate, and
Kay is starting to get snippy about it. Let's review.
In 1998, a month before the iMac hit store shelves, Kay told
Newsbytes that while the iMac should help Apple's _survival_, it
wouldn't "fundamentally change the dynamics of the desktop
industry." (MWJ_ 1998.07.20) A month after the iMac shipped, he
was telling reporters that "it could get ugly if you try to put it
in a network with anything else" (MWJ_ 1998.09.28). A year later,
it was obvious that Kay had missed the boat: the iMac was a huge
success and companies like Dell and Compaq were rushing to get
"designer" PCs into the market to compete. Then, and _only_ then,
did Kay try to catch that already-sailed ship, reporting [21] that
vendors will increasingly differentiate their commodity products
with style instead of technology, pointing to Compaq's iPaq and
Dell's WebPC as examples (MWJ_ 1999.12.11).
[21] <
http://www.maccentral.com/news/9912/07.idc.shtm>
That fell flat, too - although Compaq's iPaq line has been
successful, Dell's WebPC didn't last long at all, and design among
PC manufacturers is still more of a sore spot than a strong point.
First Kay said the iMac wouldn't change the desktop, then when it
did, he said that the PC makers _copying_ would change the desktop
and pretended the iMac had nothing to do with it. He was wrong on
all counts. It took until over two years for Kay to admit that the
iMac had changed the rules (MDJ_ 2000.11.30). Last year, Kay said
the March 2000 release of Mac OS X was "probably a bit premature"
(MDJ_ 2001.03.08). Joe Wilcox of CNet News perpetually turns to
Kay when covering Apple products because he knows Kay will almost
certainly come up with the doom-and-gloom perspective, avoiding
that uncomfortable dissonance of having to admit Apple's major
role in the present and future of technology.
Kay, in particular, has been insistent that Apple is nothing more
than a niche player and never can be. He's complained (as in 1998)
that Apple's products won't expand its market share, and that
without expanding market share Apple can't be a major player. So
now it seems Apple has some traction - lots of visitors to retail
stores, hot new products, a _Time_ magazine cover story - maybe
there can be more market share after all.
That's dissonance for Kay, who has spent years publicly saying
this could never happen. So guess how he reduced it? He told the
Dallas Morning News [22] that Apple shouldn't even _try_ to expand
market share, rather petulantly insisting that the company stick
to _his_ definition of a niche player. Clayton Harrison's article
indirectly quotes Kay saying Apple trying to sell "to the masses
... would be like automaker BMW trying to sell its latest model to
every American household."
[22]
<
http://www.dallasnews.com/technology/STORY.eb43fbfcef.b0.af.0.a4.d59.ht
ml>
It simply defies logic. Last the _Attitudinal_ checked, BMW _did_
market its cars to every American household. The company takes out
national TV ads, magazine ads, has dealerships all over the
country, and everything else you'd expect from a nationwide
concern. Sure, BMW realizes that not ever driver can afford its
cars, but the company wants everyone to _want_ one. BMW has no
problem if your five-year goal is owning an M3 convertible. The
very _suggestion_ that BMW is not trying to sell to everyone is
ludicrous. Sure, the company targets ads at consumers more
_likely_ to afford its products, but that's a far different thing
from not trying to sell to everyone.
It seems that Kay needs to firmly contain Apple in a niche to
reduce dissonance over his long-stated position the company
couldn't do anything else. He calls the company "bipolar" because
it keeps showing signs of serving lots of customers when Kay wants
it to stay contained. He said, and this is a direct quote, "Apple
often has trouble reconciling its megalomania with a practical
reasoning of its own position. They want to sell to the horizontal
market and get all consumers to convert to their platform. That's
just unlikely to occur in their current structure." (There's more
dissonance reduction: instead of realizing his stated position
doesn't allow Apple to expand, he blames it on Apple's
"structure," whatever that means.)
Another consultant in the article makes the position clearer:
"Apple can continue to hold on to the professional creative
graphics market. I would focus on owning and dominating that as
opposed to the rest of the world." But you know how that would
work - the same pundits would argue that Apple can't survive
unless it increases market share and it's not even trying. Kay has
argued for years that Apple can't move beyond a niche even if it
tries. If it tries and succeeds, it would be yet another
embarrassing blow to a pundit who's missed every significant Apple
trend of the past few years, so now he's arguing Apple shouldn't
even try. That would certainly reduce his dissonance.
For the record, the _Attitudinal_ is not the only one catching Kay
in major errors. Hiawatha Bray used the release of the new iMac to
write about the mainstreaming of flat-panel technology, but didn't
get much help from Kay. "Roger Kay of International Data Corp.
mistakenly told the Globe earlier this week that LCDs are already
outselling CRT monitors. Not even close. According to data from
Kay's own firm, only about 15 percent of last year's computer
monitors were LCDs. But that number is expected to hit 23 percent
this year and 41 percent by 2005." Most such mistakes wouldn't
make it into a newspaper article where space is at a premium, nor
would the offender be identified by name if a relationship with
him was worth cultivating. The _Attitudinal_ has no knowledge of
anything - it's just saying, you know?
A fear of saying something wrong may be why Kay's comments to Joe
Wilcox of CNet News were so wishy-washy, predicting the new
machine might or might not succeed, which is almost as bold that
predicting someone's unborn child will be a boy or a girl. "The
proof will be in the usage of it. If it is flexible to use and the
engineering is good, I think people will take to it. If any of
that is off, given the look, it could be a disaster," he said.
There's enough wiggle room in that statement to get a wet suit off -
but you won't be able to come back to it in a year and say he
blew it. No dissonance there.
**Loose ends**
That whole _Time_ magazine thing _really_ has some journalists
showing their worst sides. In an article referenced earlier, John
Markoff of the _New_York_Times_ quoted a _Time_ employee (speaking
only on condition of anonymity) as saying the magazine
_guaranteed_ Apple a cover story in return for an exclusive
advance look at the new iMac. On the record, _Time_'s Ty Trippet
(say that three times fast) said, "as a newsmagazine, we don't
guarantee covers," and said the mag had other cover stories
available to use, a position that would fit with what most people
know about newsmagazines. And it wouldn't be out of character for
a magazine to say a story is the "default" cover story unless
something really ripping came along, either.
Of course, if _Time_ got a story other people (like Coursey)
couldn't, there must be, as Tom Lehrer put it, "nepotism and
intrigue." Leading the charge, other than Coursey, is Ron
Mwangaguhunga, senior editor of MacDirectory, a site and magazine
that has been very much the Apple gadfly over the past couple of
years, and sadly, usually without cause. It was MacDirectory that
publicized the sad little "MacCards" site trying to make a profit
with electronic greeting cards designed around Apple Computer's
logo, slogans, and computer designs, and it was MacDirectory that
tried to make site owner Simon Jones into a martyr when he was
asked not to do that anymore. Mwangaguhunga was also the one who
published all the interviews with the rabble-rousers who announced
huge plans to stage a live protest at Apple Expo Paris in 2000,
until it turns out the "protest" was entirely over sites like
MacCards and dealers in England that had to stop using Apple
trademarks in their names.
Those have been MacDirectory's biggest original stories of the
past few years. It gave lots of online ink to Alan Deutchman and
his book _The_Second_Coming_of_Steve_Jobs_, largely because most
other publications refused to do so, building up an elaborate
conspiracy theory about how Jobs supposedly scuttled an excerpt in
_Vanity_Fair_ without any proof whatsoever. The book did not get
good reviews except from the usual crowd of Jobs-bashers.
MacDirectory also has a propensity to "borrow" ideas, like lists
of powerful people, and in the past ran quite a little newsfeed of
stories copied from CNet and Yahoo without copyright notices or
bylines.
Mwangaguhunga, the guy behind MacDirectory, is the one crying
ethical foul over _Time_'s cover story. He even went so far to
write to Jim Romenesko's respected MediaNews [23] site, dredging
up a Deutschman quote (offered, again, without proof) that Jobs
"has proven his willingness to use Apple's position as an
advertiser to try to influence publications," but the only real
stories of that attempted influence to date have been over _Mac_
magazines - a report that Apple threatened to pull all advertising
from print magazines and Web sites that printed rumors about the
company's upcoming products, a story that was never quite
resolved. The editor of the site that used to run wholesale copies
of stories from other outlets writes that if he's right, _Time_'s
actions would indeed be "an awfully huge leap across the line of
journalistic integrity."
[23] <
http://www.poynter.org/medianews/letters.htm#ronm>
Although there's no specific link, the same page has a letter from
Daniel Drew Turner that paints a far more realistic and less
conspiracy-inspired picture. Companies like Apple regularly
present stories under embargo - a signed agreement not to disclose
any of the content until a certain date, usually a certain date
and time. Apple obviously presented the new iMac to _Time_ under
embargo, and the embargo was apparently to end Monday morning when
copies of the new issue hit newsstands. It would not be unusual in
the slightest for the embargo to specify that the story couldn't
go on the Web until Apple had officially announced the machine.
_Time_ would not have agreed to an embargo that would have
affected the print production schedule, but could have agreed not
to put the substance of the story online until later in the day.
In fact, during the business day in the US but before the keynote
speech, _Time_'s US site _did_ mention the story, but the link and
the photo were unavailable until after the speech. The
_Attitudinal_ asks you to consider: would any of the people
complaining about the embargo hesitated to have accepted the same
terms for their own publications?
**Why the dissonance?**
You know, when you think about this, great new products from Apple
really shouldn't cause much cognitive dissonance. Your perception
of automobiles probably isn't threatened by hot new designs, at
least not to the point where you feel the need to minimize their
advances and confirm the status quo. When a great new movie comes
out, you usually praise it - not try to convince everyone you know
that all the individual parts had already been seen in earlier
films. If a new software product starts gaining a following, like
DiskWarrior did over Norton Utilities a few years ago, you don't
feel that you have to belittle DiskWarrior just because you
already own Norton Utilities. Do you?
At the heart of dissonance theory is the postulate that man is
more of a _rationalizing_ animal than a _rational_ one. We all
want to believe we act rationally and choose the most logical and
beneficial choice among many, but we don't always do so - we react
emotionally, we make mistakes, we have preferences. Sometimes
that's hard to admit, and so we rationalize our choices - invent
reasons why they were the right ones and why the other choices
were bad. Researchers have found that rationalization to lessen
dissonance is far more common just _after_ a decision has been
made than before. While in the process of deciding, humans like to
think they're being rational, listening to all available
information, sorting it, prioritizing, and so on. Once the
decision is made, though, we feel the need to defend it, lest we
feel dissonance over having believed ourselves rational but
nonetheless having made an irrational choice.
The _Attitudinal_ has been convinced for years that this is
nowhere more true than in shopping for computers. True, today's
purchases aren't the US$3500 and US$5000 investments they were a
decade ago unless you want the biggest and beefiest computer
available, but you're not just buying a US$1000 computer. You're
purchasing the hardware, the printer, and an endless stream of
software for it. By the time you've had the thing a couple of
years, you're pretty well invested. Suggestions that you made the
wrong choice - or that the folks who made the other choice now
have better options - can be hard to rationalize away. That is,
unless you start attacking the reasons you think the other guy has
an advantage.
It's happened over and over again in technology. The people who
chose Betamax VCRs insisted for years, and rightly so, that their
format was technically superior, but a different one cornered the
market. Linux advocates fiercely defend their platform today, as
do Macintosh owners. They refer to the technical inferiority of
Windows, to Microsoft's world-domination plans, to the "lemming"
mentality of those who accept unproductive computers just because
everyone else does. There are facts behind it, but the advocates
work so hard because it validates their own positions.
The same is true about people who find value in the Macintosh but
did not purchase one. The easiest way to reduce the dissonance of
all those Mac users who actually enjoy using their computers
(compared to people who find their computers tedious) is to
rationalize that they're all nuts. Every Macworld Expo sees at
least one "Cult of Macintosh" section, not counting _Wired_'s
ongoing and insulting section [24] of the same name. This year, it
comes from Salon [25], where Katharine Mieszkowski says that Steve
Jobs got Macintosh fans to applaud "on command" for Microsoft,
that "personality, more than usability or reliability or price ...
supposedly sells Apple computers these days," and that in
applauding for Office v.X, "the disciples put their hands together
in a show of obeisance." Perhaps in Mieszkowski's world, the
concept of people happy to use their computers and thankful that
people try to make them not only faster but _better_ is so strange
a concept that only cult-like behavior could explain it.
[24] <
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/>
[25]
<
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/07/macworld/index.html>
Or perhaps it's all dissonance reduction, even thinking about it.
This is the best theory the _Attitudinal_ has to explain it all,
and if you have one that works better, the _Attitudinal_ will
fight to discredit it to the bitter, bit-stained end.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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Publisher: Matt Deatherage <mattd@macjournals.com>
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--
"There might be less software on the Mac side of the isle, but a lot of
what's produced for Windows isn't all that good. Crap does not survive
in the Mac market."
-James Staten, Dataquest analyst