I always thought that Apple was a brand that was favoured by hippies, refusniks and other peripheral types when I was growing up and at college. Macs were frowned upon by the academic fraternity when I was at Ag college, first time round we used dos and other antequated software which was hard to grasp and put me off computers nearly for life.
When I did my MBA in 2001, windows was all the rage and again Macs were kind of frowned on and most people took the mickey of anyone who even thought about using one, let alone owned one! Part of my business strategy classes was looking at Apple Inc and the role mavericks and key individuals can have on a business. Steve Jobs has been key to the success of Apple, from being a small struggling business making niche Market computers, it is now recognised as probably the biggest global super brand.
Having been a dedicated windows man up until Monday, mocking my sister and mother about their 'indoctrination' into being Mac users, my patience with my windows running laptop finally snapped. Plagued with continuos error messages, Internet explorer suddenly shutting down for no apparent reason, the machine hanging and freezing mid way through writing something on here, I almost lost my rag and hurled it against the wall. Now I have a colleague who has been showing off his iPad, doing stuff with it which was quite amazing, mocking us other guys about how backward we were using windows etc. He gave some ofus a demo of just how fast his iPad(16gb version 1) was compared to our 2ghz laptops. It was taking him seconds to do things, us minutes to do the same things.......
So Monday afternoon I had a seminal moment, went down to the local Apple store in Exeter and saw one, the iPad mk2. Now I can see why people say it's a cult, guys in blue Apple t-shirts, immaculate, clean, simple store layout, incredibly customer focused, it just shouts out for you to go in and play with the stuff. Sweetshop mentality, it is almost impossible to resist. I have often been past this store, usually it is packed, barely room to see anything, let alone try it out, so I went in late, just 20 minutes before closing, only a few people there to see what it was all about, why were these fan dangled machines so popular. I had been looking since spring at the new smartphones, sussing out what they could do, etc. I like the Samsung Galaxy S2, it's big screen etc. I had SO nearly signed up for one, but then I saw out of the corner of my eye the recommended antivirus, my heart sank having already suffered 2 viruses this year through attachments on twitter. This young guy asked if I needed help and then swiftly, simply and completely blew me away with what the iPad2 could do. And FAST! It is hard to resist fact, deny it when you see it, everything I experienced was exceptional in customer satisfaction, so 20 mins later I walked out of there with an IPad2 and the biggest grin I have had for a while.
There are so many underlying metaphors in this blog about life, work, companies and quality. If other companies had similar corporate strategy, ethos, focus, service and focus on customer satisfaction, maybe shopping would be a happier experience. The striking thing about Apple is this, it's NOT CHEAP, you will bleed financially, wince as you suddenly find that all the goodies that go with it will make you bleed even more, not to mention all the apps out there and they don't do check-outs with tills etc, it's so fast and simple you don't have to time to blink! But as a customer said to me earlier this afternoon, if the quality of the product is so good, price is not the issue. He bought Red Circle grass seed.
So thanks for reading my first blog written from my iPad, I am still grinning from ear to ear.
