Why nobody buys Apple

A story in Macworld UK says that the Apple brand has been picked out as 'cool' by a survey from NFO World Group. Being cool is all very well, but when does your average IT nerd care about that?

Although there is no doubt that Macs do have some pretty stirring design features, would real technologists really want to be associated with them?

The important thing about the NFO World Group survey, carried out for Superbrands, is that it appears to be making an attempt to understand what 'cool' really means.

Macworld quotes a spokesman as saying: "The concept of cool is difficult to define, because it can be so subjective. But it's about possessing an indescribable magic that gives a product or person a certain edge."

The survey itself lists such names as Volkswagen, Bang & Olufsen, Haagen-Daz, Mercedes-Benz, DKNY and Diesel as the type of brands that rank alongside Apple in the 'cool' stakes.

As for people, the obvious candidates are there - David and Victoria Beckham, Kylie Minogue and The Simpsons. It is worth noting that none of the names - other than Apple - are major contributors to the IT sector.

Here, perhaps, is where it starts to go wrong for Apple. As a reader of this article, it is quite likely that you are surrounded by a few 'technology-competent' individuals.

Take a close look at them and decide whether you consider them to be cool in any shape or form. Do you think that they consider you to be cool? IT technology is not cool and IT technologists have a tendency to stay away from anything that could be considered as cool.

I am most certainly not cool but I am happy to concede that recent Mac designs have been pretty neat. They have nice lines, a mixture of bright colours, even see-through casing.

It is certainly not standard fare for an industry that only recently got its head around the idea that computers do not have to have sharp edges. However, it also means that I do not use these rather attractive features as a part of any buying decision that I might make. In fact, I would probably need a compelling reason to buy because of those features.

Could Apple perhaps have done better if it had spent its cash elsewhere? If all of the software and business capabilities that I needed were available then I might consider buying a Mac. But it is too cool.