You know most average pc users think someone "sends them a virus", they ask "why do they write viruses to attack my computer?". You and I know this is the question of someone who doesn't understand the purpose(s) behind malicious software... but think of how well this image of a hacker writing a virus for your computer aligns with the billion-dollar marketing campaigns of anti-virus software corporations. They don't try to educate users WHY the malware is written, only to position their product as a weapon against the evil-doers.
So it hit me "the malware ecosystem is not as large a detriment to the windows platform as I thought, in fact it has somehow become not only 'ok' and accepted but continues to be proliferated as a 'necessary evil'" (keyword "evil" to imply it's intents are targeting YOU).
I agree with your statement that habit and familiarity play a large part, but what drove me mad was that I know despite the powers of habit and familiarity surely Apple's good word-of-mouth and powerful ad campaigns would educate pc users of a "better way" and they'd take it. But are "switchers" more so motivated by the poor performance of the pc or the great performance of the mac? I think more by the poor performance of the pc (in other words, if they don't feel that the pc performs poorly than they do not have sufficient motivation to take all the (superficial) risks associated with switching). The status-quo is windows, and to gauge how they feel about windows performance they check against the status quo. Those who identify with often breaking from the crowd and rebelling have probably already switched to Mac. Those who gauge their choices against thy neighbors and find comfort in numbers aren't yet convinced Mac is superior and in fact would argue that Mac is only superior because it is not handling "the load" that the windows platform is handling and once it does (if it does) it too will buckle under the pressure.
So it hit me "the malware ecosystem is not as large a detriment to the windows platform as I thought, in fact it has somehow become not only 'ok' and accepted but continues to be proliferated as a 'necessary evil'" (keyword "evil" to imply it's intents are targeting YOU).
I agree with your statement that habit and familiarity play a large part, but what drove me mad was that I know despite the powers of habit and familiarity surely Apple's good word-of-mouth and powerful ad campaigns would educate pc users of a "better way" and they'd take it. But are "switchers" more so motivated by the poor performance of the pc or the great performance of the mac? I think more by the poor performance of the pc (in other words, if they don't feel that the pc performs poorly than they do not have sufficient motivation to take all the (superficial) risks associated with switching). The status-quo is windows, and to gauge how they feel about windows performance they check against the status quo. Those who identify with often breaking from the crowd and rebelling have probably already switched to Mac. Those who gauge their choices against thy neighbors and find comfort in numbers aren't yet convinced Mac is superior and in fact would argue that Mac is only superior because it is not handling "the load" that the windows platform is handling and once it does (if it does) it too will buckle under the pressure.
"good enough" is comfortable for them