Cafes and Macs? Why so many?

[notjustjay]

"I should go sit at a coffee shop alone with my Mac and let people see me"

I know for a fact that there are people who think exactly this. And you're right, it's laughable, and embarrassing. But no different than people who wear a certain outfit or drive a certain car or bike around, or for that matter, date certain people. "I want people to see me with this!" is a very common motivator.

My laptop lasts 6 hours if just doing Word and stuff, but I have never brought it to a coffee shop.

Maybe it's the ADHD in me speaking, but I could never bring a computer to a coffee shop and actually expect to do any serious amount of work with it. There's just too much noise, too many distractions. Plus I'd feel bad for taking up a seat for too long. The only reason I would ever do this is if I was meeting with someone else.

I could certainly be wrong, as I base it on my own experience only. Notebooks from Apple are the only ones that haven't given me a bag of frustrations with arbitrary and unexplainable wifi issues.

I have had different types of problems with WiFi with both my Macs and my PCs! My Mac can never seem to stay connected to my local WiFi network at home for every long. Occasionally it will simply start disconnecting after a few minutes. Rebooting the router seems to help, so it's probably not solely my Mac's fault, but the fact is that no other device in the house (other people's laptops, a printer, my iPhone, my iPad, a NAS, a PC, my PS3, and a Sonos device) ever have these issues.

On the other hand, I can usually take my Mac to a new place and connect to their WiFi on the first try, while friends with PCs sometimes take several attempts before they can connect.

 

[Young Spade]

I think this is an interesting question as well and its not totally a social/image thing because I travel a lot for work and I notice it in airports too. I look around at people with laptops out and the ratio of Macs to Windows machines is not in line with their market share. I often see 2-3x the number of macs out.

This makes complete sense though. Let's think about where we see the most Macs. Airports (although I haven't been to one in years), Coffee shops (this is a definite depending on where you go), Colleges.

What do all of these things have in common? The people there, for the most part, have a certain amount of disposable income. The Mac and pretty much all Apple products are looked upon as premium products and are priced as such. Now are they worth the money? Depends on what you get IMO. However, to stay on topic, the point I'm making is that people who have Macs generally (from my observations) have a higher disposable income. If I don't have the money for a Mac (and we have to account for the varying education people have on the electronics here to keep it as unbiased as possible) I probably have the money to frequently spend 5 bucks on a cup of coffee.

Airplane tickets cost money. A lot of it depending on who you are, and if you don't have money laying around to just buy a ticket, chances are you wouldn't also bring a thousand dollar computer to the airport as well. Of course I'm making grand generalizations here and I want everyone to know that I don't exactly believe all of this nor am I stereotyping or counting another group out, just trying to offer an educated guess at what's being viewed here.

There are also certain people who buy Macs. I'm going to guess that a lot of people who are at these coffee shops are either students or people who are somewhat creative. Now I've heard a lot of results from various studies that state that the people who generally spend time in coffee shops with Macs are mostly well versed in the liberal arts (which explains the high proficiency of art/literature/writing majors I've seen with them) and a local coffee shop (or starbucks somewhat) caters to this crowd nicely with its laid back music, light atmosphere, and bustling or laid back environment.

No real point here to be made, just throwing out some observations that I have seen ove the past year or so.

 

[TheSideshow]

This makes complete sense though. Let's think about where we see the most Macs. Airports (although I haven't been to one in years), Coffee shops (this is a definite depending on where you go), Colleges.

What do all of these things have in common? The people there, for the most part, have a certain amount of disposable income. The Mac and pretty much all Apple products are looked upon as premium products and are priced as such. Now are they worth the money? Depends on what you get IMO. However, to stay on topic, the point I'm making is that people who have Macs generally (from my observations) have a higher disposable income. If I don't have the money for a Mac (and we have to account for the varying education people have on the electronics here to keep it as unbiased as possible) I probably have the money to frequently spend 5 bucks on a cup of coffee.

Airplane tickets cost money. A lot of it depending on who you are, and if you don't have money laying around to just buy a ticket, chances are you wouldn't also bring a thousand dollar computer to the airport as well. Of course I'm making grand generalizations here and I want everyone to know that I don't exactly believe all of this nor am I stereotyping or counting another group out, just trying to offer an educated guess at what's being viewed here.

There are also certain people who buy Macs. I'm going to guess that a lot of people who are at these coffee shops are either students or people who are somewhat creative. Now I've heard a lot of results from various studies that state that the people who generally spend time in coffee shops with Macs are mostly well versed in the liberal arts (which explains the high proficiency of art/literature/writing majors I've seen with them) and a local coffee shop (or starbucks somewhat) caters to this crowd nicely with its laid back music, light atmosphere, and bustling or laid back environment.

No real point here to be made, just throwing out some observations that I have seen over the past year or so.

I thought Mac users were known for their constantly overdrawn bank accounts

Semi-serious

To be completely honest though, I come from a very affluent county in CA. Suburbs of San Francisco. The families that really weren't affluent for the area were the ones typically buying the Macs. The people (My family and others) who were relatively, for the county, affluent were the ones with regular (More premium) laptop PCs. There were obviously rich people who bought Macs also, but my point is the people trying to project a false image had the highest Mac/Apple purchase rate. They were also the ones coming to our family for loans.

 

[yayitsezekiel]

Wrong. Any PC or Mac with a wifi adapter is only as reliable as the driver written for it. Any other problems are either physically related or software conflicts and has nothing to do with the OS.

I don't think he was referring to the computer. I think he meant cafes have reliable WiFi and macs are there because of their good battery life.

 

[torbjoern]

I don't think he was referring to the computer. I think he meant cafes have reliable WiFi and macs are there because of their good battery life.

Actually, I was referring to the computer - but maybe I wasn't specific enough... What I meant was the WLAN-device and the way OS X interacts with it. After all, there are other manufacturers that use the same WLAN-devices, and still there are problems. So it's obviously something related to the drivers.

I travelled around in South-East Asia with my first MacBook and never had any WiFi-issues at all. Not one. We changed hotel/guesthouse frequently, going from one place to another in Thailand, Cambodia and Burma, but WiFi worked like a charm everywhere.

With my previous Windows-laptops, however, there would sometimes be strange and sudden issues with wireless internet-access even in my home - and I knew there was nothing wrong with the network, as others could still login and I had gotten access the day before. Maybe some drivers or TCP/IP-related files had been altered during a System Update or something like that - I don't know the reason, but this was really frustrating! Sometimes it was enough to "Repair" the connection. Other times I had to restart the WLAN-device or even restart the computer itself. In many cases, I still couldn't get access even if I did all the above ("Limited or no connectivity" was the mantra). I have never experienced anything like this with Macs.

Maybe it's just that my luck changed when I got a Mac, but I find it far more likely that Macs are more reliable. Especially on anything wireless.

 

[TheSideshow]

Actually, I was referring to the computer - but maybe I wasn't specific enough... What I meant was the WLAN-device and the way OS X interacts with it. After all, there are other manufacturers that use the same WLAN-devices, and still there are problems. So it's obviously something related to the drivers.

I travelled around in South-East Asia with my first MacBook and never had any WiFi-issues at all. Not one. We changed hotel/guesthouse frequently, going from one place to another in Thailand, Cambodia and Burma, but WiFi worked like a charm everywhere.

With my previous Windows-laptops, however, there would sometimes be strange and sudden issues with wireless internet-access even in my home - and I knew there was nothing wrong with the network, as others could still login and I had gotten access the day before. Maybe some drivers or TCP/IP-related files had been altered during a System Update or something like that - I don't know the reason, but this was really frustrating! Sometimes it was enough to "Repair" the connection. Other times I had to restart the WLAN-device or even restart the computer itself. In many cases, I still couldn't get access even if I did all the above ("Limited or no connectivity" was the mantra). I have never experienced anything like this with Macs.

Maybe it's just that my luck changed when I got a Mac, but I find it far more likely that Macs are more reliable. Especially on anything wireless.

It's funny because several of my Mac toting friends always lose WiFi and are turning their WiFi on and off all the time to solve it. Other devices work fine on the networks it happens on too. Clearly it's not as simple as Macs are flawless and "PCs" have problems.

 

[torbjoern]

It's funny because several of my Mac toting friends always lose WiFi and are turning their WiFi on and off all the time to solve it. Other devices work fine on the networks it happens on too. Clearly it's not as simple as Macs are flawless and "PCs" have problems.

It's certainly not as simple as that (it cannot be), and I can only write from my own experience. But if a significant share of the laptop-users at Starbucks have similar experience to what I have, then I understand perfectly well why they bring Macs as opposed to wintel-laptops. Just my $0.02.

 

[Young Spade]

I thought Mac users were known for their constantly overdrawn bank accounts

Semi-serious

To be completely honest though, I come from a very affluent county in CA. Suburbs of San Francisco. The families that really weren't affluent for the area were the ones typically buying the Macs. The people (My family and others) who were relatively, for the county, affluent were the ones with regular (More premium) laptop PCs. There were obviously rich people who bought Macs also, but my point is the people trying to project a false image had the highest Mac/Apple purchase rate. They were also the ones coming to our family for loans.

Interesting. Of course, I'm from a middle class family and am constantly surrounded by other middle classed people; what kinds of computers did you see the people around you buy? And was there a certain reason for the more expensive purchase (specs, design, brand?) or was it just... well because of the higher price?

Thanks

 

[Frozen99]

I dunno. I never go to Starbucks. (Their coffee is terrible!)

And Bill Gates is poor!