05/27/2001
by Irene Tosetti
Columnist

I've been writing for PB Central for a couple of weeks now, but I still couldn't call myself a celebrity :-) So in this column I'd like to talk about really famous people who made an "Apple choice".

I'm sure you know Bryan Adams, but maybe you didn't know that all his creative work, both as a musician and as a lyricist, is done on a Powerbook. The same applies to director Sidney Pollack, who brought us movies like "Tootsie" or "Out of Africa" and started his portable Mac life with a trusty PB 3400. Douglas Adams, who recently passed away and whom you'll definitely remember for being, among other things, author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", used to work on a PB G3 when on the move.

Other incredibly successful writers who also happen to be Mac users include Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy. Then we have plenty of Hollywood top-names, like Ben Affleck, who a few weeks ago bought two (yes, 2! call that a good back-up habit for people who can afford it!) Titanium PBs, and the Sharon Stone, Sly Stallone, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (even know that they no longer share the same Macs...), Sandra Bullock, Tim Burton, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Danny De Vito, Jodie Foster, Mel Gibson, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Hanks, Kevin Klein, Wesley Snipes, Robin Williams... and the list could go on for many more lines... My point, though, is not to give you a thousand big names; there are good places on the web just for that, like maccentral.macworld.com/famous

I think that the important thing here is to ask ourselves "why did these people choose a Mac?". I don't agree with those who says that it's just because Apple has smart guys in the marketing dept, so they just give free macs to all the Hollywood big names. If this had been the case, this advertisement choice could have easily been taken up also by the PC industry - but it's not like that. So it probably means that when you have no problem with money (excuse me, but I don't know of any famous actors who actually have to think about debt or loans or lease) you just enter a computer shop, see for yourself what looks and feels like the best, and take it home. You just don't worry very much about what other people tell you - you don't have that much to lose, anyway.

On the other hand, common people - and of course I'm not talking about those who already use a Mac - are easily misleaded by some PC-user telling the old tale that "Macs cost more, Macs have no software, Macs are not compatible..."; and even if they still think they prefer Apple , some of these people can eventually fail to choose a Mac when they finally enter a shop and see that ugly PC with a lower price tag, because they still ignore that they'd save much more than that without having to pay for windows xp upgrades, lost productivity, sudden fatal errors... in the following months. Hopefully, this old bias will fade away thanks to Apple Retail Stores; Apple, would you please at least PLAN to open some of them in Europe, too?