If they love you, all is forgiven: perception, reality, and Apple

There’s a popular perception that Apple is the happy, fuzzy, cool computer company, and Microsoft is the evil death star of the IT universe. Apple makes cool fun stuff for shiny happy people. Microsoft enslaves millions of hapless users with its unpleasant products. Both companies elicit strong responses from people; they have recognizable brands with strong emotional components.

Perception and reality are often out of sync; ZDNet blogger Ryan Naraine asks, How does Apple get away with this badware behavior? and gives an example of Apple behaving quite badly indeed: when he used Apple’s software updater to install a patch for the Safari web browser on a Windows machine, the updater’s default setting was to also install QuickTime and iTunes:

That’s 95 MBs, pre-checked by default, bundled into a security patch and ready to hose my machine.

This is clearly badware behavior and it’s shocking to me that Apple gets away with it. I understand the economics of Apple being aggressive to establish a presence on the Windows ecosystem but this is really unacceptable.

The StopBadware.org guidelines are very clear on what constitutes badware and, to my mind, it’s a no-brainer that Apple is being deceptive and irresponsible, even if the bundling is separated under the “new software” tab.

He’s right; defaults that get users to download applications they didn’t ask for and might not want are totally unacceptable. Apple’s already gotten grief about doing this with the Safari browser when people were updating iTunes on Windows machines.

They got some flak, and everyone stopped talking about it. And the perception remains: Apple, your friend. Microsoft, you evil beastmaster.

Why? Because brands are a lot stronger than anybody likes to admit. And when your brand is as strong as Apple’s or Microsoft’s, it takes a whole lot of reality over time to change perceptions.

Apple can get away with mistakes and bad behavior because their overall brand perception is positive. Microsoft has a hard time getting credit for good things because there is a lot of negative brand perception attached to them.

I’ve worked for small companies that were Microsoft business partners in the past. My experience has been that they are fantastic. Their partner programs are well thought out and rich in resources. They help a lot of small businesses do very well.

I’m not trading in my Mac anytime soon, and I continue to curse the misbegotten Office 2008, but it’s interesting that the things they are good at don’t make more of an impression on consumers. Meanwhile, Apple can foist unwanted software on people and offer UI abominations like iWork to the market, and their brand remains intact. (Hey, I like them and am happy to be a customer.)

It’s something to think about as you work on your own brand identity. Pay attention to it early; if you dig yourself a hole, as Microsoft did a while back, it’s hard to get out. And if you build yourself a throne, like Apple did, it will earn you a lot of forgiveness when you screw up.

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