That is: they have fanatical users who might give the product a bad name.
While the Mac community has been likened to a group of rabid internet thugs, I have always felt this to be an unfair comparison. After all, everyone knows you have to go to Usenet to meet rabid internet thugs.
Most Mac users are extremely enthusiastic about their chosen platform. Some recent switchers I know are so into their Mac that they actually spend time preaching to the heathens (one even wanted to open a Mac store as a sideline because there are no Mac retail stores in the province). This is real love^wobsession at work.
Firefox has the luxury of being cross platform and therefore able to catch people with obsessive tendencies no matter their chosen platform. For some, the ease of use of changing platforms and synchronising bookmarks is reason enough to use Firefox as there is no other browser that is as uniform across the platforms. (For some of us, uniformity is not actually a feature!)
Where the problem arises, for the Mac and Firefox communities (as opposed to Apple and Mozilla as organisations) is that some people cannot abide the presence of heretics and non-believers. I think it would be safe to say that a few hundred years ago these same people would have been staunch supporters of the Inquisition.
Note that being a product fanatic is different to being a product evangelist. A fanatic doesn’t take the time to even consider a competing product. An evangelist investigates the competition thoroughly because they have to have cogent discussion on why their product is better.
I would echo the advice given in the SpreadFireFox web site:
- Be aware of why you use a product
- Be educated about your product choices
- When you have an opinion, always know why
- Don’t argue with a brick wall.
For our product, I don’t think we’ll get fanatics. We’ll get people for whom our product is essential. And some who won’t bother. Either is cool – but corner me at a trade show and I’ll tell you all of the reasons WHY our product is essential….