"In an inteview this week, Kawasaki recalled signing up 44,000 hardcore Mac users in 1995 on a listserv named, quite appropriately, "EvangeList." "All I would do is disseminate good news," Kawasaki said. He wanted his listserv to be a counterpoint to the torrents of bad news about the Mac, exemplified by a 1996 BusinessWeek cover story about Apple titled, "The Fall of an American Icon." For its cover art, the magazine placed an Apple icon in front of a black, funereal background.

Kawasaki's idea was to give Mac users hope, that they were not alone, and that they were on the right side of history. Hope is a powerful thing to someone at the end of their rope, and while that's perhaps overstating it a bit, that's how many Mac users felt in those years.

"It's almost like a religious experience in that you feel like you have to tell everyone you know in an effort to 'save them.' It's crazy, and I never understood those people but now I am one," said Doug Otto, a News.com reader, vice president of systems engineering for Govstar and a Sacramento, Calif., resident."

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Labels: apple, culture, mac