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Newsflash: Mac Users Love Apple, Hate Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "An article on wired.com talks about how Mac users helped Apple through the dark years of the 90s." It goes on to discuss how a psychologist was hired to figure out how to woo Mac users away from Apple, with some (to him) surprising results.
Score: -1, Redundant
People who buy a company's product during dark times keeps the company from going under! Tune in at 6pm.
Seriously Mon, PHP on my G3.....
Linux users hate Bill Gates.
Elllen Feiss switched to pot.
Slashdot slashdots sites.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
It's is well known (although I cannot remember the technical name for the effect) that people are 'loyal' to their decisions. Even if they've made a bad choice, there is an internal attempt to justify it.
Our society needs an opposing side to compete or dislike, look at other things that are similar... football teams, car manufacturers, political systems, countries, religion... need I go on?
If everyone liked what everyone else did you really think we'd have much variety? It'd be darn boring eating the same food everyday and watching the same tv show every day.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
From the article:
... you have an instant friend," Chris Espinosa, one of Apple's earliest employees, told Stanford Library. "Most likely, you share something very core to your being with this person, which is a life outlook, a special vision."
"If you see somebody in an airport in London, or someplace down in Peru or something, and you see an Apple tag on their bag, or an Apple T-shirt, it's like the Deadheads
Isn't the same true for Linux ?
"Apple is like a strange drug that you just can't quite get enough of," the musician Barry Adamson told the Guardian newspaper. "They shouldn't call it Mac. They should call it crack!"
;)
Whoo! Oh, boy, my sides are aching! Oh, my ribs hurt! Oh, man!
Also...
Andrew Lackey, a visiting professor of business and economics journalism at Boston University, said Apple's monopoly in the Mac business allows it to get away with things companies in a competitive market can't...."With Apple you're a captive, and to some extent they abuse that privilege," Lackey said. "I would have thought Apple would be all folksy, like a Ben & Jerry's kind of company. But in my experience, PC companies are much more responsive."
BMW has a monopoly in the BMW market. GM has a monopoly in the GM market. And yet, they both sell cars and compete against each other. I guess that's why this guy is only a visiting professor of economics.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
"The Mac community is arguably the largest subculture in computing. Mac enthusiasts -- as a group -- are probably more loyal, more dedicated than users of any other computer, perhaps even Linux. Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves."
I know a handful of people that have switched from Linux to Mac OS X (quite surprising in some cases), but this article implies that people are switching in droves. I found that interesting.
... that they have an exclusive club? I have despised MS for years and have never owned an Apple product.
Microsoft users love Windows, hate Apple
There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community.
Please, god, no.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
The biannual Macworld conference is often compared to a religious revival meeting, where Steve Jobs is worshipped like a rock star, or a charismatic cult leader.
So that explains it!
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
"Apple is like a strange drug that you just can't quite get enough of," the musician Barry Adamson told the Guardian newspaper. "They shouldn't call it Mac. They should call it crack!"
Cant the same be said about linux users?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
From the article...
"[mac users are] more dedicated than users of any other computer, perhaps even Linux. Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves. "
Hmm, what could be the attraction?
I doubt that, the first thing that gets installed on a Mac is an MS mouse, usually wheeled nowadays, second thing is MS Office, then often times some kind of Windows emulator is installed
Yep that's hating Microsoft
"The Mac community is arguably the largest subculture in computing. Mac enthusiasts -- as a group -- are probably more loyal, more dedicated than users of any other computer, perhaps even Linux. Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves."
Thought this would be a good place to ask this...
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
A recent survey also found that linux users prefer linux over microsoft, and that Be users prefer Be over microsoft, and that Hurd users prefer Hurd over microsoft.
if you are a first timer, or had a free account before they switched to a pay format, they offered it for 50 bucks.
then at the end they sweetened the deal by offering 100 4x6 prints from kodak for Free! those cost 50 bucks anyway.
in fact, they did that for all .mac users. they also give u alot of software for joining, Virex (well that's useless, we don't really have those, but. . .), the great Backup util that saved my bookmarks and some other stuff.
don't forget, u can make all the functionality of .mac on your own server if you want. its all open source.
all in all, it looked bad at the start, but they really did a good thing with it, worth it for the few bucks extra.
mind u, i was vehemently opposed at the beginning
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Oh my god! They're right. I've finally gotten away from using a proprietary operating system on non-proprietary hardware, and now I'm going to switch to using a proprietary operating system on proprietay hardware.
when you take stuff out of context, it makes it a lot better though:
"Does it bother you at all that some of your fame might be related to your perceived state of sobriety in the commercial?
It doesn't really bother me. I do admit to looking pretty out of it in that commercial -- I think I look horrible. It was after school, but I was the last person to make the commercial, so by the time I made it it was like 10, so I was really tired. The funny thing was, I was on drugs!...."
"They eat it up," said Matthew Rothenberg, an editor at Ziff Davis and a longtime Apple watcher. "It's like a B&D (bondage and dominance) relationship. There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community."
There's some merit to this: thinking back, just about all of the Mac using women I've dated were serious SM freaks. Of course, they happened to be artistically-inclined pierced, tatooed gothy punks, but that in itself is an odd correlation.
Any testimonials out there?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
On the other hand, you can see an iBook or Powerbook a mile away from almost any angle. You don't need to see if they're running OS 9, OS X or XFree86 to know that they've made the same choice you have.
Please check the timestamp before modding to redundant. Losing mod points because people surf in "Newest Post Mode" is not very nice.
:-)
Anyway, a redudant comment is still on topic, given the title of the news.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Does anyone have a counter-experience, of having a Mac imposed on them? "You'll take this Powerbook and you'll like it!".
So the moment Apple starts using TCPA enabled chips (compliments of IBM - founding member), will Macphiles still be as obsessed? Speculation: The impact of trusted computing technologies will drive the newly converted OS X UNIX veterans back to Linux/xBSD and there will be a concerted effort to implement an open source version of the OS X APIs and underlying technologies on GnuDarwin, FreeBSD, and Linux. Most long time Mac users (like most Windows users) will hang on for the ride like abused housewives.
I have to disagree. I know EXACTLY what is going on under the hood of my Mac's. The ONLY reason I'm using Mac's today is because of the Unix based OS. Recently with the upgrade to 10.2.2 there was a problem of the CPU spiking to 100% (and staying there). Easy to diagnose and fix -- it's the crappy HP print driver causing the problem (again).
... from the Linux world no less. Problem solved.
... printing.
Replace with Gimp-Print
PS: I've not been happy with HP print drivers for a LONG time (even though I do like their printers). My biggest headache in the Windows world is
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They mention folks swicthing like the linux/unix community suddenly decided to bag the open source world for big stevie jobs. However, they fail to mention the "new core" of OS X that might be the reason for the attraction.
Linux/Unix folks aren't switching to Apple, its the other way around.
-rt
This is only one of many "mac is best loved" stories on wired. They always go on about how much mac users love their OS, how they'd never change, how they hate microsoft. They never mention how most of them use M$ word... or how osX is just a pretty version of BSD (an os whose users love it so much they write it and give it away for free, even to 'competitors' like apple!). The article is big on how mac users feel they are a part of a community, that they are all people with a similar 'think different' outlook. Yeah, right. They think so different they buy the only other OS with big advertising..... OK maybe mac users are all similar people. People who like to think of themselves as interesting and different, who want to stand out from the crowd. But who don't want to (or can't) do any actaul thinking or work in order to not conform. "I want to conform to the nonconformist view too! that'll show I'm different and clever!" yeah right. (s)MacWhores Dan
Linux and the GNU and Porche drivers and everthing else with a "following" has mindless zealots.
I know damned well what's going on under the hood of my Macs, I know the limitations and the disadvantages to my hardware and my OS. All the Mac "zealots" I know are pretty up to speed as well.
Well I wouldn't say all of them. But a large part of the people around here do hate Microsoft. Even traditional Windows users do HATE Microsoft. And, historically, Microsoft has not only argued with its office walls in Redmond... /. is full of Microsoft haters/flamers/visceral enemies. Frankly I don't hide my highly visceral hatred to M$, and many people know me here for my anti-Redmond flaming (I have 15 years of reasons for that). However I believe that this submittion goes a little too far. How this can be a newsflash when lots of people here, are here because they hate Microsoft? How many of us kicked out features, games and promises of M$ Enligthenment for the raw fields of *NIX and Apple? I am somewhere the 9949 Slashdot account. Well, by the time when I came here, Linux was surely not ready for 80% of desktops (but it was ready for 20% of them), and it was a terrible experience to work in a nearly 100% *NIX environment. But among those 9500 accounts, there were lots of people who were going 100% not-Windows. And till 2001, lots of people changed sides by "paying" the fact they could not run games and some important apps in *NIX. Till now, we have that problem with many recent games (but not with all games anymore). Well, maybe we are now 1% of /. auditory. But still this surely is not newsflash as lots of Windows fanatics know us for being too stubborn to get back to Windows.
/. admins should have forgotten long ago. However, what is /. without some good flame?
Sincerly this is the style of headers that
...the real reason a story like this was posted was the Anti-MS FUD Campaign has run out of ammo. Apparently, MS didn't make the news yesterday so they had nothing to attack them with. Relax though, you'll find more Jerry Springer'esque drama as soon as MS makes any type of move.
"Commodore hired engineers, Apple hired marketers."
And you know, only one of them is still in business. Its not what you sell, its what people think they are buying.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Maybe those cute Apple ads are close to how loyal users feel about it. Maybe those Apples just work for the vast numbers of people who purchase them for the specific purpose of being invisible. Apple owners don't own computers. They perform tasks that their Apples enable for them.
Are you saying that a computer that "just works" and "is prettier" is somehow less worthy? Why are these criteria unimportant in your expert opinion?
It seems to me that a computer that "just works" and "is prettier" is far more valuable than one that doesn't "just work" and "is uglier."
Circa 1999 it was Linux user = hobbyist geek. Now Linux has been revealed as a savior to businesses of all stripes, but if you're an "early convert" you're still seen as a hobbyist geek, rather than a smart person who picked Linux early for the right reasons.
Something similar may be going on now with the Mac. It's been the cultists who have kept Apple and the Mac alive, but with the release of OS X and the influx of UNIX folks and perhaps a few Windows converts, the cultists are viewed with scorn as the faith-driven zealots rather than as rational adopters of what is really just a computer system.
The Mac has always offered something basic that Microsoft and most (but not all) PC vendors simply don't understand. The computer is built to work out of the box for the human being, not the other way around. You can argue all you want about how it limits your upgrade options, costs more, doesn't run as many apps, but there will always be a certain segment of the computer-using population that very strongly wants a computer that just works, with no fuss.
Now why should people who believe in that concept get labeled as oddballs? Maybe its the rest of the population that's odd, for settling on buggy, conflict-riddled, nonsecure by default, inelegant crap.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I did during my early years of MS Hate.
(And, yes, yes, I know MS worked on the early OS/2)
I'd like to see a poll on who likes Microsoft less; Mac users or Linux users. I'd also like to see a poll on what Mac users think of Linux (which would shed a lot of light on their technical accumen given OS X) and vice versa.
My
Limekiller
There are a good portion of us who are very technically aware, have used all of the major OSes extensively, and feel that Mac OS is much better than Windoze.
There are a large number of you out there who say that "Macs are crap" blindly, without having used one in quite a while or ever. I would say that those people should "atleast [sic] have the decency to KNOW what [they] are talking about".
Well it seems the Apple isn't a (as in single) subculture anymore.
Firstly there are the old time Mac users - they used a Mac found it easy to do what they wanted and just attached themselves to the system. Many have had Macs for years and will tell you how the Mac "changed their life". Often these users work in "arty" jobs (DTP, Graphic Designers, etc)
Then there are Windows switchers - they got fed up with the Wintel PC, some it was system crashes, some it's more religous reasons.
Linux switchers, often those who were working in Windows/Linux for various reasons. Lots have PowerBooks.
Then there are old NeXT users (not many of us actually!).
And others I'm too stupid to identify. I'm not sure that the Mac is a single culture anymore. I hope this is healthy for the platform.
Of course I have omitted those who "co-exist" and use Mac and something else.
If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'
.Mac thing. They're still getting what they paid for--a computer that just works, no questions asked.
That's exactly why I am loyal. I got a product that is useful to me as well as aesthetically pleasing. Who cares how or why it works as long as it does.
Coming from a PC background I can understand having to know how to partition or reformat; or move NICs to PCI slots without shared IRQs; or diagnose DLL and registry problems introduced by 3rd party software products. I did learn a lot, but that's a lot of lost productivity.
Some people like to use computers without having to be amateur computer scientists. That's why people love Macs. That's why people still buy them, despite the good rodgering some people think we got from them over the whole 10.2 and
cognitive dissonance is an extremely powerful component of the continuing strength of MS. Admitting that fear, uncertainty and doubt has led you to lock yourself and your company into an abusive relationship with a monopoly is not something that people want to do (if the latest licensing scheme doesn't qualify as abusive, I don't know what would). People would much rather declare that their "choice" of MS is sensible and will save them money.
Disclaimer: I used to be a Macaddict, but I switched to Linux in college "because I can code", and I never went back.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
We don't all toe the slashdot line. Some of us just want something that works well, doesn't waste our time, and lets us work effectively. OS X fits that bill wonderfully for me, and it plays well with my *nix servers.
I don't get paid based on the liberation of my software, I get paid to get things done. Fuck the KDE/Gnome amateur hour; give me OS X and software that works.
If people forgive youre mistakes it means you have succeeded in what every company wants. Brand-loyalty. Lucasarts had it for a long time. Sure they made a couple of stinkers, afterlife, but by and large most gamers where willing to trust them. Hell any lucasarts adventure I will buy without even reading the back of the box. This kind of loyalty is very important since it allows a company to make mistakes/try new things and not be immidialty killed of for it.
If at as a competitor you are wondering how the hell a company gets away with it ask youreself what you youreself have done to win youre customers loyalty. Perhaps it is the small things that allow you to get away with the big things. Surely I can not be only one who thinks that Apple charging for point upgrades makes MS constant upgrade or be obsolete cycle seem mild in comparison.
Any psychologist majors around who can explain this behaviour?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves."
I'd like to see where they're getting this information. While I'm aware of some overlap, I just don't see a lot of Unix/Linux admins running Apples. It might have something to do with the fact that they are smart enough to know what a real computer is. I don't care what the popular opinion is, Steve Jobs is just as evil as Microsoft. I just don't understand why so many Apple users think he's a saint.
Keep Austin Weird!
Well, I think it's not fair to compare the update to Mac OS X 10.2 with a service pack for Windows XP, the smaller updates-- from 10.1.1 to 10.1.5 and some smaller security updates etc., were free. .mac -- I cancelled my my account there and switched to a free (still...) mail service, again; it's your own decision whether you think this service is worth the money it costs.
10.2 is in many ways a new operating system. The "update" from Windows 2000 to Windows XP wasn't free either.
For those who are happy with 10.1 there's no need to change, for me 10.1 works fine.
About
Being an apple-fan doesn't mean you have to agree to all decisions of the company...
It's weird but it describes me very well, if I see someone with an apple logo on their t-shirt I will walk up to that person and start to talk :) I usually have lots of things in common with the person.
But doesn't the Linux community feel about the same about Microsoft and Bill Gates?
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
The Macintosh do seem more attractive to users (used?) that are not tech-savvy, and not just because it looks nice. The GUI has a certain flexibility and learning it is very straightforward. However, everyone learns it in their own way, and Mac users have all different habits.
So that explains Mac zealotry, since once you get used to using a Mac, going to Windows can be hard since it doesn't have the same usability features.
However, the same can be said about Windows - although it seems that it imposes its own way of doing things, it becomes natural once you are used to it. And when you try a mac, you complain that everything is missing. ^^
Mac OS X should be attractive to Windows users that wish to use some flavor of Unix but who doesn't want to give up a nice interface. But Apple loses in this crowd with the propietary hardware. I would have loved to build a machine with OS X, but I find the idea of buying overpriced hardware ridiculous (for the same price I can buy technically superior and esthetically equivalent components).
Of course for Linux enthusiasts, Apple is just another Microsoft. Don't forget that Steve Jobs once said "Microsoft succeeded in what we have tried to accomplish" (he also said that comparing Mac to PCs was ridiculous since PCs have already won - both quotes from the book "Apple Confidential").
The ENIAC Demo Competition
All I got from the article is a reinforcement of the idea of community and the power it wields. Linux, Unix, and Mac have managed to create a community around themselves wich helps stregthen them in every way. The Unix and Mac communities are a group of avid fans but they can't easily create for thier OS although they can add to the community. The Linux community is a step beyond the avid fan it allows the fan to become a creator. But what I find truly interesting is that Windows seems to have no community at all. The closest Windows has to a community is the VB programmers Windows so often screws by wiping out everything they know every 4 years with a new development platform. Even though it is great to have a community it doesn't seem to gain you market share while at the same time it seems to preserve market share.
...because they brought a world of uncertainty ("error -1") to a logical world of command line.
So I became loyal to PCs instead. Little did I know that some years later we would face the same uncertainty in the form of a blue-colored display. ^^
The ENIAC Demo Competition
I'm a midget, not a troll!
I completely agree with you. I come from a PC background, used to 'hate' macs. MacOS X changed that. Whenever there was a problem with my PC I would open up the case, blah, blah, blah. With the mac, there hasn't been a single hardware problem except for a battery issue (but that could happen anywhere and not hardware specific). I still have my PC for the occasional Quake 3 but almost exclusively use my iBook now. I don't want to have to deal with the hardware issues all the time.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
The answer, of course, depends on who is asked: Marketers say it's the brand, psychologists say it's a social relationship, and Apple loyalists say it's the merits of the machine, its friendliness, its simplicity.
But some common themes emerge: community, the alternative to Microsoft, and the brand, which connotes nonconformity, liberty and creativity.
I thought this quote from the article was particularly interesting. The various Lunux distros strike me as similar to what Wired describes. The distros have a community, logos that allow others to recognize each other, a sense of liberty and creative programming.
Basically, Linux distros have everything Apple does except the "easy to use" part! :) (Kidding!)
But seriously, this seems like a good way for many distros to proceed, if they aren't already. Develope a theme for each disto based on some sort of killer app or need, like Apple's artistic bent. Then use the social aspects of that community to promote loyalty and recognition.
Just my 2 cp. And of course, many distros may already be doing this. But I have to say, as just a computer user, I have no idea what the marketing thrust or theme behind any of the distros is. And I'm not unfamilar with open source. I think more marketing here is needed.
That would be the PowerMac 7200, wouldn't it?
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
and all this time I thought it was the translucent cases.
Table-ized A.I.
I know how you can get my apple away from me
Pry it from my cold dead hands
Nothing else will do
AC/DC
(Anonymous Coward/Don't Care)
For Apple, turning a profit is secondary.
No kidding, but considering what PowerBooks and PowerMacs go for, I can't imagine how they're not turning a huge profit.
Moderators: Don't be dismayed, I have a PowerBook.
I used to work in an office that was evenly divided between Macs and Windows PCs. My experience was that Macs were no more reliable than PCs, but there were two big differences.
Broken Macs gave you a frowny face instead of a cryptic error message, and Mac zealots would stand in front of a dead Mac, look you in the eye and tell you that Macs never break down. When you point out that the Mac they're standing next to is, in fact, gefuct, you get a waffly sort of, "Oh, no, I just loaded a bad driver or something. It's not really broken."
I wonder if this psychologist actually got around to making any recommendations beyond his gushing "Wow...they really like their Macs!"
If MS really wants to switch Mac users--something I really doubt is in their interest, given that Apple is their only real defense against monopoly charges--they'll need to sell hardware.
Hardware is the core of the Mac experience. I love OS X, but the real Apple hook is that Mac software runs GREAT on Macs.
MS could perhaps woo Mac users with a new house brand. It would need to feature hardware as pretty and innovative as Apple's, specially tuned for a customized OS uncluttered by butterflies and Windows logos, with distinct performance advantages over current Mac hardware. MS would need to think hard about Apple users with legacy software. They have deep enough pockets to offer some sort of an exchange program for equivalent software, or they could build-in some sort of emulation.
Really, all this should be done under a new brand name. Apple users resist all things Windows. Even if the core of a new Mac-magnet OS were Windows XP, it should be called something else and look completely different. It would run Windows applications, of course.
Then it all becomes a marketing game: co-opting Apple's traditional creative class, Job #1.
MS could do this if it really wanted to. Apple could be so badly cored that it would go away. I'm not sure Microsoft should go there, however.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Why is there such a loyalty to Apple on Slashdot?
Is it the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" syndrome? This is misguided... Apple is no friend to Open Source or Free Software.
Say what you will about Microsoft (and please don't think me an apologist here), but at least they don't build both the hardware and the operating system. Given the opportunity, Apple would abuse its position even more. In fact, Apple has taken every opportunity to abuse its hardware-software monopoly: Take, for example, the fact that Apple refused to provide Be with technical details to the G3 processor, effectively _shutting out OS competition_ on Mac hardware. Why? Because Apple couldn't compete. Until very recently, Apple's operating systems (up through OS 9) have been technically inferior to all others, including Windows.
I don't mean to start a holy war here, but I speak from experience as a Mac programmer-- move one bit wrong, and the whole system would freeze due to lack of multi-threading and protected memory. It was hack-upon-hack of an operating system from the mid 80's, which still relied on obsolete 680x0 code written in Pascal!! Even Windows 3.1 was more stable.
How in the hell did this OS survive the 90's, when it really couldn't compete by its own merits? Why are consumers willing to buy overpriced hardware with an underpowered OS? Because of this Pavlovian loyalty towards Apple, which is Apple's greatest asset. And they cultivate it... these poor Mac users, such happy victims of marketing.
And now that they've thrown out OS 9 (a very wise move!), Slashdotters hail Apple as some sort of champion. Is yet another proprietary Unix (OS X) really the direction we want to go??
If you are going to be blindly loyal, atleast have the decency to KNOW what you are talking about as opposed to 'it just works' and 'its prettier than PC'.
Actually, that is knowing what they are talking about. They know they want a computer that works and they know they want something that is aesthetically pleasing to them. The first one is the most important. Why is it that many PC users equate power of computer with complexity? Who cares if you can diagnose 1001 DLL conflicts and then set all your IRQ's properly while installing something in an ISA and AGP slot at the same time. The vast majority of consumers don't want to be bombarded with technical terms that make computer repair technicians cringe at the thought. They want a tool (and that is exactly what a computer is, a tool) to help them do their work. Would the average person want a swiss army knife that you had to configure each time you used a different tool? No, they want it to cut when they ask. Just like the average computer user wants it to print when they ask. And as to aesthetics, if you had to stare at the same thing every day for 8 hours, would you want something that looked like a moving van box with a putrid grey and perfectly square shape, or something with soft curves, and a variety of colors. Soothing appearances help productivity you know.
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
Apple users hate Microsoft, linux users hate Microsoft. The sky is blue.
Notice most Windows users don't really hate either? I think the main reason is ignoreance. Most Windows users don't know that there is a subculture of geeks who are mocking them based on what amounts to a decision to purchase a piece of electronics equipment, an appliance. Myself...I'm a Windows user primarily, and I don't hate Apple or Linux. I regard them in the same way that I generally regard Jehovah's Witnesses or homosexuals. They are fine to do their thing wherever and whenever they want just as long as they don't try to push it on me.
If we were going to equate computing platforms to religions, I think Mac and Linux users would be like Christians, sending missionaries about trying to convert all the windows heathens. Perhaps they are more like Islam. In general they are peaceful and reserved, but the radical zealots ruin the image of the rest.
What so many programmers don't realize is that to have a successful software company, marketing is the most important factor.
For every dollar you spend on engineering, you should spend at least 2 on marketing. I've heard up to 5 mentioned. It depends on the market, of course.
It's funny to think of all the clueless programmers who constantly whine about "stupid" marketing people on Slashdot, while they in fact owe their jobs to them!
I use a Mac because that's where the creative tools are. Way too many people think that Mac and Windows are the same because there are lots of Mac/PC applications, but they're not the same at all. Digidesign's Pro Tools runs on both Mac and Windows, but it's been running on the Mac for much longer and with more features, and all of the pro-level plug-ins are Mac-only. So, all of the #1 hits done with Pro Tools are also Mac-only. Similarly, Quark runs on Windows, but most of the plug-ins are Mac-only, and color management, advanced typography, a PostScript renderer, and PDF workflow are built-in to the Mac, so most of publishing runs on Macs. Many other mainstream creative applications are only a few versions old on Windows, and five or six versions more mature on the Mac.
It's just that the technology is so much better than any other platform when it comes to creative stuff of any kind (art, music, video, design). If you replace "Windows PC" in this article with "typewriter" and then read it again you'll see how it looks to a Mac user. No, we're not anxious to trade our multimedia audio/video/graphics workstations with great UI and amazing stability for IBM Selectrics. As a creative workstation, Windows makes a shitty typewriter. That's all there is to it. The rest is window dressing, with non-Mac users wondering what the buzz is about.
my dad bought a Mac Plus in -86 (as i recall it) as he was publishing a small immigrant newpaper (for Polish people living in Sweden), and wanted to do it using DTP instead of traditional methods (does anyone remember how magazines where done before DTP?), and at about that time i started playing Larry and using my rudimentary english to type "use rope on balcony".
ever since, i've stuck to the platform since it's the one i know, and due to the experiences i had using Windows & DOS computers.
one reason why some macintosh users get so attached to their computers (like i used to be, before i began working as an apple technician and became a cynical and hateful bastard) could be childhood traumas loading the mouse drivers in DOS, and being ridiculed by Windows us'ders (actual quote: -Mac isn't a real computer, it's a toy. You don't have to type anything!) enhanced the feeling of being the underdog (which Apple has been branding towards ever since).
so yes, although there might not be much difference in GUI nowdays, nor functionality, i believe it's the brand image of Apple that keeps, and attracts new, users.
having said that, i'm hereby stating my intentions on actually learning more about computers than just how to ResEdit my way to others' MacAdmin passwords, and get a cheapass laptop running Linux and wardrive gothenburg.
"whaddayamean i can't play with myself? it's a fucking playground, isn't it?"
...it turns out that Microsoft users also hate Microsoft. There was a slight difference between the degree of hatred between Microsoft users for Microsoft and Apple users for Microsoft but it was not found to be statistically significant, after removing Microsoft employees and shareholders from the Microsoft users sample.
that's why i love apple products - in everything that's presented to the user - thought has been put into it.
'design is practical art'
john
-2: Asshat
Windows NT had true multitasking, none of that memory allocation to each app crap, and was overall more stable (despite what Mac freaks say). Apple's OS was still basically a modified Andy Hertzfeld Switcher program. Hook into GetNextEvent and steal control and pass it to another program. Polling -- yack.
But this past summer I bought an iMac. What a beaut. Unix underneath it all, stable, runs well, a joy to use. Now I still have ah, two XP machines, one 2000 server, one Linux router/firewall, a laptop with XP, and one Linux workstation in the house (between my wife and I), and the iMac is in the living room on the coffee table, but my next laptop purchase will be a Mac, that's for sure.
Anyway, the claim that all Mac users stuck with Apple through bad times isn't true in my case. If they don't make a better product, I won't buy it. Right now, except for the dead-end processor chip they are currently stuck with, it's just a better product... (and if they don't put a G4 in the iBook this January, I won't be buying a crippled G3 iBook nor an over-priced G4 Powerbook.)
what, after all can I do with a fifty-button mouse that I can't do with a keyboard and one-button mouse? Ctrl-click, option-click, and command-click are fine by me, and I'd prefer that than getting accustomed to a weird little piece of hardware. Actually, at work, I use a two-button trackballalthough I've never figured out what to do with that extra button!
If only mac users could make APPL's stock go up, I'm still down 25% :O
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Yes, there are *some* Windows user groups, or at least gatherings where people assemble to discuss / bemoan their Windows software, but when it comes to true fan clubs, the Mac wins. (Linux wins, too -- it's not a one-winner competition :))
When I bought my first personally-owned Mac about 10 years ago, I discovered that there was an "Apple Pi" (I think that was the name) meeting in my town, and by going there a few times, I learned some valuable tips, bought shareware fonts (when shareware was nice), and was generally happy with things.
One reason I looked for a Mac user group is that I had a problem getting my modem to connect; the conclusion I came to is that -- wielding the broadest brush possible -- Mac problems are mostly interesting; Windows problems are mostly infuriating.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What is under the hood of most things is actually not very important, and in general this issue does not occupy the thoughts of busy people over much. Further, not caring about things that do not matter makes one neither a zealot nor ignorant, and should actually be a measure of maturity.
In a few more years the computer technology industry will become a consumer electronics industry. People will not care how the applicance works, so long as it fetchs email, browses the web, and archives Buffy episodes. It will make no more sense then to ask what is under the hood of (what is now called) a personal computer than it does to ask what kind of compressor is running in your refrigerator. Unless you are the equivalent of a refrigerator repair person. But repair people do not run the world, do not determine the future of technology, and do not have any special place in the pantheon of labor. They are like crows, waiting for something to fail so they can profit. They contribute little to the advancement of technology. This is the future fate of tech-glorifying nerds who today think someone is stupid if they don't buy a PC over a Mac based on specifications of the component parts.
A better use of your time would be to find a solution to spam, or invent a fail-safe operating system for information applicances, or devise sensible ways to limit child access to porn, or some other interesting challenge that, indeed, makes no big deal of what is under the hood. If you are not up to the task then you can either go back to school or leave the rest of us alone while we focus our adult attention on things that matter.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
I remember those dark days. Sporting goods manufacturer AMF bought Harley-Davidson in the early 1980s and set about "saving money". The bikes produced at that time were crap. It got so bad that the employees or Harley-Davidson bought the company back from AMF. Harley-Davidson was within a heartbeat of dying.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That Microsoft actually owns a part of Apple...
Hmm... Am I the only one who thinks that Steve Jobs is nothing but a failed Bill Gates? I find it difficult to believe that a desktop overwhelmingly controlled by Apple would be any better than the current situation with MS. If anything, it might be better, for Apple aims to control both software and hardware. I don't think there is any freedom with Apple - although its products seem to be better than MS's.
Mac users hate microsoft until the need to browse the web, read email, open a doc file, or do just about anything else.
SCORE: -1, Redundant
*WARNING* Karma Whore *WARNING*
--Enter The sig--
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
I swear, I'm so pissed off at Apple right now that if somebody wants to do an "I switched back" commercial I'll star in it. Last year I ordered a TiBook for Christmas, but didn't get it until February. This year, some on-line friends bought me an engraved 20Gb iPod as a thank-you present, but it arrived with a flakey hard drive so I had to send it back. According to the Apple "Support"(sic) web site, they verified the fault 4 days later and ordered a replacement, but here it is 30 days later and I still don't have my freaking iPod.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Can anyone explain to me why they also don't like Intel? I've see artist Mac-user types, who wouldn't know machine language if it rammed up their butt holes, go on and on about "Intel's segmented architecture." As if it mattered what instruction set your computer software ran on, as long as it's fast enough.
I've gotten people to question their use of Apple's products simply by knighting a friend who uses Windows XP, solely for the reason that he isn't using a Mac.
I don't see it as loyalty when someone questions their use of a Macintosh solely upon seeing some guy knight another utilizing a plastic butter knife.
(And no, I'm not the Queen of England. But I say, if Microsoft can piss on anti-trust legislation, than I can piss on the Constitution and start handing out titles of nobility. Glory to the Imperium.)
Now, if you want to talk about real loyalty, walk into a room and shout, "[vi or emacs] rules! [the opposite of the previous] sucks!"
That, or find someone who uses Slack.
Yikes. The wired writer, and most of the posters here are looking at this enirely wrong. Wired is looking at the user's attachement to Apple. The ./s are looking at the user's attachement to a technology. Both miss the point.
Look at it this way. Dos and Unix were (are) command line driven. The text paradigm underlies everything. Macs were never text driven, always visual. You can divide the population very roughly into three instinctive communication/learning styles. Visual, text and aural. These styles correlate to many other personality types, cognitive styles, etc. Computers were invented by the text crew. The aural people have their phones. But for visual communicators, there is simply no alternative to the MAC. Sure there are enough similarities across all modern GUIs that there is some room for substitution. But the text derived systems betray their origins at ever turn.
That is why a comparison between the loyalty of Apple users and Dell users is ludicrous. Think if only one company made mice for left handers. Good or bad, that company would own the market. Comparing the loyalty of its customers to those of one of the right handed only mouse companies would profoundly miss the point. Same here. The user's devotion to Apple is beside the point. The Mac is much bigger than Apple.
This is, of course not to diss the command line derived approach. I use the CLI all the time for Linux, and suprisingly often in XP. But almost never in OSX. You can, but it never feels right.
I like my BSD Daemon tshirts. and my Java tshirt. and my slew of Thinkgeek tshirts. i'd have BSD Daemon shoes if they made them....but then again, yeah...Tux is kind of gay.
Linux/PPC geeks hate Apple b/c it keeps in secret details of its hardware from Linux/PPC developers.
And all linux geeks hate BSD ... b/c BSD is dead (don't you know that?).
Less is more !
And Dell has a monopoly on the Dell market. HP has a monopoly on the HP market. A Dell laptop is significantly different than an HP laptop, right? I mean, I couldn't just replace one with the other, could I?
Sorry, but that doesn't wash. From what I've seen, Macs are not immune to conflicts by any stretch (if they are, explain Conflict Catcher).
Here's a real example I witnessed: CD with a non-Apple program for the Mac. Stick in CD drive. Starts to install. Installer whines about conflicts, informs user that they need to restart without loading any extensions [ie. restart in Safe Mode], then locks up machine. User restarts sans extensions. Now CD drive is not recognised... being it's an extension [device driver]. Ooops!!
Point being, when it comes to this sort of argument, Macs and PCs are very much more alike than not. Macs happen to ship completely set up. If you buy a completely set-up PC it'll "just work" right out of the box, too. What if Macs were shipped with a blank HD and the OS on a CD, for the new owner to figure out? If that were the case, we'd hear howls of pain from Mac buyers too.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Not to be overly insulting, but...
If you're opening up the case for every problem you had/have with your PC, you either-
1. Have a POS system.
2. Don't know what you're doing.
3. Are trying to exaggerate your experiences to sound impressive and puff up Apple's reputation.
Aside from removing a faulty video card (which was promptly replaced by Gateway), I have NEVER had to open my PC's case to fix a problem, over the course of 10 years, 3 systems, and 4 different OS's.
You sound like someone hired by Apple, frankly.
Oh come on! No one has said ANYTHING about the awesome Amiga yet?! It was the BEST OS ever. Back in the day the Amigas could emulate both Macs and DOS .. Neither competition had anything to fight it with. But no one knew what an Amiga was.. And if they did, they just said "Oh, look at the cool game selection." ..... Bah!
It's another semantic name game here.
If Apple had given 10.2 a bigger number, like 10.5, less people would complain.
If Apple had waited 10 more months to release it, less people would have complained.
If Apple had given a 10.1->10.2 *upgrade* path, less people would complain.
*However*
10.5 is just another number. People would have accused Apple of manipulating version numbers to make their product look 'bigger'.
If Apple had waited longer, people would complain that Apple wasn't releasing fast enough. We have journaling (10.2.2) now. Apple doesn't seem to wait on it's products very much.
Apple released 10.1 as a free upgrade CD(available at Fry's, CompUSA, or Apple Stores) or available for $19.99 online. Logic? They charge $20 for a point release, they charge $129 for a full release, and Apple doesn't otherwise do upgrades.
Microsoft, in comparison, released Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME every two years and charged you for it. This is different how? Because Microsoft didn't relelase a Windows 96 for $20, it's okay? Because Microsoft didn't call them Windows 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3? You do know the code name for Windows 2000 was Windows NT 5.0 right?
GPL Deconstructed
I don't care about these mac users. Please stop pretending to be someone important to this world. You are no different than an average PC user, only you pay more for less. There is nothing special about you and your old Macs. Macs look pretty and that's all.
No I do not have a POS system, I do know what I am doing with hardware. Yes it may have been exaggerating a little bit but at that times that is what had to be done.
I should however note that I did build my last 2 computer myself using parts (mostly new or recycled from last computer). I found systems like that are hard to get to sleep for example (my last 2 always froze or just didn't).
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Now that was predictable... within two minutes, along comes a Mac zealot and mods "-1, Troll". That's what you get for speaking your mind around Mac zealots. The same thing happens in face-to-face conversations.
Sorry, kids, I *never* troll. In fact, my above post is comprised of 100% realworld examples.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"No offense to Apple, but their zealots are ignorant for the most part. These are the sort of people who are blindly loyal to Apple and do not have a clue what actually goes on under the hood, but yet profess to say it is better than MS, PC, etc etc."
You should be shamed of yourself to put out a sweeping statement like that, probably because you have little knowledge of the Mac community or you are just an arrangant and brainless idiot with just enough intelligence to follows the crowd.
Most Mac users that I know of are creative, smart and sensible people, and they choose Mac out of their own free will and for good reasons or due to constant frustration with endless reliability and security issues with the noisy and ugly Wintel PCs.
To me as a professional software developer with over 10 years experiences on virtually every flavors of expensive Unix workstations (Sun Solaris, HP/UX, IBM AIX, etc), Mac OS X simply blows them all away and is much much cheaper and more productive and sexy, and let's not bother to talk about Windows here.
You have also got realize that people have different priority and are not necessarily ignorant or less intelligent than you just because they don't want waste hours on messing with a crappy old PC.
Despite the unflinching moral declarations of the FSF, most users of so-called "Free Software" care about the gratis a heck of a lot more than the libre...
... hell, why not just say most people care much more about gratis than they do libre. To care about libre takes a lot more intelligence than to care about gratis. Everyone has to eat. Lots of stupid people want to buy all that pop culture crap and play Vice City. They're not going to make time to think about why software should be free (libre). God, our own crappy language has a hard time expressing these concepts!
Don't try to relegate this type of thinking to only users of so-called "Free Software." I think that most computer users
In the real world, every Linux-user I know has or wants to have a Mac--and they're not putting PPC Linux on them, they're leaving OSX as-is, save for adding a few utilities.
So what? Your world is not the real world. It's viewed through your own subjective, rose-colored lenses. In other words, your anecdotal evidence isn't meaningful.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
There's not too much difference between the two. At least not enough actual difference to make one the winner or one the loser. Both are pretty much the equivilant of one another..one does some things well and one does some other things well. Barring an application that will only run on one or the other, I just don't see the point of "switching" from one side to the other, or even back again.
:(
Furthermore, there is NO difference between Apple and Microsoft. Both are big companies lead by egomaniacs. Who would be/are very bad monopolists, wanting complete, total and utter domanance of the industry.
I've used all the major OS's...and they have all for the most part "just worked"..yes even Linux. The problem is when something breaks..fixing something that is broken is not difficult if you know the OS you are using. If not...it's fdisk format reinstall time. No ands ifs or buts about it.
I do have a personal preference myself. I do not like Macs. OS X is a decent idea, but the UI just does not appeal to me. Same thing with XP, I like the older more sparse UIs like Windows and most Linux distros. If I was to buy a computer for a family member, even not counting the cost I would build a 2000/Linux duel boot box, with the linux box all set up with tons of end user apps easily catagorized. In fact, for a newbie this is a great setup.
My biggest problem with Macs, and this may be a limited problem, is that the video display gives me a headache. Everything seems to have a way too slow refresh rate. On the three Macs I've seen (old and new model Powerbooks and a G4 setup), everything seemed to update way too slow. Maybe that is just a setting..but on the IMac I actually used I've looked for a while, in both 9 and X for a solution. Couldn't find one.
I have come across many computer users who will spit in my face for mentioning the name apple or mac. They are still caught up in the early mac days and tend to have a negative view towards all things apple.
On the other hand though, when you ask them if they have ever used OS X, the blank stare as you explain to the linux user that it is unix under the hood, just with a much nicer GUI.
The idea is that a sort of tension or "pressure" builds up -- the cognitive dissonance -- until at some point you have a moment of head-slapping realization and revise your beliefs to match up with what you're seeing or doing.
I can see where it bears on brand loyalty in the face of adversity, but the term isn't an attempt to explain how the loyalty got there to start with.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Heh...amongst my geeky t-shirt collection, I have:
1.) A Microsoft "Spring Internet World 2000" specimen...hey, they were giving those puppies away, and that surfer graphic looked cool...
2.) A Mac Expo 1997 "Premiere" shirt...I actually volunteered that year. Hell, 1997 was just about the nadir for Apple...nobody expected the company to last the year.
3.) A Penguin Computing "Good Evening, Mr. Gates, I'll be your server today!" t-shirt.
So what do they all have in common? I got them FREE. I actually wear them all. Between bands we know and geek conferences/conventions, we have all the t-shirts we need to prevent indecent exposure arrests. As far as I'm concerned, t-shirts serve utilitarian purposes. The images on them are almost completely meaningless. Gimme a free t-shirt and 9 times out of ten, yes, I will wear it.
Heh, maybe I should take pix of my dead dot.bomb T-shirt collection...I've got some real doozies there and I prolly should get pix of them before they fade away...;-)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
And yet Apple is more open. I speak from personal experience here: I had a minor problem with one of the low-level parts of Mac OS X. I'm no OS hacker, just a user who's done some C work, but I was able to find the relevant bit of Darwin, download the source, play around with it until I got it working, and then contact and work with one of Apple's engineers. I'm told my fix will be in Mac OS X 10.3. How responsive is that?!
Yes, Apple are a large corporation. They're not perfect; they don't always do things I approve of, or that would personally benefit me the most. But they're improving, and IMO they have by far the best combination of openness and usability there is. So I'm happy to stick with them.
This isn't out of personal animosity towards M$ (I've never owned a PC), nor ignorance (I've been involved with many other non-Windows platforms). In some ways I think M$ has given all corporations a bad name. I wish people were able to consider Apple fairly, free of political (and geekiness) concerns.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Heh.. I like Windows in general (tho not everything M$ has done to it, especially recently) and I'm a M$ shareholder, and I attend M$ seminars regularly to keep up with what they're doing and hear about it firsthand... but at least once a week M$ does something that gives me a serious urge to knock Gates' and Ballmer's head together. I could rant at great length about how much better Windows would be without so damned much one-man "vision" half-assed pasted on top. But I haven't found another desktop that works as close to how I want it to, either. When I do, off I'll go to the wild blue. My loyalty is to my ability to get my work done how I prefer to do it, without being annoyed all to hell by the desktop, not to Redmond or anywhere else.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yes, that's an interesting point.
.. UH OH! You're some kind of counterculture revolutionary.
I do agree some Mac fanatics can be a little odd (I consider myself one, even though I use usually use Linux and FreeBSD for the flexibility).
But I've also noticed that it's okay to drive a different car than most folks, or eat a different breakfast cereal, or drink a different soda, or sit on different furniture, or buy exotic cookware. But as soon as you mention that you use a different computer than everybody else
I think this is partly because Microsoft is so pervasive, you have to go out of your way to avoid them. Which is a little sad, really. I don't care much for Microsoft's technical practices, I don't like the monopoly, I don't like the idea that this one company controls almost ALL the computers out there, from the government on down. They have a position of amazing power. So I practice "don't like it? don't buy it!". Why should that be a big deal.
I feel Apple's position keeps them honest. If they ever became Microsoft, I'd jump ship in a heartbeat and head for the safety of the GPL. Right now they have a great platform and it's nice to use. I also relate to the Apple philosophy of "little details" rather than raw power, since that's how I choose pretty much every other product I pay for, and the philosophy I use in my own programming. I spend much more time with "superficial" stuff like the names of buttons and menus, then with actual algorithms.
People always say "hey, don't fight Windows, it's the standard, it came free on the computer" and shit like that, which after a while makes you real defensive and makes you come up with all kinda of rebuttals for each point.. I just try and shrug and say "It works better for me" or something like that.
> Now why should people who believe in that concept
> get labeled as oddballs?
Good point.
There used to be an annoying guy I knew who insisted I was a "Mac bigot". Never mind the fact that he had to ask me how to troubleshoot his Windows 2000 machine, or that I had set up a Linux machine to host a SQL database fronted by PHP. The fact that I chose a PowerBook G4 as my primary computer meant that I was anti-Microsoft and thus technologically biased.
The truth was, he hated Apple emotionally but he couldn't say why.
I thought it was funny; I paid for Office v.X (most people that run Office for Windows tend to "borrow it from work"), I used Entourage for my email and contact manager (he used Netscape), and I even used Internet Explorer for browsing the web. In short, I had probably paid for more Microsoft software than him, and yet he considered me to be biased against Microsoft because I chose not to use Windows.
I finally asked him, "So how much Microsoft software do I have to run for you to not consider me biased?"
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
The interesting thing to me is that even though droves of Windows users would agree with this statement from the article: "Microsoft crams a bad system down peoples' throats. It's the evil empire, big brother, a monolithic corporation," they're still unwilling to explore other options.
Its not that they are unwilling to explore other options, its that the other options aren't any better and generally are less usable for the things people want to get done.
I think there is a pretty simple explanation for the current state of things, where Apple has a small marketshare and is loved by their users, while Microsoft is dominating software but is despised: focus.
Apple has always focused on doing things for the customer, even if it means screwing the developers and the existing user base. Apple has sort of a family-style "tough love" philosophy - almost parental. It will say things like "The dock is better for you. Just take it." Even though people may or may not like it, Apple has your best interest at heart, and so it will jam things down the users' (and developers') throats, if need be.
Microsoft, on the other hand, focuses on the developers. They want to make Windows the best development platform in the world. Microsoft figured out early on that people only buy computers for software, and that people are not going to write their own software. By luring developers to their APIs, MS achieved market dominance. The users in this case are more of an afterthought - they are sort of a problem left to each independant developer.
Some examples:
When Apple introduces something new, Jobs comes out and talks about how insanely great this will be for users. When MS introduces something, BillG will talk about how the API makes it easy for devs.
At Apple, we would routinely make API changes that would break every single major application (like PhotoShop and PageMaker). Our attitude was "screw them, the devs just have to keep up, the new way is better." At Microsoft, we still have code that makes sure WordPerfect 3.5 for DOS still runs in a command window in NT.
I have worked over five years apiece for the research labs at both Apple Computer and Microsoft, so I have some insight here.
I wouldn't go so far as to say Linux/Unix users are switching in droves, but supplementing things with Apple equipment is certainly an appealing option.
I have been a long time Linux user, occasional Windows user. I recently purchased the one piece of Apple equipment that I felt was competitively priced, the iBook.
Desktops and Servers, hands down I'd go with Intel architecture with Linux, the price/performance kicks Apple's ass in all kinds of ways.
Now laptops are just about equal in terms of price, but the Apple laptop's have some damn good battery time and nice temperature, along with being pretty lightweight. The performance may not be stellar, but that is not the most important thing to me in a laptop role, I need the battery and the weight, so iBook was great.
On the software front, I wouldn't have considered an apple before OSX. Now the toss-up is between Linux/x86 and OSX. (Also have Gentoo on this iBook, but have come to realize that there really isn't any benefit of using it over OSX..).
With Linux, there is Wine and VMWare for decent performance for running the occasional Windows game/applictaion. VirtualPC isn't nearly as viable in this role. Aside from that, the commodity hardware prices in the x86 world are very tempting. For a desktop/server, hands down this is the option.
OSX has Quartz and some nice native apps/games (Blizzard, even many MS apps). It is a Unix and with fink can run many things that linux has in addition to native OSX apps. One thing I absolutely love with OSX that I first dealt with in a relatively pure form in ROX (http://rox.sf.net/) was application directories. Install/Uninstall is rarely a special case. Instead, just drag the directory over, and runtime generated files generally appear in a nice, self-contained directory in ~/Library. No central registry being mucked up, no mixing up files with hundreds of other applications dumping things in lib, bin, etc, just truly self-contained applications, beautiful... I just wish there was a good, free Virtual Desktop for native Cocoa apps (and don't even suggest Space.app, way way too limited. I'd like to have two windows of a single application exist on different workspaces, for example...)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As i type this on my mac I sit and wonder what is so ironic about this.?.?.? I mean WTF? isn't there anything else to write about now-a-days! This is F#(&*^g Lame!
I should move to F@%*$&% Canada.
Oh, and Apple didn't revamp their licensing schemas, forcing the majority of corporate clients to pay significantly more (and probably requiring additional hardware costs) just so that they could be assured of a stable revenue stream because people weren't upgrading because there was no good reason to and lots of reasons not to.
And the "I don't want to buy new hardware" argument is really a call to Linux and BSD. They're designed to continue functioning on your older boxes, unlike MS which keeps upping the requirements to keep their hardware "partners" in business, forcing you to buy new Wintel boxes.
"Please, don't take my one-button mouse and my plastic-looking interface away. Technology frightens me."
This is the core of why mere consumers (such as Mac owners) are so contemptible. I am human; learning from and improving my tools is my birthright as an intelligent being. To abandon that is to become an animal, making mythology ("computers just crash sometimes", "god said so") because they're unfit to understand the world around them.
This is a perfect example of Wired's consistent Mac bias showing up in yet another mostly irrelevant article. I'm sorry, Mac is a marginal hardware and software brand and show no signs of gaining signficant ground over Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't even care about Apple anymore as a competitor; a bunch of disorganized, sociopathic programmers with no leadership to speak of pose a far greater threat to them than an ordinary company with inferior business strategy. And yet Wired sees fit to write article after article about anything Macintosh users/one Mac user/former Macintosh users/future Macintosh users do, say, or think. Maybe they tatoo rainbow apples on their butts. Maybe one named his cat Macintosh. Maybe they eat Macintosh apples. Maybe they eat other apples to encourage competition.
Who cares?
So when I read this article, which just reiterates what everyone of any mind has known since Apple because a company, I couldn't help but see the childishness of this phenomenon. M$ users hate Macs, Mac users hate M$, GNU/Linux users are like the anarchists... we (yeah, I'm one of them) see closed-source, proprietary systems as "evil" or what have you, and still we have our security-blankets in "GNU" and penguins and such... we are all part of the same system.
It really is an argument against the concept of indviduality, against an identity free from logos, based solely on ideas.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
.. but you can replace my Mac with Windows when you can prize it from my cold dead hands.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Business decisions made by... former CEO Amelio! I read this as saying: "Even someone who makes as many bad business decisions as myself couldn't sink that ship with so many loyal users manning the pumps." One wonders how these people manage to find employment at the CEO level after comments like that.
"Andrew Lackey, a visiting professor of business and economics journalism at Boston University, said Apple's monopoly in the Mac business allows it to get away with things companies in a competitive market can't." as opposed to the various other manufacturers of Macs like....?
Regardless of what MS is or does, is no one appalled that the newer macs have no 3.5" floppy drive?
I still use this incredible technology each and every week. And thus I cannot own a mac. Cannot.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
I think you wrote an excellent article which explained your point quite well. I consider you 100% wrong but that shouldn't diminish a high quality post which does deserve to be modded up.
/. before and after OS9. Instead we now see OSX being treated with the respect that /. gives to OSes they do take seriously like: Linux, MSFT, Solaris. People vigerously argue about the pluses and minuses; particularly value over quality. There is genuine interest in the platform even from its non users.
/. is a Unixphile forum (that is many are not Unix users but most admire Unix). By making the switch to a Unix based platform Apple gained respect. In addition they have created a Unix variant which is centered around the mainstream desktop and not the server which is genuinely unique in today's market. Since most /. ers are desktop users and Unixphiles the unique desktop Unix is obviously going to be treated positively.
I'd offer a simple piece of counter proof, the treatment of Apple before OSX came out. Prior to OSX the overwhelming attitude of the slashdot crowd towards Apple was disinterested hostility. Apple system were simply not taken seriously at all; treated as more of crippled computing appliances than computers. Almost no one advocated the advantages of OS9 over Windows, Linux, BSD...
Were your argument true, that is that the behavior is based on price and lack of market share there should have been no difference between the behavior on
That is a huge change in attitude. I think the more likely explination is this:
"Now why should people who believe in that concept get labeled as oddballs?" Because that allows everyone else to disregard the opinion of people that disagree with them, reinforcing their position of cognitivie dissonance. Many, many labels that we hear every day are chosen with great care.
[laughing] Exactly so. Whenever I've had to use a Mac box, I'm annoyed no end by all the stuff I'm used to being able to get at in Windows (and DOS), that's just.. absent!!
Even tho at every exposure, I've found I disliked the classic MacOS from one end to the other, I'd be willing to try OS X -- *if* it would run on my PC hardware. (Hell, I downloaded and fiddled with Darwin for x86, and rather liked the BSDness of it, better than I do naked linux.) And it would be nice to have a mature alternative to Windows, for the dark days to come when Windows goes where I don't care to follow (given that linux desktops just aren't there yet). But I'm not about to cough up an extra grand for proprietary hardware just so I can try MacOS X.
Apple may make its profit margins on hardware, but (to continue your comparison to M$) I'd bet they could make a lot *more* profit selling a PC-compatible OS than they currently do on selling Apple hardware (itself a shrinking market). Even if it were designed for a certain base hardware, and the hardware mfgrs had to cough up their own drivers, it would still reach a potentially much-larger user base. Especially when that userbase doesn't have to give up M$Office and Photoshop to use MacOS.
But I think that is the true reason Apple doesn't release OS X for PC: if they did, M$ would stop making M$Office for Mac. And if that happens, the Mac market will dive to below 1% overnight. So Apple doesn't compete with M$ in the OS market.
That wouldn't matter if MacOS X could grab 20-30% of the PC platform -- because M$ couldn't afford to blow off that much of their potential market for M$Office.
And the competition would doubtless be good for all of us.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This guy is not too happy with OS X frankly he is kinda pissed
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
Take your pick...
Apple: No hacking required. Some quirks but stuff works. Costs a lot.
Linux: Code-it-yourself. No support beyond news groups. RPM's are cool, but you're on your own if they don't work right. If you can't code it yourself, you're screwed. Finding hardware is a pain.
Microsoft: Code yourself insecurely by default with standard edition Visual Studio languages software at $200+... Forced upgrades because the code you wrote probably has buffer overruns you didn't know existed. IRQ's, hardware problems, driver hell, DLL hell is a separate type of hacking. The code you write will be obsolete in three years and won't even run on the next version of Windows despite the fact the OS is still fundamentally the same. Python/Java exist, but aren't bundled. Your money goes to the Starbucks of Software.
I use MS at work, Linux at home. I hack MS at work with DLL hell, Visual Basic, SQL Server. I hack Linux at home with Python, KDE, and a bash shell. Is any of it really better than the other?
I don't use Apple and haven't since college. No one's forced it on me. If it's like Linux, but easier for Joe User, well, that's wonderful. I'm just not lined with cash from my Microsoft job.
Unless you have tons of money to throw at Apple, your next religious option is Linux.
I pick Linux. I have no penguin logos.
This space for rent.
Likewise, Microsoft's latest update for Windows XP is free.
They're basically comparing the latest m$ UPDATE with the latest OS X UPGRADE. It's like comparing apple and oranges.
While many people barked loudly at the price tag on jaguar, it was truly an operating system upgrade Not only speed and reliability were dramatically improved, but many new applications and pieces of functionality were added.
Saying that the latest bug fix service pack for windows xp is free should be compared to the fact that every sub-dot release of OS X have also been free, such as 10.2.1 and 10.2.2.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
If Apple really want people to switch they should try providing Switch adverts in a format that does not require a Mac to view. If most of the switches are from Linux/Unix users, shouldn't it ring a bell to their marketting department to provide those adverts in a format that can be viewed under those systems?
As someone said, Mac users are probably more interested in the ads than any other group.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
And now the power Mac users who argued against DOS back in the day for not having a GUI are taking pride in using terminal to tweak OSX.
These are the last days.
and an old time mainframe guy. Then he's wearing sandals ( having learned through experience how idiotic going around barefooted is these days) and has a grey ponytail to go along with the beard.
When you see this guy wave and say hi, it's me (unless he's wearing rainbow suspenders. I hate suspenders).
KFG
Too bad most sport bikes look like ass. It's hard to look cool riding a bright neon toy.
In related news, an article on wired.com talks about how Amiga users helped Amiga through the dark years of the late-80s.
Oh... wait!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Who doesn't hate Microsoft?
No, Apple wasn't and isn't perfect, but c'mon -- the point is, they've always placed a priority on the elegance and usability of the OS, and users have responded to both that tone and the resulting machines.
You're making a plausible argument, but your example isn't particularly accurate or true. "Safe mode" isn't all that analogous to booting without extensions, for one thing, and I'm not smelling "real" details elsewhere in your CD story. Sounds pretty unlikely to someone who supported these things for a while...
But leave the details alone: Nobody said the Mac OS was the infallible holy grail of computing. What the poster said was that the OS, and Apple, have consistently provided users with more simplicity and reliability than the competition. Um, forgive me for mentioning it, but that's what the users do say, you know? Kind of hard to miss it, actually. Your rebuttal is to post a specific example in which you gloss details about the Mac OS circa 1993 or so? Obviously extensions and Conflict Catcher are from a previous generation of the OS... which prominent competition of the same era would you like to make this comparison with?
And you may be right, partly it's that Apple gives a heck of a lot of thought to how their machines are set up on delivery and so on... but isn't that part of the package? I missed what your hypothetical example of the unformatted hard drive was supposed to tell me; wouldn't I just use the "Restore System" disks so thoughtfully provided by Apple to get to that same starting point quickly? And so on.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The Management Team did a LBO (Leverged Buyout) in 1981.
y 19 80.asp?bmLocale=en_US
http://www.harley-davidson.com/CO/HIS/en/histor
Wired is full of trendy media people, this is Apple's long time core constituency. Regarding Mac users, well rebellion is very trendy too, at least in modern American culture. This benefits Linux as well as Macintosh.
Haven't used a mac in 2 years now, eh? No more conflicts.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
If you try a mac I bet you wont go back.
:-)
I use Mac OS X on a regular basis, and owned (in parallel with a PC) a Mac LC (and System 7) for several years. I still prefer PCs.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
I thought I was reading The Onion!
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
personalizing your Linux box was, in and of itself, a very creative undertaking.
When did "creativity" get limited to the "artsy-fartsy" field?
Gallileo, Newton, Einstein were all rather creative people I'd say, as is Larry Wall.
KFG
That's not the point. People do not even explore the possibility.
If they do, and then find out they don't like the system, fine. But they don't...
Spelling? Silly. Linux isn't the main target here you idiot. Windows users are the main target. The quicktime format doesn't require a Macintosh to view it. Too bad that you've got your head so far up that penguins butt that you couldn't see the light of day long enought to understand what you're talking about before you bothered to post your crap here.
with OSX on it, to go along with the System 7 and OS8 boxen in my house.
It isn't because of any particular love of Apples though, it's because I'm a geek, I want at least one of everything I can get my grubby little grounded paws on. So in my case at least being Linux user who wants a Mac doesn't confer any special status to or feelings about Macs in general.
Hell, I'd adore having a Babbage machine. Now THAT would be cool.
KFG
The service you are referring to is called "OnStar", and while heavily advertised on Cadillacs, is available on a variety of brands.
But I think the meaning of the original quote is that the brand of a "Mac" in the broadest sense is an experience, everything from the way the computer works, to the customer service, designs, and innovations in products. However, only Apple makes "Macs" in the same style, with a monopoly on this market. There are companies that try to get the same style, or same ease of use, but they all use Windows, which was complicated and counter-intuitive in those days.
Who the fuck do you think you are to decide what matters? I've got new for you nothing MATTERS, nothing other than what each individual likes.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
In the "...which just reiterates..." sentence, all I was saying was that the article, which says that Mac users love Apple and hate M$, isn't saying anything that people don't already know, and in fact have known "...since Apple became a company." My mistake was the typo (because=became)... sorry 'bout that.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Goldstein said participants' left brain, the logical side, was telling them they might have to switch if Apple went under. But the right brain, the emotional attachment to Apple, rejected it. There was a profound sense that Apple was one of them -- counterculture, grassroots, human, approachable, Goldstein said.
Goldstein obviously graduated from the Bumbleberg School of Hugely Oversimplified Psychology.
It looks like Wired is really having to search for their daily Apple handjob article these days.
Was that a joke? It reads like an Onion piece.
The line between "real" news and the Onion gets narrower every day, it seems.
> Are you saying that a computer that "just works" and "is prettier" is somehow less worthy?
Hell yah. Why would I want to use KDE? Oh..n/m.
And you just have to plug the fucking two button mouse into the usb port -- is that so hard for the rest of the non-mac (Specifically Linux-Tech-Commies) world to understand?!
I've got nothing against Amiga. But I do take umbrage with people who claim Amiga invented things they didn't.
Amiga - The Al Gore of Microcomputers.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Citroen or Messerschitt in America, or eaten something wasn't a "breakfast cereal" at all for breakfast, or eschewed furniture completely.
Even where the culture allows "choice" without discrimination or ostracisation it only allows such choices from a fairly narrow check list.
Stray from that list and yes, the car you drive and your furniture (or lack thereof) will have your neighbors all clucking their tounges very, VERY loudly.
KFG
Many years ago (ten of them or so) I switched from dos/win 3.1 to slackware. I did not dual boot (not enough disk) But instead switched completely to linux. This is how I got good with Unix in general; Stop using windows, and find a way to do everything on Unix.
I didn't try to justify it; No one gave me any crap. :) But the point was, it was harder to get things done then, and it's harder to get things done now, comparing Linux to Windows. That doesn't mean Linux isn't right for the desktop, just that it needs more polish.
Most of what people DO on windows, they don't need to, and if they were doing things right in the first place (which is sometimes easier on Unix in general, not just Linux) then Linux would suit all of their computing needs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I laughed my head off when I read that. I figured it was pretty obvious to everyone that Macintosh Users LOVE Microsoft.
After all, is it not Macintosh users who shell out hundreds of dollers every year or two to get the latest Microsoft Office? Mac users are just as loyal to Microsoft as any PC user. What do they use for email? Outlook! What do they use for writing? Word! What do they browse with? IE!
Just cause they don't use an MS operating system doesn't mean they hate microsoft. Mac users have a lot of choice in office-type software, probably more than PC users have, or atleast as much... and in the end, they go running to MS like the drones they are.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
I'm incredibly loyal to Apple and I do know what goes on under the hood. I program Macs and Windows for a living.
One thing I like about the Mac is the system calls actually have parameters that make sense. (The File Manager is the exception to this.) Win32 API always seems to want you to fill out some insanely large data structures just to do some simple operation. For example, compare the code between MacOS and win32 for getting a list of the fonts installed on the computer.
I own two Apple computers, and, at times, I hate using them. The GUI is so inflexible.
People seem to have the opinion that Apples let you work the way you want to work. Well that's bollocks. The GUI forces you to use click-to-focus and an auto-raise window behaviour even if you've not used machines with that behaviour for all of your 17 years in the computing industry. I'm told that even MS Windows allows you to change that behaviour, if you want.
And that single menu thing sucks too. For example, right now I am using Mozilla on a second monitor attached to my Powerbook. If I want to access the menu for mozilla, I have to move the mouse over to the other screen to do so. How brain dead is that? If I had 20 monitors attached to it (if it could handle that, which I don't think any Apple can), then it would be impossible - not a bright policy for the future.
Then there's the fact that they made Aqua incompatible with X windows, when there are plenty of window managers out there which work just fine, thank you. Why didn't they use one like that? Instead they chose one which a pain to use. Sure you can get X window managers for it, but they don't work 'quite right' - like using 'x2x' for example.
Also, ever since I bought the things, it feels like I'm bleeding money! I thought I could use iMovie to edit movies I download from my ReplayTV, but, no, they have implemented a 2GB limit on importing files which forces me to buy a professional application (FCP), which does *way* more than I need. Then I find that iDVD won't work with 3rd party DVD-R/RW drives and Apple don't even supply a DVD-R/RW for the Powerbook (they do now, but that didn't help me back then).
Apple customer support sucks too, IMO. They should try calling Microsoft Mac support to see how it should be done. I called them for help with Powerpoint X and they gave me excellent support. Each time I call Apple support, unless it is something completely noddy, they are useless or refuse to help (like if I mention the word 'terminal' for example, their knee jerk reaction is to say "we don't support..." bla bla).
No, the only reason I use an Apple is that most applications are available for them (so they are useful) and they're not MS (political preference).
If the commercial apps were available for Linux, I would most certainly switch (back) to that...but they're not and the 'free' ones just don't cut it.
Max.
You know... reading this article made me laugh. It made me realize a logical contradiction that I myself and guilty of. Whenever Apple puts out a "new" product (e.g. the iPod or iMac) they are "innovators". Whenever Microsoft puts out a "new" product (e.g. XP MediaCenter Edition for MediaCenter PCs or the X-Box) they're the "evil empire" and obviously trying to crush all competition in that sector.
The funny thing is that no one accused Apple of trying to kill Creative with their iPod or trying to corner the home movie market with their DVD burning capabilities.
I know why Microsoft is treated the way they are... the recent article on the abismal losses in most of their business areas shows that they are using their monopolisitic powers in other sectors (office and OS) to buoy their newer sectors (entertainment) and thereby rent-seeking. I just think its funny as hell that Microsoft just can't get a break. I guess in the end it serves them right. :-)
Excuse my language but what the fuck? I'm a Mac user, I love my iBook. Right now I'm typing this comment from my maching running Windows XP which is hooked up to my RedHat Server/Router... I read the first paragraph and refuse to read more. Let's say all Arabs are terrorists. How about, all Germans are nazis, all whites belong to the KKK. I think this is insane... Hell, on my iBook I have MS Office and use a MS IntelliMouse, man I sure do hate Microsoft. Speaking of which, I hate Windows XP because it's made by Micros---
*kicks computer*
*continues to throw linux box*
*cuddles with ibook*
_________ Help me get a PSP!
Apple loves Mac users!
The same point can be made about Windows. Windows 2000 was much more stable than previous versions, and XP is even better. When I watch most of those Mac "switch" commercials I'm usually not too impressed because my XP system "just works". Maybe if Apple had put those out 1-2 years ago.
part of the "problem" is the idea of being in a niche, a small group of people who are oh-so-different from you that you wouldnt even understand them. the other part involves a similar thing to something someone said before... its like the base 16 double storage on IBM mainframes, it sucks for accuracy, but theyre never going to change it. changing it would make it load better, but would also admit a mistake *gasp!* i have to admit that i have to use a mac where i work because its next to the guy training me, but this osx is pizimp. unix command line! hell yeah!
i sell illegal drugs
" Sorry, but that doesn't wash. From what I've seen, Macs are not immune to conflicts by any stretch (if they are, explain Conflict Catcher)...Ooops!!"
Oops, is right! Like they guy in the thread said, most people here bashing the Mac haven't used one ever, or in years. OS X, doesn't need conflict catcher since it doesn't use MacOS extensions or Control Panels, or whatever the other things were called(except in Classic, if you have that installed). I switched back in 95 to Linux & Win because of work and the hardware fiascos Apple was foisting on us. And I didn't switch back until OS X because I felt the newer versions of Windows (NT, 2000), and Linux, were less prone to crashing . That said, As soon as Apple looked viable again, (read OS X shipping), I jumped right back on the bandwagon.
Apple, and the programmers producing code for Macintosh, just do things a little better, more elegantly. For example, one of the FUDs against Apple has always been, "There's less software for Macs than PCs". And there's a reason for that. There's less pure useless crap applications out there for Mac. There's software out there to do everything a PC does, you just don't have to wade through so much garbage shareware to find it.
I will say this though, since Windows2000, PCs have been tons easier to deal with. I support an office full of PCs, and the Win2K machines are a breeze. Mostly.
A person's loyalty to a company's hardware doesn't necesssarily indicate their loyalty to the same company's (or anyone elses, for that matter) software.
Just because there's a G4 sitting on someone's desk... or a Powerbook in their car, doesn't give any clearer indication of their personal preferences than this article truly does.
A prime example of this is Yellow Dog Linux. They aren't selling new Mac boxes loaded w/ YDL 2.3 becuase it's getting them laid. No, there are enough people who want them to make it a profitable endeavor.
So, to decide that Mac users either love or hate Microsoft due to (and only to) their choice of platforms is not only narrowminded, but dim witted.
BTW -- When I sit down at either my Powerbook or G4, I use pine for email, AbiWord for writing and either links or Mozilla for browising (depends on whether I want the perty picters).
----
The difficulty of a system is comparable only to the ignorance of the end-user.
#SickNotWeak
I spend all of my time looking for news on Apple on slashdot instead of doing something more productive. Who else would make an OS that shows a happy face on bootup (oops...eliminated in OS 10.2)? Or have system alert named "sosumi" (uh...eliminated in OS X).
What? You can't discuss the formation of the basic values of the Western European Cultural Complex?
OK - let's discuss the political tensions between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and how this impacted the writing of the Constitution and the formation of the American political process.
What? You don't know the underpinnings of the system of government under which you live?
You are an animal!
There is a conceit among some /. users that technical knowledge is the highest form of knowledge, which is patently untrue. There is no higher value on being able to program versus being able to paint a picture, and the fact that I am more interested in the history of politics and religion than soldering my own motherboards in no way means I am any less intelligent or capable or valuable then anyone else.
What I think relly angers some computer geeks about Macs and ease-of-use is the possible retreat of the world-view on which they have staked their self-image - the mastery of technolgy. There is an idea that being able to untangle technical problems allows one to enter a select brotherhood which makes one somehow better than the unwashed masses who don't know the difference between source code and morse code. This is, in a word, bullshit, cause without those of us who care about other things, there would be no food on your table, no books in your bookstores, no movies in your theaters, no clothes on your backs, etc. So climb down off your high horse and realize that the world is a lot bigger than the distance from /. to your keyboard.
Besides, I know I got laid a lot more in college than the CS degree students I knew. . .
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
about customizing my own Linux box, no, I don't think it was. Nor did I at any point compare the imaginitive powers of *any* Linux user to Einstein's, let alone the 'average' Linux user's.
I will go on record though as saying that the "personalization" of my own Linux box goes far beyond the mere choosing of options. That's why I use Linux. It allows me to hand craft my own commands, libraries, apps and even the OS itself to an extent not possible in other OS's.
As it happens I am a physicist by training whose mother founded the ceramics dept. at Alfred and whose father is an internationally known writer and I've been in the habit of rubbing elbows and just plain hanging out with Nobel's and "near" Nobel's for decades. I can't claim to have met Einstein but I've known some of those minds who he himself admired.
I think I've got a broad enough view to have a reasonable idea of what is creative and what isn't.
A six year old with eight crayolas and average IQ can be very creative. So can a kid with a LOGO interpreter.
Just because you only see the space inside the lines of your coloring book doesn't mean that's the way everybody does it.
KFG
I am a sys admin for a small company where I have to administer a couple of Novell servers, a Debian webserver, a Debian mail server, an NT Navision (POS but stable as hell) box and a bunch of non computer savy users. In order to make my job easier I got myself a Dell Inspiron laptop with XP Pro and it has worked just fine, supports all the proprietry apps and hasn't crashed once and is pretty fast. But windows, even XP, is just plainly so incredibly badly designed. I posted this before, but I'll say it again: Why oh why does Microsoft have to make network setup such a confusing mess? Why does Microsoft have to make the ability to look at mail headers hidden in view->options in a little hard to view box? There are many, many things like this that I am confronted with every day. So often in fact that I would get used to it if it wasn't for that I still have my old 333MHz G3 Powerbook chugging away with OSX on it at home.
The system preferences, all of them, are in one single place, in a thing on the dock called... system preferences. The buttons, window titles bars and other widgets are clear, big and don't fuck with millions of non consistent rollovers that work in some software in one way and in another in another way. One click of the terminal icon and I've got got a true shell at my fingertips, just like the two debian boxes at work. This is why people love it. Lots of people have their problems with the UI but very few of those claim that Windows is more consistent or easier to use.
I'm saving up now and will be getting my new G4Powerbook in January.
I have a dream application athat I've wanted to try writing for about two years now, and the tools, Project and Interface Builder, are there and don't cost any more. If the application is ever made it will probably only find a small audience, and only in the Mac world, since it's being written in ObjC, but I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it because I want to be able to make a useful tool and have fun doing it. On Windows, I can't do this.
Huh? The Mac OS doesn't have a GUI anymore?
Yes, Mac users bashed DOS for having no GUI. Because it is crappy to not have one. Mac OS has a wonderful GUI. Now it also has a CLI. This is good because super-users can do tweaks and things that a CLI makes possible. Those who don't like/want a CLI never have to use it or see it. This is the best of both worlds.
Linux is similar... except there is NO way to avoid using the CLI on a regular basis for one thing or another.
You are a FUDmuncher.
The lockin, I guess, comes from the apps that you use. This was a really big deal in the old days, but I would say its a lot less of an issue now.
90% of what most people do with computers these days is cross-compatible: web, mail, chat, word-processing/spreadsheeting, personal finance, etc.
The rest is the equivalent I guess of the roof-mounted ski rack that I bought for my wife's Toyota that wouldn't fit on the Nissan we bought when the Toyota lease ended.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a M$ box in the corner. I only have to boot it when I want to get pictures off my parallel scanner or an old digicam. If I were to actually use the pain in the ass like Bill says I can, it would break down in a few months just like all the other PC's I've got that now run real software. Free sofware does what I want better and easier than M$ crap ever did. Most of the "simple things" that take a little bit of time to accomplish under Linux are impossible under Windoze.
Twitter is a simple user and he hates a troll. There's more bullshit in the above post that I'm going to bother with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
For a second there, I thought I was in the minority.
People that do not use microsoft hate it
-1 stupid
Non-Microsoft users not only had the "trial by fire" of chosing an alternate route, but they have to justify some of the dissonance they have regarding format incompatibilities - they may not be able to play a game, or watch a video, or see a web site, that their MS-using friends and family can. If a critical mass of the market were on the same platform as them, however, there would be less of that interplatform disconnect for them.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Apple's market is the pretty, upscale market: people who want to project an image of creativity and non-geekdom, and who are willing to pay a little extra. It helps that Apple is pretty good technically and tends to select fairly new standards into their machines (although their claims of having invented it all are pretty annoying).
I'm suprised at the number of people who think this is a redundant story. Sure, it's obvious that Mac users like Macs. What is not obvious, and is quite interesting, is that the reasons for liking Macs is clearly not because price / performance / compatibilty reasons - which are probably the most important things from the viewpoint of pure computing.
Mac users border on facisim in their insistence that Macs are the One Way to Go - anything else is just *wrong*. Sure, there are people like that in all OS camps (Linux sure has its share), but Mac users seem particularly susceptible. I find it ironic, that for all the hype about creativity, what you get from Apple is:
Any look and feel - as long as it's our one,
Any hardware you like - as long as it's our HW.
If Apple was about "freedom", they wouldn't have a monopoloy on the hardware that can run their OS.
I've only REALLY started resenting MS since XP came out, and they started infringing on my freeness. My experience with Mac freaks is this: [I'm using my Win95 PC, which I built for cheap] MacFrk: NOW what are you doing? Me: I'm... MacFrk: This isn't intuitive AT ALL! Me: Dude, you're a Mac user. *I'M* not having any trouble with the Windows OS. MacFrk: On my Mac this would be so much faster. Me: OK ------------- Now, it's not that I don't like Macs. I like them. I live in a part of the world where NOBODY has them, software and hardware is hard to find, and I'm not about to strand myself in an already limited landscape. And stop trying to frickin' convince me. I know. I want a Mac. Please give one to me, for I have no money. This is sort of a crappy post, but now I've spent all this time and effort, I might as well send it. Damn
Please stop stalking me, bro.
This to me assumes a hypothetical user who goes out and buys a machine with little firsthand experience, either because those Apple commercials are so darn clever or their one crazy friend who never shuts up about how cool OS X is. Switching cold from one platform to another is always a slightly shocking experience, and buyer's remorse is common even when you're mostly satisfied, so the cognitive dissonance as you describe it would naturally come into play here.
Most folks I know who've switched to the Mac, however, did so after using one, not because of advertising or recommendations or hoping for some tech-hipster cachet. I was a staunch Windows user when I sat in front of my first Mac in 1996; Windows was all I knew, so I assumed that's just how computers were. Once I got over my initial discomfort and bitching and grousing, I realized that the Mac approach was simply better, for me at any rate. I didn't know who Steve Jobs was, what "megahertz" meant, or the difference between a SCSI and a parallel port; I didn't know Mac users were considered cultists and loonies. Yet even though it was years before I could afford my own Apple machine, I became a loyal Mac user that day. I felt I had finally used a computer that was designed for me.
I see a similar scenario playing out all the time today. You see it here on
I think this sense of relief and "homecoming" is one of the most memorable aspects of the Mac experience for those of us who switched from Windows, and I don't think it can be explained away as mere cognitive dissonance to ward off buyer's remorse.
I'm not sure what I think of this point. All platforms have quirks. Windows and Linux users adapt to their platform's quirks and hiccups as surely as Mac users do, even if they don't realize it. I don't see how this applies in any way uniquely to Mac users. I think you're being a little reductive in reducing the issue to cost and cost alone.
Windows users can be defensive about their platform because a) they resent people thinking they're tools for preferring Microsoft products, and b) admitting that Windows isn't working for them would compel them to investigate alternatives, which few people are inclined to do. Linux users may not have invested a lot of money in their operating system, but that doesn't mean they haven't invested time, and switching OSes is not something one wants to do routinely; you want to feel your decision was the right one, even if it cost you little in out-of-pocket cash.
Uh, those are all wrappers around apt, hence you are using a single install system instead of having a standard way to record installed packages. This in no way addresses the issue I describe in the comment you reply to. The windows situation is akin to using apt and rpm on the same system, with a single interface kicking off their respective uninstall methods when you uninstall a package installed with one or the other. Of course this requires a single database of installed packages, which again does not exist on linux. RPM, apt, gentoo's portage and other installation managers all use their own schemes for tracking package installations, with ridiculous results.
That's funny. I use free software and Unix for its rational benefits over the alternatives, and I still have a harder time getting basic desktop tasks done on Linux than on Windows. This is why I run Windows on the desktop, and Linux on my firewall.
Face it, all the standard things which people expect to be able to do with their PC are easier and work better on Windows. Everything from working with MS Office documents (obviously) to ripping a DVD to a SVCD (less obviously) to playing a DVD (of course) is easier and faster on windows. Hell last time I tried to build the tools to rip a DVD on linux half the packages wouldn't build from the latest "stable" source or from CVS versions.
Some things are easier, faster, cheaper, et cetera on Linux than they are on windows. Most of these are server or appliance tasks. I wouldn't use windows as my firewall, or to do NAT, which is primarily what I'm using Linux for (I also IRC from it because I can run screen.) For everything else, there's XP combined with cygwin. No rebooting to play windows games, no problem viewing quicktime movies, et cetera. Also windows networking is easier than setting up samba, coda, or even NFS, and it works in a transparent fashion. Hopefully coda will bring this to free/open systems soon, but it's still in its infancy really in spite of the fact that it mostly works.
I didn't say you couldn't DO things on Linux, but the fact is that Windows typically does desktop tasks better and/or faster than Unix simply because that's where the software is. It's not a statement of the quality of one platform or another.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Tools, not just computers. It's about learning what you could do and how, so studying what other people did is only sometimes helpful. I see no value in studying religion except as a case study in memetics (which I'm only starting to get into). However, I do have a layman's interest in designing ethical and workable governments; for instance, I've already gotten around to reading some of the Federalist papers from a book I found at the National Archives, because they were trying to solve many of the same problems we have.
80 years isn't enough to learn everything, but I want to. That's where I (and you, it seems) differ from passive consumers of technology as well as culture. They may say "why does this have to be so hard", but it's only us who really want the answer.
Yes, I was referring to Mac Classic, I should have been more specific :) I would hope that OS X, being of *NIX ancestry, would handle such things more gracefully. And if it weren't for OS X, I doubt I'd be paying any attention to Apple at all.
:)
As to how elegant the programming is, well, I knew one of the core coders for OS7.x, and he had a shitload of horror stories about how poorly things were handled at Apple (stuff like managers taking projects away in midstream and giving them to someone else, who then of course had no idea where the first coder was headed), and about how Apple *forbid* the OS coders from issuing a simple patch to fix a firmware problem, because Apple wanted to sell the next hardware upgrade instead.
Just as with M$, I've no doubt there would be much improvement at Apple if half the managers were taken out and shot.
As to crap shareware... well, *proportionately* there's probably just as complete crud much on both sides of the OS fence. But in my observation, Mac users are more likely to look first for a commercial solution. Some of us old PC hands don't think much of the average shareware or freeware app either.. I use damn little of it myself, and as a rule only when a commercial solution doesn't exist, because so much shareware follows Sturgeon's law too closely.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Actually, yeah, about two years. MacOS 8.5. And not a lot, but enough to recognise that a lot of what was claimed as "different from the PC" was just renamed terminology.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No, usualy, Microsoft users hate Microsoft, but use it anyway....
Advanced users are users too!
I sat there and watched the "CD story" (on MacOS 8.5, so while of a previous OS era, not exactly ancient history) as it happened, it's not 3rdhand. Oh, and the initial error message was, no kidding, and I quote, "Like, Dude, something went wrong!" (Well, gee, thanks. This much we knew!)
As to the hypothetical unformatted HD: Okay, let's say all Apple ships is naked hardware and an install CD (NOT a "restore CD", but one where you have to make your own decisions, just as you would with a regular Windows install CD). Would this be in any way superior to a PC shipped the same way? So how is it that a Mac shipped with the OS preinstalled and preconfigured is in some way superior to a PC shipped with the OS preinstalled and preconfigured??
My point being, that's now a spurious argument in Apple's favour, since nearly all PCs have shipped with OS installed and preconfigured for years now (even clone boxes). Oh, but it's okay to compare current Macs as delivered today, with PCs as delivered 10 years ago? Now who's comparing different eras??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Hey, well.. I'm proud to be a hobbyist geek, cause at least it means I'm free. And I won't forget the men who coded to give that right to me. I'll proudly stand up and compile my kernel. Cause there ain't no doubt, I love open source, god bless the GPL!
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
your annoying to read
However, when people *learned* programs like Photoshop, the only market around may have been Macs...
Because Macs were first, before DOS and Windows, for GUIs and color correction and color management and font tools, etc, etc, etc.
In the same sense, you can get a $5k DVD authoring or movie editing studio from Apple. Until now it was the province of Avid.
For $2k you can get a consumer level DVD authoring or movie editing studio from Apple. By next year perhaps it will drop to $1k. Which PC manufacturer sells a DVD authoring solution for $1.5k (compete against the eMac)? Or a DV movie editing solution for $1k (compete against the iBook)?
Specific solutions are still very Mac centric and Mac specific. Yes, eventually Microsoft will catch up with Microsoft Movie Maker 3.2 or Microsoft DVD Maker 2.1, but for at least a short while, Macs do hold some superiority in those markets.
Your examples are mature markets; Microsoft eventually did add Truetype, color management, high color displays, and multi monitor support to their OS, years after Macs made it possible to make money using those tools.
Likewise in a few years Microsoft will add the DVD authoring and movie editing functionality in their OS, but only after Mac users have been enjoying these fruits for at least 3 years, assuming the next revision of Windows next year has these features.
So no, there is *nothing* inherent now because Microsoft has caught up. Just like 2 years from now there won't be any security disparity because Microsoft has caught up. Etc, etc.
GPL Deconstructed
There are also many more of us who are technologically aware, more experienced, who have (and do) use all of the major OSes, and who don't buy the Apple marketing mechanism wholesale.
iTunes is less functional than WinAMP.
iPhoto is less functional than the software which *came* with my digital camera.
And gee, I paid a third of what you did, for a *faster* machine that, wow, just works!
So, who's the zealot, again?
Why I haven't switched.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
very well put.
I went to Fry's this past weekend to look for an external firewire case for an ibook that I'm getting for Xmas.
As an extensive PC user since '94 (not especially long, I know), walking down the PC case isle (where they sell bare cases) made me smile on the inside. No longer would I be cutting myself on sharp case internals, or plumbing cooling fans like warts onto ill-equipped hardware, or thinking Christ, will they ever make a PC that looks good?.
I work in computers (unix system engineer), so perhaps it's accelerated my disdain for all things PC, but this is one person who won't be looking back except to giggle.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
You can't state an honestly negative opinion around Mac zealots either. If you do, they come after you with torches and pitchforks.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I don't want to insult you, your point is very interesting. At the same time however, you exemplify in one fell swoop why Mac people are sometimes ridiculed and seen as unbearably elitist people.
You see, you are abusing the `creative' word. Design/graphics tools are not the only `creative' tools. A compiler is a creative tool, even just an editor. A typewriter is an amazingly creative tool. What did you think Hemingway used? a Mac?
People can be using pen an paper and be very creative. Did you think Einstein had a Mac?
Please stop thinking that the only creative thing that are done are in your own field.
All the best
I keep logs of everything I do and all the errors that occur when I work on my computers. The obvious...
My personal pc (cheaply bought, about $500 less than any price apple could offer, and running win2kPro) has been up for exactly 31 days today. I have had ONE problem:
My desktop icon's were replaced with a 'Default' icon. I killed and then re-launched explorer. Problem fixed in 2 seconds.
My professional mac (expensive, running MacOS9.2.1 & X2.2) has gone maybe 2 days this month without having atleast one problem. Just today, I have had photoshop crash twice, classic mode crashed killing 3 apps at once, and I had to reboot one time. Even as I type this, my text is lagged because my mac can't handle printing and basic word processing at the same time. How sad. All of this in only one day. Anyone who reads my logs would clearly see all the reasons why apple sucks.
MacOS has always been inferior and still is. I can't believe MacOS was released without any truly innovative ideas. 'Wow, a linux back-end that I don't use and a slow gui. Wooooo!' WTF is that? Everything you can now do in MacOSX, you have been able to do on a PC for several years. Only mac guru's get excited because they do not realize that fact.
I just don't understand where Apple finds all their sheep. Sorry for my rant if this is a bit off-topic, but any time the opportunity comes, I must point this out...
Apple can die.
Linux users are like lemmings, They like to be with their own kind. Their "kind" are people who know they spent far too much time for so little and are feeling superior so they surround themselves with others who have done the same, now they feel even more superior. As the rest of the industry moves on so does Linux but not nearly as fast.
[Link to something that Linux doesn't do very well]
What does it take for these oh-so-cools to wise up?
"Microsoft doesn't even care about Apple anymore as a competitor"
Oh, so did they do this http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/2162. Maybe they just can't help copying Apple's idea.
Apple Computer, Inc. is a business. Furthermore, Apple Computer, Inc. is a typical business. They hire employees, develop and sell products, and satisfy their shareholders.
Apple Computer, Inc. is not dissimilar to Microsoft Corporation. They both control their markets very tightly, will kill off companies that stand in their way, and even risk angering their loyal customers in an attempt to achieve "the big picture".
Apple Computer, Inc. wields lawyers when they think their brand is threatened, to a positively ridiculous level at times. e.g. The Graphical User Interface, The Aqua Theme, Apple Communications, etc. Even Microsoft Corporation doesn't sue as liberally as Apple Computer, Inc. does.
The signficant difference that I see, however, is that Apple Computer, Inc. has stuck to the same marketing theme for more than two decades: Apple Computer, Inc. is for the free thinkers, the rebels, the nonconformists, the people who need to be different. Microsoft Corporation has not.
Apple Computer, Inc's original Macintosh commercial may have been inspired by George Orwell's 1984, but it is from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that they learned that it takes 64,000 repetitions to make one truth.
'til IAmTheRealMike is using OSX :)
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Whether something is ``practical'' or not depends on what you want to practice. I, for one, want to practice freedom, efficiency, economy, self-improvement, privacy, peace of mind, and overall I want to practice enlightened self-interest. Linux fits the bill, Macinto$h does not, Micro$oft does not. Linux is the practical choice.
For what I want to practice, I am a very practical guy, so I use Linux. You may want to practice something else, so Linux may not be practical to you.
BTW: RMS is a very practical guy, too---he practices freedom. Perhaps you might find it instructive to ask yourself what do you practice.
All in all, I've been forced to use Macintoy$ now and then for a while now, so I have built an opinion: Mac$ SUCK. The new MACOS X sucks a little less, but that's because it's Unix.
But worst of all is the effect prolonged exposure to Mac$ has on the human mind; Mac$ make people stupid. Oh yeah, Mac$ are simple to use! What that means is that Mac$ are only fit for simple uses. Mac$ suck because they make people limit themselves to simple things. Get a few teenagers, introduce a group of them to Mac$ and another to Linux. Wait six months. See what kind of stuff each group is doing.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
...as MAC or APPLE ?
Apple is the sole maker of Macs and has control over the Mac market. Microsoft makes no PC's, yet has control over the PC market.
Apple is not a monopoly because they can do whatever they want to do with their own products. Microsoft is a monopoly because it has control over *other peoples* products.
Apple controls Macs because its their own produect. Microsoft has control over the PC market when it doens't make any.
Forever suck?
Mac OS has not *always* been inferior.
Until Windows 95, you really had no choice except a Mac to do desktop graphics and printing.
Macs had high color
Macs had multiple monitors
Macs had TrueType and PostScript
Macs had color management
So it took until 1995 for a PC to catch up for that (you use Photoshop in Classic Mode, so there's your history for you). So if it was the year 1994 and you had to do graphics, there was no alternative except a Mac... Oh, sure, you could use Windows NT 3.51, actually, but... people didn't.
So until 1995, realistically, Adobe had to survive on Macs and Windows NT. You couldn't have your Photoshop on your Windows 2000 computer without Adobe thriving on the Mac. So say thank you to all the Mac users who kept Adobe alive long enough for Windows to catch up enough for a Windows port to be possible.
What else... Mac OS released without any truly innovative ideas? At the time a mouse, a windowing system, and a desktop metaphor was pretty innovative. Photoshop, released in 1990, couldn't have existed on the PC since Windows 3.0 wasn't available until 1990! The first graphical Mac was unleashed in 1984... of course Windows 1.0 was available the very next year in 1985...
So what else does that show us? Word 1.0 for DOS was available 1983, Word 1.0 for Mac was available in 1985, and it wasn't until 1993 that Word 6.0 (for Windows) was released. Word for DOS had or Word for Mac had only been available up to that point.
Then there's Quicktime...
Okay, so all that is OLD hat. Microsoft (eventually) will catch up, history is showing us.
So what did Apple do new with OS X that is innovative, you ask?
How about security? Of course security is a nasty beast to define, because it is only visible through the lack of exploits. No exploits, no news. Do I think OS X is more secure than Windows XP? Yes. Why? Partially because the core OS is open source, partially because the core OS is heavily related to BSD, and partially because the core OS has been in use since 1989 with the release of the first NeXT workstations. Windows, while similarly old, is not similarly aged, with IE exploits, IIS exploits, ActiveX exploits, and other exploits. OS X gets around IE exploits by not integrating IE, though there is an HTML library available. It gets around IIS exploits by relying on tried and true OSS servers such as Apache, BSD-telnetd, BSD-sshd, and BSD-ftpd. It gets around ActiveX exploits by relying on a scripting technology, AppleScript, that has been used successfully since 1993 to automate prepress, print, publishing, and graphics businesses. Oh, and they don't integrate AppleScript into the html rendering engine, though there is a third party AppleScript plugin available. Yes, there have been AppleScript viruses, just like there are VisualBasic viruses...
But Apple doesn't suffer nearly as badly because Mail doesn't auto execute AppleScript viruses which aren't embedded into the HTML that s rendered by the preview pane.
Alright, so this is sorta cheap, innovation by not being as *bad* as Microsoft.
There's legitimate innovation as well.
OS X 10.0 had it's compositing engine. Vector based, PDF based, output independent. It's certainly not perfect, but it's a continuation of NeXT's PostScript based DisplayPS. Windows already has something called GDI+ and WMF, but I do not believe they are currently used.
OS X 10.0 introduced iDVD, to match the earlier release of iTunes and iMovie, allowing the sufficiently well of Mac owner the capabillity to make DVDs within 20 minutes, though burning them probably took an hour or so.
OS X 10.2 upped the stakes with *hardware* accelerated display technology. Big deal, you say? It's 3d hardware accelerated. Microsoft is hoping to catch up next year with Longhorn.
OS X 10.2 also added new networking technology that doesn't yet exist on Windows, though UPnP is close. Rendevous, otherwise known as ZeroConf, is a peer to peer network discovery protocol.
OS X 10.2 added bluetooth support, which Windows XP adds later this year.
OS X 10.2 added full tablet and handwriting recognition, which doesn't appear until . Also, you will probably need a new PC, where OS X only requires a tablet, such as a Wacom tablet, instead of a new computer.
Anyway, it's really only your loss, not mine, if Apple OS X doesn't somehow suit your needs, and likewise your gain if Windows XP can suit yours (but not mine)
GPL Deconstructed
> Uh, those are all wrappers around apt, hence you are using a single install system instead of having a standard way to record installed packages.
/not/ a wrapper around apt. Nor aptitude. They, and apt, are wrappers around dpkg. Anyway, dpkg most certainly is a standard way to record installed packages, it's just not the only standard.
/same/, but nor is the windows installed software facility the same as the rpm or dpkg facilities.
/same/ as Debian's, but, again, neither is it the same as that of Windows.
dselect is
> The windows situation is akin to using apt and rpm on the same system, with a single interface kicking off their respective uninstall methods when you uninstall a package installed with one or the other.
rpm and dpkg packages both optionally have installation and uninstallation scripts. Again, each one provides a single interface. They are not the
> Of course this requires a single database of installed packages, which again does not exist on linux.
Linux is only a kernel, so package management is naturally beyond its scope. Debian, however, is a complete operating system, and as such does indeed have a single database of installed packages, namely the dpkg database. Red Hat has one too; again, it is not the
Debian, Red Hat, and Windows, three distinct operating systems, naturally have different facilities for package management. The only notable interaction here is that there is some potential for compatability between the linux-based distributions, thanks to alien.
> Hell last time I tried to build the tools to rip a DVD on linux half the packages wouldn't build from the latest "stable" source or from CVS versions.
How long ago was the last time? I've never had a problem building MPlayer from stable releases. Contact me if you'd like assistance.
I like Macs. I started with macs, and use macs heavily at work, but... http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/rev iews/cw_macvspciii.htm
-JG
Apple is one of the few vendors that's actually worse than Microsoft, if you look past the hype.
Mel Gibson has anal sex with some guy at SCI FI? He stuff gibs in his anus?
Dude, mystery science theater needs to be on whenever there is filler time needed.
I sed Mac, Linux and some Windows. Mainly use Mac's and Linux, and I seemost people miss the point, as does the person writing the article:
:).
People have more than computer, be it a notebook or multiple Desktops. So who is actually moving over fully? Few people. Who is now adding Mac's to their networks...Many more and I think you'll find most "geeks" will continue to use and improve upon Linux in great ways from lessons learned from Mac Land. the Big loser is potentially Windows...So Go Mac, Go Linux, hit them where it hurts in the Desktop market.
Saying that, I have no interest in Mac desktops, use them all day at work and I always love coming home to my Linux boxes. But being able to seamlessly ssh in from work is fun...Notebooks, well Apple portables are certainly value for money snd they will integrate into my existing network with relative ease
StarTux
From the article:
"The Mac community is arguably the largest subculture in computing. Mac enthusiasts -- as a group -- are probably more loyal, more dedicated than users of any other computer, perhaps even Linux. Linux and Unix users are, in fact, switching to Macs in droves." [emphasis mine]
OK, anyone have any evidence to back this up?..
Off the top of my head, this seems an apt anology. Brand loyalty aside, HD and Apple had some similar problems and solutions. Both had worn product lines and chaotic manufacturing. Apple had slightly diluted their branding with forays into niche markets and software; HD had lost total control of their trademark and faced fresh competition from ID diluting clones.
Under Gil Amelio, Apple revamped its manufacturing, introduced JIT inventories and eliminated their single source supply problems. They simplified the product line to three models with many interchangable parts. Amelio and Fred Anderson straightened out the companies finances by selling some assets (ARM stock, mfg. facilities) and issuing a bond (in this case a convertible debenture). When Jobs returned Apple completely revamped their product line, modernizing it and retargeting mainstream consumers with flashy new products, including an attractive entry level offering.
Similarly, the LBO team at HD completely revamped the product line. Their modernized (Evolution) engine and upgraded asthetics appealed to broader and wealthier markets. They fixed a scary financial situation by going public and issuing a bond. They introduced JIT inventories, multiple suppliers and statistical production controls. The new HD set their lawyers on the thousands of merchandisers who used HD trademarks without authorization and capitalized on the notable differences between their product and the clones. They introduced a killer entry level product (the Evolution 883 Sporty) analogous to the iMac, and a market shaping high end retro model (the Springer) that put some distance between them and the clones.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Ever since the advent of OS X, I can see the reason why. The "switchers" are not really switching away from Unix, they are just switching to another form of it.
very nice article
plus, Windows is getty prettier and pretter and is including more and more built-in abilities like DVD burning, picture-viewing, internet games, and other junk that Macs have.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Apple is one of the few vendors that's actually worse than Microsoft, if you look past the hype.
You won't be able to ever convince anyone of this though. It'll take Apple becoming large enough to do some real damage to the industry before Mac Zealots will see this, and some never will.
Microsoft for all of their shortcomings, do have some positive things about them, just as Apple does. I think the real lesson here is that the larger a business gets, the more evil it becomes. Apple has a rotten core. Fortunately for us, they're not big enough (yet) to spread the disease very far.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
He kept saying that he understood why people would like the Mac, but couldn't unerstand the religious like cultism that permeates many in the mac community. We discussed everything that is mention ed in the article. But I kept coming back to a point someone had mentioned to me years ealier.
It's about getting it.
I don't mean this in a condescending way, though it may sound like it at first. People who use and love Macs just 'get it.' I'm not even sure if I can explain what 'it' is. There is something about the Mac, about Apple computers, and it's hard to put into words.
Many people don't get it. Most people never will. There is nothing wrong with that. Getting it doesn't make one any smarter or any better than anyone else. It doesn't open up the knigdom of heaven for someone when they 'get it.' It doesn't grant you riches. It doesn't entitle you to anything other than knowing that other people love something you have come to love. "Getting it' encites an enthusiasm in people. And these people simply don't understand how other people don't 'get it.'
It isn't about Apple's marketing or PR machine. Apple has succeeded often in spite of itself as Amelio unabashedly admits. It isn't about style, it isn't about performance, it isn't about hating Microsoft, it isn't even really about computers.
When I see people 'get it' for the first time, it's almost like I'm 'getting it' for the first time as well. It's as if I feed off their enthusiasm and become more enthusiastic myself.
Mac fanatics know that Apple is just like any other company, driven by profits and greed. We know that when you boil it all down, Macs aren't really any better than the competition. We know that the Mac has an uphill battle to gain even a tiny marketshare. We know that there will be those who will lodge very articulate and reasonable objections to the Mac platform...It simply isn't important.
There is something we just 'get.' It just makes sense to us.
The only thing I can liken it to is the phenomonon of performers like The Beatles and Elvis. They weren't the best artists of their time. They didn't have the best voices and weren't the most attractive. There was something special they had that just drew people to them. No one could put a word to it. Call it charm, call it mystique...there was something undeniable about them.
I have no idea if any of this makes any sense...if not, I'm sorry for wasting your time. If it does, well then, I'm not as high as I thought I was.
I've always considered anything with a keyboard, mouse, and a monitor to be a computer. What, you want to write something? Print it, email it, browse, record, edit, burn, whatever? Windows can do it, so can a Mac, so can *nix. They're all going to outpace each other in different ways. It's even possible to demonstrate why one is better than another for a specific application. Yippie.
It's fun to discuss this stuff, but the passion that is displayed for such subjects as which company charged $30 more for a subjectively less substantial upgrade amazes me. Shouldn't we be bitching about the true offensively bad implementations of technology? /.ers could fix one of those intersections up in a week. .5hp more out of century-old internal combustion engine technology?
- How about oversold cell networks that are often too crowded to make a call (and the telco staff that explain the problem as a "weak signal")?
- How about traffic lights (with pressure plates or other sensors) that are obviously misprogrammed? They could be cutting traffic and emissions, but instead they waste money. You *know* that 4 our of 5
- How about the auto raciing industry that is obsessed with squeezing
- How about that out of the hundreds of available digital camera models there is still not one simple enouh that we can recommend it to our parents?
- How about... biometrics?
Sure, it's nice to be able to add a new protocol and bind it to the NIC without restarting (or whatever), but honestly who gives a shit?
Rob
I think this article is a crock of *&*& I think large portions of Mac's traditional Market demographic are currently moving to windows in droves.
My father has been an avid Mac user for the past 20 years and in the last years he's acquired a laptop with Windows XP. He loves it. And whats more he hates OS-X and won't move to it from OS 9.0.
In the last few years I think Apple has a made a move away from their original user base and is now target the Open Source community for a new user base to carry them into the next millenia.
Indicators that they have made this move were the abandoning of the old OS for a system based on freebsd and their recent very impressive push into the server market supplying a highly extensible easily installable server system, clearly targeting Sun's Solaris market.
Why would Apple abandon it's desktop users pursue a line that puts them directly in competition with Sun ?.... Hmmmm oh yea thats Microsoft is the largest shareholder of apple.
This article is 100% bullshit. How the author would describe the 96% percent of computer users in the world? They have been using an awful OS and that is true masochism. They have been buying every version of that terrible OS eyes closed or by inertia or like zombies. This describes the phenomenom as it was a sect of rebels doing things against an establishment. It would be nice to put this individual (the author) under a magnifying glass to find if he is so normal to the establishment eyes...
Funny how some of us see that the other way around. I look at Windows users and see people too stupid to know not to use Windows.
Sterotypes. Get past them and your post makes sense. Stick with them and you tempt your readers to throw out the good points with the pointless.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
What I learned about Windoze could fill several monkeys' brains. It's a hateful amount of minutiae. And all because, endlessly, the PC demands this burping and bottle feeding and diaper changing, which one learns to do in order not to be helpless, and then, after a certain time, earns for his labors the sobriquet "Power User" -- as if slavishly cleaning up after a thoughtless arrogant corporation were something to be proud of.
The relationship with my Mac is coming along quite nicely. It came poddy trained. :-)
This reminds me of an observation I made several years ago after working for lots of different companies.
If the head of your company comes from marketing, your ship date will be somehow tied to a trade show (i.e. Comdex, MacWorld Expo, etc.) I don't know how many times I had to get something working for MacWorld...
If the head of your company comes from sales, your ship date doesn't matter until sales start to slip. When this happens, you are immediately late and must work 24/7 to get it done.
If the head of your company comes from accounting, ship dates will be the first of the year. Accountants are like that.
(Note that if you are a public company, ship dates may be tied to quarters. My favorite story is a friend of mine who works for a company and they customarily release the Mac version six months after the Windows version because, by this point, sales of the Windows version have started to drop and they need to boost the revenue. It's a public company, so I assume it's run by sales and accounting...)
If the head of your company comes from development, you have no ship date--just free "public betas" which continue to be distributed until the company goes bankrupt.
(By the way, I've never worked for a company run by a QA guy. If anyone has an entry for this, let me know)
I mean, Tux looks pretty lame. On the other hand the Apple logo looks attractive. It's simple and elegant and when done in an Aqua like manner looks really shiny. How's Tux gonna compete with that?
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Mac users get to claim all these Mac converts and UNIX users get to point to all these UNIX converts and everyone gets something out of the deal. Hell, even Microsoft. At least their captives aren't going anywhere right?
Ok, not enough of them to matter at least.
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About 15 years ago, the Mac company I was working for got bought by this PC company. One of the reasons was that they wanted us to do a Mac version of their form design software, which ran under DOS.
When I first saw it, with it's pull-down menus and generally ripped-off Mac interface, I said, "How quaint!" (a la Scotty)
Since then, when I really want to annoy a die-hard Windows user, I'll look at their machine and go "Windows? How Quaint!"
Of course nobody will see this since this topic has run itself out, but here goes anyway:
Apple killed the best development platform on the market (OpenStep) in favor of a relatively crippled cartoon GUI
In the words of many great vampire movies, "You can't kill what's already dead". Please, OpenStep was going nowhere slowly, Apple is not an OS charity, they took something that had a good foundation and applied what they knew about the market to give people what they wanted (or at least what Apple figured they'd purchase).
They paid off Sorenson so that no competitor would be allowed to license the most common QuickTime codec, keeping the format effectively proprietary
OK, I'll give you that one.
They killed the entire third-party Mac market (and several capable vendors) because they found themselves to be an inept competitor.
Hmm, they canceled a business practice that was causing them to suffer and threatened the entire Mac market. Sounds evil to me. Don't forget, without Apple there IS/WAS no Mac/clone market. The clone makers were just leaching off of Apple anyway since Apple was so desperate to create that market.
they bait-and-switched developers who were holding out for Rhapsody-ready hardware
Is your complaint that they droped Rhapsody? I'm not familiar with what you are complaining about here.
And let's not forget the look-and-feel lawsuit
Well back then a gui was innovative, so look and feel was an important issue. Not saying that Apple had a leg to stand on considering the whole PARC thing, but one could easily see why it was at least worth a shot, esp. when you consider Apples position in the market at the time vs IBM/Microsoft.
Apple is one of the few vendors that's actually worse than Microsoft, if you look past the hype.
While I can understand the frustration from your complaints, much of it is just whining. Apple is a business that would dearly love to stay in business. To achieve that considering the market position that they hold, they sometimes have to make unpopular decisions. Now are all their decisions morally on the up and up, well just like anybody/entity, no. But to complain about some of the items that you have makes no practical sense.
They were talking about supporting different operating systems and there was a quote in the ad, something to the effect of, "And the only way you'll get your Mac users to give up their Macs is by prying the mouse out of their cold, dead hands."
I always liked that one.
1) Very very very few programs ever REQUIERED you to start with extensions off before installing. While it was recomended, it was almost never ever required.
2) I have gone through all the error message resources in the classic OS (because I wanted to customize them) and there is not a single default error message that is "Like, Dude, something went wrong" which leads me to believe this error came from the program you were using which in that case is the program, not the computer's fault.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
OpenStep shipped; all they had to do was press more discs. Instead they required those projects (at least the ones that weren't smart enough to dump Apple) to downgrade to OS X.
The NuBus/Rhapsody story: In short, a lot of developers and power users were holding off on buying new Power Macs because they wanted a box that would be able to run Rhapsody. Apple publically announced that Rhapsody would support all Power Macs (and clones!) sold since January 1997 (which were all NuBus) so they'd start buying. Then they decided it would only support PCI boxes, so the defrauded customers had to bring a class action lawsuit to actually get what they'd been promised.
Because of the cloners' early success, Apple's solution was to ensure that nobody would produce what the market had just demonstrated it wanted, so their uncompetitive production line could return to rent-seeking.
Maybe Apple couldn't have survived without such underhanded tactics, but that just indicates the company is unfit to serve its market and is squandering other producers' resources. They aren't unique, but they sure seem to do it more often and unrepentantly.
What of the REAL minority OS users?
( using an A2000HD since '91 )
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(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Circa 1999, you couldn't do any serious desktop work with Linux. I define "desktop work" as working with Word/Excel documents, and generally having things just "work" in a somewhat sensible way, as opposed to trying to print (!!!) something in Linux. People want to plug hardware in and have it work, not download a dozen shared libraries and recompile a kernel.
So yeah, unless they were using Linux for servers or programming circa 1999, THEY ACTUALLY *WERE* hobbyist geeks. There were no "right reasons" to use Linux on the desktop.
Why does everyone here have to make it seem like Linux is and always has been the "right" choice? The fact is, Linux (all distributions) did really, really, really suck for desktop work at one point. Linux and all the distributions have improved and are now actually useful on the desktop, that's why more people are using it.
1) Well, that was what the troubleshooting instructions said to do. Dumb, but there it was.
2) Wouldn't surprise me that the silly error message came from the program -- nothing else about it was sensible either, and we never did get it to work.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I shouldn't even reply to this, but what the hell. You're talking about iTunes and iPhoto, which are applications. I'm talking about operating systems. I guess you have bought wholesale into the MS marketing mechanism who want you to believe that all applications are really a part of the operating system.
There aren't many MS zealots -- you don't *need* to be when you're on top.
... and so on).
How many zealots have you met demanding more rights for men? Not many, because men already *have* their rights (in most circumstances).
As a general rule, the more a cause has to fight for recognition and survival, the more zealots will exist for that cause (Apple, Islam, Israel
-- Askari: Give JavaScript the bird.
Linux fans users hate Windows and visa versa
Apple fans hated Atari ST (Not true anymore) mostly for the Mac emulation at a lower cost
Atari St VS Amiga but only for the most fanatic Amiga and Atari fans
Solarus users seem to continue the Mac sucks becouse it's user friendly myth so maybe they belong in the mac hate group.. (I stay away from Solarus fans.. they seem to hate Linux as well)
Amoung the hardoned Pocket PC and Palm Os fans there is more distain than hate.. It's very mild.
I think Pocket PC users can see Palm earned market control and Palm fans can see Palm is Amigaing itself so there isn't any air for shouting.
Most of all pritty much everyone hates Microsoft... even a larg chunk of Microsoft Windows users...
A good chunk of Windows users don't have any fealing... the majority of them...
and a very tiny slice are fans... most of them are fans becouse they were hired into a high paying job with nothing more than provable skill (Not talking collage degrees but the old sorce code resume thing proving one can do anything)
I don't actually exist.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/redir.php?url=http://g oatse.cx
"New" oscilloscopes use ethernet or other networking setups to transfer data. They *don't* have floppies. Don't confuse what you're seeing at the technical school with what's out there in the real world.
If you have to have something to transfer stuff to your house, you might look into that new "CD-ROM" drive. they're all the rage.
I use Apple computers. I do know a bit of a f@##$^$g shit about computers.
You have stated a poor generalization.
Whats most important to me is the User Experience. The Macs does it best. I programmed the Mac for a long time, then was forced to switch to the PC, so I chose to switch to Java instead, because the alternative (MFC) was an ugly hack of a class lib (like most of Microsoft's products). What an intrusive OS Windows was... As for the user interface, PCs sucked a lot, but I got used to it eventually. However, I kept up current with my Mac skills, because thats what I love to do... good and innovative engineering as opposed to creating forms after forms type of applications under the PCs. Now with OSX, Apple's got it right again. Its a cool new UI for those who dont want to mess around with a command line, and a stable Unix machine for those who do. Its truelly the best of both worlds. I'm doing my own Java development for the Mac now at home (aside from work) and would switch back to a Mac job as soon as I get one!