Slashdot Mirror
Are Mac Users Smarter than PC Users?
arminw writes "Maybe not smarter, but according to MacNewsWorld they are better at expressing themselves than the average Slashdotter and certainly are better at handling the king's English than the average PC operator." Also, michael is better than CowboyNeal. Mathematical expressions of written style don't lie!
By Paul Murphy
www.LinuxInsider.com,
Part of the ECT News Network
07/15/04 7:45 AM PT
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language.
My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.
Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average Mac user really is smarter than the rest of us isn't so easy. Part of the problem is that even if you matched the admissions test results for a graduate school with individual PC or Mac preferences to discover a strong positive correlation, people would argue that the Mac users are exceptional for other reasons, that the tests don't measure anything relevant, and that it's unethical to do this in the first place.
In fact, it's pretty clear that this topic is sufficiently emotionally loaded that you'd get shouted down by one side or another no matter how you did the research; and that's too bad because a clear answer one way or the other would be interesting.
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language. This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly.
Measuring Written English
In other words, if we knew that Mac users, as a group, were significantly better users of written English than PC users, then we'd have a presumptive basis for ranking the probable "smartness" of two people about whom we only know that one uses a Mac and the other a PC.
So how can we do that? As it happens, Unix has been useful for text processing and analysis virtually from the beginning. In fact, the very first Unics application offered text processing support for the patent application process at Bell Labs -- in 1971 on a PDP-11 with 8 KB of RAM and a 500-KB disk.
By coincidence, Interleaf, the first GUI-based Document-processing package, was the first major commercial package available on Sun -- in 1983, well before Microsoft "invented" Windows and well ahead of the first significant third-party applications for the Apple Lisa.
During the 12 years between those two applications, text processing and related research became one of the hallmarks of academic Unix use. By the early eighties therefore most Unix releases, whether BSD- or AT&T-derived, came with the AT&T writers workbench -- a collection of useful text processing utilities.
One of those was a thing called style. Style is somewhat out of style these days but is on many Linux "bonus" CDs and downloadable from gnu.org as part of the diction package.
Style produces readability metrics on text. Forget for the moment what the ratings mean and look at the numbers. For comparison, here's what style says about the first 1,000 words in what is arguably the finest novel ever published in English: The Golden Bowl readability grades:
Kincaid: 18.2
ARI: 22.2
Coleman-Liau: 9.8
Flesch Index: 46.7
Fog Index: 21.7
Lix: 64.4 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 13.5
Of course, that's Henry James at the top of his form.
Slashdot and Other Style
For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:
Kincaid: 7.7
ARI: 8.0
Coleman-Liau: 9.7
You already posted a Mac users are smarter story two years ago. Is this "We're Smarter" thing by Mac users necessary to make yourselves feel better about spending so much for your hardware AND your software?
Anyway, we all know that the really smart users run Gentoo, highly optimized for whatever hardware they're using!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Is it a slow news day today? Is there nothing else to post but something to start flame war between PC and Mac users? With that said... Everyone knows about those wimpy Mac users. While they may be smarter and have better vocabulary, us PC users get all the chicks.
Hmmm.
You could probably boil this all down to economics. People who come from families who earn more than $200,000 are typically better educated that kids who come from welfare families. The argument could be made that folks with enough cabbage to purchase a $2k+ Macintosh have greater access to funds that the poor schmo who can only buy some sub $800 PC system which, in my mind, reflects on their access to education. If you can afford a mac - you probably went to a real University instead of DeVry.
-_-
Ok, this is absolute troll food but I'm hungry:
For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:
Kincaid: 7.7
ARI: 8.0
Coleman-Liau: 9.7
Flesch Index: 72.4
Fog Index: 10.7
Lix: 37.1 = school year 5
SMOG-Grading: 9.8
Notice that these results apply to comments from Slashdotters, not to the text on which they're commenting. Look at the source articles and you get very different results because, of course, most are professionally written or edited -- although there is an interesting oddity in that ratings for files made up by pasting together stories posted by "Michael" are consistently at least one school year higher than comparable accumulations made from postings (other than press releases) by "Cowboyneal."
Yeah, first off, I want to know what 2,800 lines he took. I would hope he didn't use a random method of comment gathering as anything under +3 is generally junk (and thus why it holds there). I want to know if he has taken a look at more recent Slashdot banter or comments generated since its inception. It's a well known fact that the signal to noise ratio has increased over the years (as is expected as the site grows in "popularity").
When he mentions that he wasn't performing this "study" on the text Slashdotters were commenting on, does that mean that he wasn't paying attention to the particular stories we were responding to? That could have a major impact on the results.
Yes, all of us Slashdotters are stuck-up assholes, but I seriously doubt that the higher rated comments are written at a 5th grade reading level unless you are looking at -1 to +5 instead of +1 and above (which I assume that most people read at).
Perhaps he posted this, knowing full well we would troll it, just to prove his point?
I guess if this hadn't originally been posted to MacNewsWorld I would I have found it extremely funny that the storey was posted by "pudge" instead of Cowboyneal...
Trying to (admittidly jokingly) determine which group is smarter by their message group posts? And using SLASHDOT posts as a base? Considering 3/4ths of all posts on slashdot are "Yu0 @r3 the SUXORZ F3G!" or "GNAA Ownz U!" (complete with beautiful ASCII art). ...there is an interesting oddity in that ratings for files made up by pasting together stories posted by "Michael" are consistently at least one school year higher than comparable accumulations made from postings (other than press releases) by "Cowboyneal."
In reality, it's a pretty funny article. Good read. Best quote from the article:
Casual Games/Downloads
See subject.
Hrum, someone that writes for a linux publication probably will give a very balanced opinion on this subject. No, they'll probably just provide troll food. Heh. I mod this article -1 TROLL FOOD
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
No, there not!
Sincrly,
PC User
Two words: Ellen Feiss
-Peter
Duh!
I had to buy a BMW because Apple doesn't make speakers yet for my iPod.
PC users. What a bunch of dumbasses.
Well, for one thing we Mac users seem to be able to figure out how to register for accounts on Slashdot...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The article begins, "I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer".
I doubt it's possible to get a meaningful answer. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's supposed to be funny.
Then how come when I put a two-button mouse on my grandma's Mac, and she tried to use it, her head exploded?
- sm
As a Mac user and Apple employee, I would just like to say:
LOL U SUK LINUX GRAMMOR N00B.
Sincerely,
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
...but they clearly don't have any financial sense!
I mean, those Macs are 50% more expensive than a functionally-equivilant PC...
-EvilMagnus
I stopped reading the article when I saw that the purpose was just to bash us.
i can be a snobby mac user also.
yse
Dude, this is just confirmation of what all Mac users know. The computer for the rest of us is now the computer for the best of us.
Come on! As you wrote, its basically a troll article (or else an article who just discovered the style program!)
Its not really worth a comment at all, though this thread will probably filled with pointless flames.
Your level of understanding of statistical methodology: 5th grade
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wow, even as a Mac user, I find this thread annoying simply for the impending flame war that will inevitably erupt. Don't we have anything more worthwhile we could be discussing than just another lame Mac vs. PC debate?
8==8 Bones 8==8
> instead of +1 and above (which I assume
> that most people read at).
Right on. Judging Slashdot by the -1 comments is a bit like judging a magazine by the articles it rejects.
Actually, even that's not fair, since it's much easier to post GNAA to Slashdot than it is to submit an article to a magazine...
The Army reading list
Don't limit themseleves to just one platform. Each has its uses. Personally, I use linux, win xp, and a Mac from time to time.
I mean, if you don't use them all, how can you really say one is better than the others?
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Imagine that, overpriced computers wich often resemble a piece of art and only garner 3% of the home computer market, appeal to folks who are smarter and speak better english. It's just so unbelievable.
This probably has something to do with l33t not being a part of the king's english.
Mac's cost more so the average mac owner is likely to have a better economic status. More money usually means better education.
For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary
What he didn't mention was what level he was browsing at.
So, I expect something like this:
'*BSD is dying scores a high ranking, while GNAA and GOATSE only got a 3. And the text art caused finder to explode.'
How do I mod the article post as Troll or Flamebait?
Moo.
Are Mac users smarter than PC users? I'd rather know: Are Crack users smarter than PCP users?
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Simply put, Mac users are, for the most part, academics, artsy or literary types who have spent a lot more time in rhetoric and literature classes while slashdotters spent their time in geeky technical (useful) pursuits. Writing style is not the main interest of the /. crew, although some argument could be made that better style can result in better communication.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
At one time, the typical Mac user bought his machine because he was scared of DOS and the rest of the PC world. Today Mac users have other reasons. Many buy into the digital media goodies (FinalCutPro, iDVD, etc). Some like the unix aspect. Some are anti-Microsoft.
Granted there are still "oooh, it looks sexy" Mac users, but those are quickly becoming the exception, not the rule.
BTW: take a look at some of the Mac books at Barnes and Noble or Borders, almost half of them are thick, serious unix books!
Before you submit that flesh-rending flame you're mentally preparing, recognize that this study only demonstrates correllation. Perhaps it's only because Macs cost more, people who can afford more expensive things tend to be richer, and rich people tend to have better educational backgrounds.
None of it means that using a PC in any way CAUSES you to be dumb.
(although I do use a Mac... heh heh heh...)
It certainly seems so, as anyone who posts something remotely critical of Apple will get a lot of replies, defending the Apple Way of doing things.
You don't think a site that reports almost exclusively on Apple/Mac related items could be slightly biased in their findings? :)
According to Word's Flesch-Kincaid report, this entire comment (with italicized quote) is reading at the 12th grade level.
If anyone has spent any time on Macslash, you know that this isn't true. Most Mac folks that have been Mac folks for a long time, have no clue or interest in running anything Unix related on or with OS X. Pll that are running OS X that come from a Linux background are much more adept, and less apt to only do things via a gui that has 'lickable' buttons.
CB#$
free ipod and free gmail!
Just to get to "Yes".
Well carp, apparently I can't spell. I guess it's true, better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Gee, most of the Mac users I know are graphic designers / marketing types. Smarter? Maybe cleverer, but smarter???
Someone once told me the Mac mouse only had one button because Mac users couldn't figure out any more than that (whoops, there went my excellent karma).
This is dumb, and it's come up before.
Yeah, the average mac user probably is smarter than the average pc user. The 4% of mac users are also in the upper 4% of the income scale. Guess what? Well educated smart people tend to have more money than others, your average BMW owner is probably "smarter" than your average kia owner.
Looking at this in any way that's supposed to matter is just elitist. Moving on . . .
...once again, I despair at the Mac zealots making the rest of the Mac community look like asshats. Good thing that doesn't happen in the Linux community, as well. Whew!
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
SPAKURS
Unfortunately, the Mac section would be dragged down by the "Blue and Wihte G3? I geuss Mac users only no what color thier computar is!!" comments.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I guarantee you there's a correlation of IQ to $$$ success. Mac is, no doubt, for people who have more money. I know that if I had more money, I'd have a Mac too, but dollar-for-dollar it's a terrible value. For the "money is no object" set, I'm sure it's great.
...but definately more bitchy and vindictive...there is something feminizing about Macs and Mac Users.
Blar.
Anybody that would pay twice the price for half the functionality is clearly not smarter. Next topic.
I wonder how that program he uses measures some of our inside jokes and spellings. Like pr0n for porn? Or hax0r?
...so I must be the smartest of all.
Interesting correlation. I personally expect that this more relates to a correlation of age and artistic tendency than Mac vs. PC. While the apocryphal 'h4x0r' will be a Windows / Linux user, have few face to face social skills, and be a youthful male, the classic 'Mac user' is just an insanely cool bohemian dude who probably lives in a free wi-fi enabled coffee shop. My personal impression (after playing with Macs and PC's since they were born), is that the typical Mac user likes to use the tool for artistic / creative purposes, and the typical PC user does not. This implies a higher ability to obfuscate in a polysyllabic vein. Sesequepedalianism does not, however, imply 'intelligence'. If it did, Mary Poppins should have been running the bank instead of those old farts who could not say "Supercalafragalisticexpialadocious".
Could it be true? Shirley you jest. Yes, I called you Shirley.
6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
My other Sig is a 229.
that is what this article should be called..
...
a troll article written about a troll article.
yea yea yea..
perl people are smarter than php people.
java duuudes are smarter than the whole world
and now, a mac user thinks they are smarter than a PC user..
bla bla bla bla..
apparently a lot of people don't remember usenet when it was worth a damn and the old beige-toaster argument about the mac users and their babbling about how they are "better"..
this is not news, it is a troll.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Maybes the scorez sux0r so much kuz n0body carez to wright g00d englush! And what does this say about our countries 5th graders? I really hope they can write a lot better than most slashdot posts.
I hope you meant to say the S/N has DECREASED - there is far more noise, far less signal.
Yes.
2^5
The funniest part was where they said slashdot articles were professionally edited. I guess that makes me a brain surgen because I can clip my toenails.
I want to know which king the article's author thinks is ruling England.
How about having both PC and MAC?
Subzerorz
More Articles
- Buy a really nice PC.
- Install the Linux distro of your choice.
- Install VMWare
- Run Windows XP inside VMWare
Tada! Nice GUI on a strong Linux base. If won't run all of your games, and it may be a bit slow, but we are trying to make it Mac-like.Well carp, apparently I can't spell.
Yes, you can't spell. Unless you were talking to a fish.
Casual Games/Downloads
The cause here seems pretty obvious. A large proportion of Mac users are communications professionals and creative types. We make our living writing and communicating, while PC users are a more representative sample of the population. The Mac is also a premium product (a slight premium, please, let's not rehash that battle again!) and people who buy it are likely to have more disposable income and education. But ... as an enthusiastic Mac and Unix condescender, I have to admit I'll be adding this to my little toolbox! ~grin~
It's all style over substance
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
To flamebait friday... between this one and the Bobbie Fisher one, I think the UN is going to be sanctioning Cowboy for attempting to start a war!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
have to open a command prompt to do something like ipconfig
:-D
LOL! would that be ifconfig???
oops
sad robot making broken music
MacNewsWorld is obviously in error. A study commissioned by Microsoft shows that Windows users are obviously superior, not only in linguistic acuity and dual-button mouse skills, but also in lower total cost of ownership. Windows users are also more innovative. It's true!
On MacNewsWorld's part, I suspect... I suspect... Damn. What's that thing they call it when you hire your own family to work for you?
Neopolitanism. That's it. I suspect *that*.
Mac users can't grasp things as simple as right click and totally wig out when they have to open a command prompt to do something like ipconfig. God help them when their disk drive fills up too. Not as smart.
I dunno about that. The typical Mac users (including and sometimes especially artists) I run across typically read at least one of the thick "Mac Bible" type reference books and love to show off all the little tricks they know. Times have changed since Mac users were just a group of folks too scared of DOS and not quite wealthy enough for a Sun, SGI, or Apollo workstation. Today Mac users have different reasons for using the platform (anti-Microsoft, unix roots, something new/different, strong DV25 media support, etc). Even the casual browsers in the mall Apple Stores seem to posess clue.
It seems to me that more and more of the clueless personal computer users/owners generally just buy whatever they use at work. Generally a Dell or Compaq. (It's funny trying to talk someone out of buying a Compaq--they often argue that they can't buy a Dell as they've never used one before and wouldn't know where to start!)
Feeding the troll
Mac users can't grasp things as simple as right click
Kinda hard to "right click" with a one-button mouse. Anyone who buys a 2-button USB mouse for a Mac can certainly "grasp" right-clicking; I did, and so did every other Mac user I've ever seen with a two-button mouse.
and totally wig out when they have to open a command prompt to do something like ipconfig
On Mac OS X, you don't need to use ipconfig, and that's the point. Use the Network Preference Pane, which is painless.
What you need to realize is that to most people computers are a means to an end, not an end unto itself. As a developer, I'm sometimes happy to tinker around with my work Linux machine, but mostly I just want to get something done and not have to tediously and endlessly tweak RedHat 9.0 to do what I want. I'd rather use Mac OS X and just get things done.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Back in the '80s when the Macintosh was first introduced I knew a psychologist that claimed that subjects using the Macintosh interface exhibited more coherent brain functioning than subjects using the PC interface. This was probably pre Windows though.
if we're to improve pc / mac user relations.
what a pice of tripe. I'm a mac user, who uses pc's out of need at work. let's stop this dericive bs and just admit that each user perfers his/her os better than the next user's preferance.
I throw down the Unix shell challenge to you good sir!
I choose grep at 10 paces.. prepare yourself!
> anything under +3 is generally junk
Your post currently rated at:
> (Score:2)
Is it just me when I say "Is it just me?"
to vote down this motion..
As usual, our weekly PC-users-smarter-than-all-UG will take place in the backlot of Intel Building 486 today evening at 6:00 pm
Rapid Nirvana
I'm glad that we Mac users can still think of reasons why we're better than you lowly serfs.
the only people who usually fill up their trash on a mac are former PC users... but nice try
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
fire BAD!@#$
Ti GUUD
Hinges break
hinges crap.
dock silly
HUI guidelines make happy chimp.
Gates = BAD. Ick Stink. poop.
Respectfully signed,
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Well, since last I heard, PCs running Windows account for something above 95% of personal computers you're comparing an average Mac user against the average person.
Seems fair enough, but in my experience those are not going to be equally distributed slices of the population. On one hand you have every parent and grandparent who need to be painstakingly coaxed through reading their hotmail account, kids who think clicking on popups is fun, and your average teen who can use the computer but mostly for games, or Word.
On the Mac hand you have a lot of graphic and industrial designers, and skilled professionals with more income to purchase a Mac, since Macs - on average - cost much more than a basic PC setup (Dell, gateway, etc).
Yes, these are kinda broad generaliztaions, but the distinctions do exist. If you compare your average unwashed masses citizen to your average possibly higher-income and more advanced skill set citizen then you are going to find disparities in intelligence and education.
Remeber folks, correlation is not causation, look at where the numbers are coming from.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
So, does misspelling "Unics" (as in "the very first Unics application"), mean that the author of the article is an ignorant PC user? Or does it mean he's an elitist Mac/Unix user trying out his own creative spelling of an existing word? Hmmm...
www.code-fix.com
Anyone have the link to the "I'ma a Mac Gamer" parody on Apple's "Switch" add campaign?
Me are PC user and no that I is bettar then sum stoopid Mac person jest becuz thay say that thay are bettir dusnt meen that thay are thay dont know englis becuz what is a Mac its not evan a werd.
I'm actually rather disappointed. Sure the Mac users score higher. PC users score at a 5th grade English level (apparently), and Mac users score at a 6th grade level. What's disappointing is that it's only 6th grade! My English skills were measured at a college level before I had even entered high school. Now out of college, I am sadly finding that this is not so much because I am smart, but more because other people are so stupid.
errr, no. It'd be ipconfig on a win box.
Windows users are alpine skiers. They're the most common, they're generally well-behaved and not big risk-takers, and they're looked down on by the other groups. They also tend to crash a lot. Grandma is an alpine skier.
Linux users are snowboarders. They tend to be younger, out-of-control, risk-takers, they don't really crash as much, and they annoy the skiers (for no good reason, they're just annoying). Teenage boys with eyebrow piercings are snowboarders.
Mac users are telemark skiers. They aren't as adventurous as the snowboarders, and they have more in common with the skiers, but they also have this smooth, sophisticated sheen of coolness about them that neither of the other two groups have. Barbara Streisand is probably a telemarker.
Tele skiers get invited to the highest-class parties; snowboarders throw the best parties; alpine skiers have to get the kids in bed because there's school tomorrow. :)
Have you read my blog lately?
Also, a large percentage of /. comments involve things like TCP/IP, MPAA, *nix, boxen, and other such words that the average word processor doesn't know. It will obviously give us lower scores on spelling and such when it simply doesn't know that they are actually real words.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
So, what if you use both Mac and PC's?
If you find both platforms useful, you
can become an expert in the best uses for both
systems...
So there!
us pc yewsers no hau two speec englash.
-Vendal Thornheart
chill guys, obviously this study is just for fun. There's no simple way to measure intelligence, or english usage ability, as this study does. Taking lines from forums? Oh, I'm sure those results are very accurate. Note: "...as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun..." As proof of the study being ntohing more than fun, I point you to the comparison of Michael and CowboyNeal. Haha
done
Mac user's constitue what, 5% of the computer market?
It's not hard to create a favorable average between 5 people versus the average of 95!
Apparently the average Mac user doesn't have a whole lot of common mathematical sense.
I don't know if they are smarter but they surely are gayer. Macs are brilliant in colors and style, so I would guess that their users are more pleasant, promoting a feeling of cheer, have much better overall taste and are probably happier than their Linux- and Windows-using counterparts, at least on the outside. I have no idea how that happiness relate to intelligence, though.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Umm, no, there is a fairly obscure version of carp
carp: [v] raise trivial objections
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
PEE CEE
^---urine
"Oh the mac has such superior hardware!"
While this may have been true for a time, since the PCI bus has been around the mac has fallen behind. Macs used to ship with all SCSI drives, but now ship with standard IDE. Now with PCI express out, how soon before I hear a mac user try and tell me "WE HAD IT FIRST!"
"Mac is best for desktop publishing"
Quark runs on PC and mac. So does photoshop, so does every other major application put out by adobe.
"Mac is best for video editing"
Mac *WAS* the only choice a few years back. Look at the renderfarms being built today though. Teams of MBA's and geeks go for the biggest bang for the buck, and i've yet to hear of a renderfarm on a major movie using a mac cluster. Final Cut is a good app for home/prosumer video editors, but for serious work like ILM LOTR stuff, get a renderfarm of PC's.
"MacOS is so easy to use"
I don't see much difference in ease of use between MacOS and XP. Then again, i'm a sysadmin, I can care less about the UI, just tell me where my network settings are so I can go to work.
"OSX uses the machBSD kernel"
Why not just run BSD and get it over with?
Between the lack of applications, the constantly playing catch up with the PC, and the general FUD mac users like to spread, they're not all that bright. Most PC users I know use a PC because they don't buy into all that Mac FUD. Like that rap song goes, "Don't believe the hype"
The Macs core markets are education, publishing and "independent creative professionals" i.e. writers, graphic artist etc. . It's a population that spends a great deal of it's time communicating in writing for money as opposed to core markets in the PC world who communicate with numbers in the form of spreadsheets and databases.
The more profound bias is the idea that well articulated writing reflects an underlying high degree of "intelligence" (whatever that is) when it really just reflects specialization. People who write a lot get good at it regardless of how dumb they are otherwise and people who write very little do not get good at it no matter how much they excel intellectually in other areas.
I mean, come on people! I'm a Mac user and I think this is about the stupidest thing one could spend time on. The author is comparing 2-3% of the computing world with 97-98% of the rest of the computing world. It should have occurred to him that results will vary HIGHLY depending on which portions of the population are used for the sample. The result is that such a comparison is useless, pointless, and elitest.
/. front page. If you need to post something that bad, just post a dupe. We're used to it by now, and who knows, there may be someone who missed the original post!
The sad part is that this made it to the
I seem to remember an article in CrayNewsWorld which stated that the average Cray user was far smarter than 10 PC and 10 Mac users *combined*. It also noted that most Cray users held multiple PhD's.
It did however note that Mac users were the hands down winners in the arena of trendy fashion, and then showed a picture of a guy with spikey hair and wearing cool yellow tinted glasses (even though he had 20/20 vision)
from reading the article, I thought that he was unfair, and should have separated the unix users from the windows users. After all, they are two different worlds. Not only that, but slashdot regroups windows, mac and *nix users altogether. Mixed bunch indeed, but I'd like to see a comparison between mac users and *nix users for one. Also, since MacOSX is based on unix, wouldn't that mean that somehow the people that programmed unix were better than Apple programmers? Evidently Apple wasn't able to come up with a stable OS of it's own and had to find a way of finding a stable one. And for literature's sake, please don't think that people who use abbreviations on slashdot don't know how to type the words they abbreviate. Sometimes, people need to type fast (when your boss is behind you, or you've got work to do) and typing whole words such as Microsoft or Macintosh can take a long time, especially when you don't like one or the other, and need to retype them several times before getting them right. Maybe we need a literary section on slashdot, that relates to fiction books as well as php, C or Perl manuals to up our score a bit. Ideas anyone?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
I is an McIntosh user, runin Unics.
...you have to be smarter than average to use the quaint Mac interface. I sure never managed it :-/
He faints dead away, knowing that his expansive vocabulary, and advanced writing skills were useless...
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
According to the article Mac Users have a larger vocabulary and use better English. This is expected to a certain degree since many Mac users were first introduced to their machines in high school or college when Apple had a lock on the educational market. Apple retained a larger precentage of college campus computers even after the general public and high schools began to transition to PCs. As a result, new users of Macs were being disproportionately recruited from among people with some college or college degrees. Better vocabulary and grammar skills would certainly be expected among this group. Cost could also be a factor. Macs cost more than PCs as a result those most likely to purchase them will be people with higher than average salaries. Since there is a correlation between salary and education, those purchasing Mac will once again have an above average educational level.
For every brainy mac user there are about 100 super inteligent pc users, 1000 smart ones, 1000000 avearage ones and about a gazzillion users that shouldn't even be close to a computer.
That doesn't mean that mac people are smarter, just that there are fewer stupid people using them.
Witch brings us to the question, do you have to be smart just to be able to use a mac?
- "There is nothing quite like an ineffective solution to an nonexistant problem"
academics, artsy or literary types ...
you mean "computer illiterates" ?
Mac users have iNTELLIGENCE.
I don't know how anyone can keep a straight face and claim that Mac users are smarter than PC users. Macs are made to be simplistic for people who don't want to bother with discovering the inner workings of a computer. Instead, a Mac is more like a television for the average user. That was how it was intended from the beginning. Gradually it has stolen away the former Amiga/Atari ST niche markets of video and audio, but it is still at heart a machine that stresses simplicity for the unadventurous, who would never consider building and configuring their own computer.
Back in the day of early Mac OS's and MS-DOS (And Windows until 3.11), the PC [Windows] user had to know more than the Mac User to operate the computer.
Today it is the PC-Windows user who does not need to know anything, while the MAC (OS X) user should know something about how to operate the computer. Of course there are still many ignorant Mac Users (not the Slashdotters) who don't know that OS X is built on BSD, never see get into CLI, etc.
BUT, when you say PC users, you have to include Linux User. I'll guarantee that ANYONE that has any kind of Linux OS installed knows more than the average Mac user about computers. BUT, a BSD geek using OS X probably is smarter than the average linux user.
Make sense? I didn't think so.
Mac user Vs. PC user
Linux Vs. Windows
RIAA Vs. Their own customers
SCO Vs. Undisclosed code
Ashcroft Vs. Terrorists
Dell Vs. Gateway
Bush Vs. Grammar
Amiga Vs. Dead Horse
Kerry Vs. A mirror
Slashdotter Vs. Soap
The list is nearly endless.
Here's a somewhat relavent link to something I saw on ABS.
No, I'm not affiliated with them... I just dig that stuff.
I use Macs, I love Macs, but I don't feel like I'm smarter or part of some exclusive club by doing so. I just like the OS, the computers, and it's what most people in my (design-related) field use.
I really, really wish the Mac press would cut it out with articles like this in Mac magazine after Mac magazine, on Mac site after Mac site... Can't they just talk about the state of the platform instead of bashing Windows users again and again? It makes us look like that little circle of smug drama or Goth kids huddling in the corner in high school talking shit on the preps and jocks.
Of course iSmart.
You make the best point of all responses to this article. Huzzah!
If won't run all of your games, and it may be a bit slow, but we are trying to make it Mac-like.
Regarding the slow part, apparently you haven't used 10.3.0 or newer. Or you haven't used a 500 MHz G3 or faster.
Regarding games, there's always a need for a Windows PC for that. Chess.app and Warcraft III get old pretty quick!
He mixes up cause and effect, as usual. It would be the same to say: "People who use a PC are better software developers", because you compared the quality of things they coded.
;-).
All that result shows is, that people with better writing skills buy Macs. This may be because people doing artistic stuff are usually doing it on a Mac (God knows why). And artistic talent often implies writing skills, too.
OTOH developers often use PCs, because there are better tools/development environments available (with OS X that may have changed).
Or maybe this is all utter nonsense and only a flamebait. Well, my post fits in nicely, then
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
Ok I have a x86, SPARC, MIPS and a PPC machine running all different OS flavours. So does that make me smartest? What a load of baloney that architecture has anything to do with it. Smart people usually tend to have more money thus being capable to buy expensive gear. And yeah Mac OS-X is sweet... so there.
"I paid my ten dollars, time to get my learn on..."
Chris Rock
I believe you meant to say that the S/N ratio has decreased. A rational number decreases in absolute value as either the numerator decreases, or the denominator increases. In this instance, I assume you meant that the 'n' (noise) increases as
But what the fuck do I know? I'm a PC user.
You're the FUD spreader. Tell you what- you use your PC for work, and I'll use mine for work as well, and we'll all get PAID. Imagine that.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
not mac user smart. not mac user eat lunch and visit web site slashdot talk to people like me. see article on mac user smarter and not agree. not mac user knows mac user and she stupid. turned not mac user down when he ask for date.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
They obviously understand the value for their dollar. Everyone else complains that macs are too expensive while cheaping out and getting $600 pcs and still complaining about their own environment. I don't get Windows users (i used to be one for 10 years). Mac users love their computers, LOVE THEM, we know how much. But i dare you to find me 5 people that have the same amount of love for their Windows computers. People complain about it and just keep going back, theres no other industry like it. Its amazing.
I'm sure that BMW (The company Apple loves comparing itself to) drivers are much smarter then the average ford/GM driver. And I'm sure that someone who buys an expensive ass Apple off the apple store is smarter then the average Wal-Mart bargain PC user.
Socioeconomic status has a huge correlation with Intelegence. Being smart can make you rich, and getting a good education (like going to public school in a rich town vs. a poor ghetto) has an enormous effect on overall adult Intelegence. I'd bet anything that Mac users are more likely to be white then PC users, but I doubt anyone would want to publish findings on that. (because of the socioeconomic status of various races in the US)
In order for this study to have any validity, you'd need to make adjustments for obvious things like socioeconomic status, education, etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Reading this reminds me of when I ran an experiment on my Philip Glass Library website back in 1997. For a period of 3-4 weeks, I blocked Internet Explorer, then about 2 months after that, I blocked Netscape for about 3-4 weeks.
The email responses I received from each set of browsers users was very different. On average, Netscape users seemed more educated and had a longer average word and email length than IE users. most IE users had a 1 or 2 line email where as Netscape users usually where 2 paragraphs at least.
I should release that study sometime.
I work for a NASA contractor. Many NASA folk still use Macs, as do some of the older guys in my shop. They are all terrible at expressing themselves using the English language. Run-on-sentences run rampant. The comma, when used, is used incorrectly. The possessive form is used when plural should be used. IANAEM (English Major), I am simply an old-schooler who thinks the language should be used correctly.
Now go make fun of whatever mistakes I made in the above paragraph, but which my aged eyes could not catch!
They have to be to by laptops at twice market value. Noting that high pay isn't always representative of intelligence.
Bums.
Homeless people are the most expressive group of people. Just ride any local train, walk down any alley or through any slum and you *WONT EVEN HAVE TO ENGAGE THEM* to hear and see the expressiveness of these people.
It's good to know that Mac users and Bums share the spotlight as being expressive.
Did I mention Muslim fanatics are also quite expressive?
ps..I have a Dell
You must be new here, pudge.
:)
Besides, CowboyNeal rocks.
Random and weird software I've written.
> This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly.
So, uh... to append some logic to that...
In America, black people are (unfortunately) frequently poorer than white people.
Poor people are frequently not as educated as richer people.
Less educated people usually have worse grammer.
And (by MacNewsWorld) worse grammer means you can't think clearly.
THEREFORE Black people aren't as smart as whitey!
No, I think the real point of this article was the large middle section's efforts to point out how superior Unix users are.
They miss out on all the fun and excitement of virus attacks! What boring losers.
...but Macs are smarter than PC's.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I see a lot of people assuming that the wealth is synonymous with intelligence. I would like to suggest that this is not the case. Granted, the weathy generally have better educations, but the many of the smartest, enlightened people I have ever met have spartan educations. History backs me up on this one. :) Socates didn't even have a house. Thoreau worked as a handyman! Steinbeck never even bothered to finish college.
RE: "and certainly are better at handling the king's English than the average PC operator."
this is the USA and if any friggin king came here pushing me around about my American slang and poor spelling & grammer i would kick his ass all the way back to europe!
That would be the Queen's english. Perhaps it's merely a matter of temporal distortion.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I do not know if there is any way that we can "prove" that Mac users are smarter than PC users. But I can say this, it is well known and well documented that the Mac is the choice for many free-thinkers in this world (artists, musicians, scientists, media/dramatists). And the Mac is well marketed for free-thinkers ("Think Different"). The other thing I have seen is that PC users are so reluctant to change by going to another operating system, which is not necessarily a good thing intellectually.
I doubt that Mac users are any smarter than the average computer user. However they may well be more technologically aware than the average user. I say this because most Mac users had to decide to use the mac as opposed to a PC (the market standard). To do this they probably had to assess the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms. People that don't give a damn will usually just buy a PC. Apart from the "it looks cool" crowd of Mac users, most had to know something about both platforms to come to an educated decision as to which to choose.
I would hope he didn't use a random method of comment gathering as anything under +3 is generally junk (and thus why it holds there).
;)
I noticed your comment is currently at +2. Should I continue to read it?
No matter how they spin it. I wouldn't even compare it to a Tier 3 university. Do they even teach a foreign language or History or any other liberal arts curriculum that is a crucial part to any well rounded university undergraduate program?
Even engineering programs at major universities require 20+ credit hours of liberal arts. There's a reason for that you know!
And I don't even want to get started on comparing their faculty with the faculty of a major universities engineering department. Because there is no comparison!
As a Mac user, Of course I am...at least all of you PC users will be so anvilous after you read how perfectly I spelled every single word...
:-)
:-)
Little do you now dad on my Mac, I have spiel check in every application! (Thank You Mac SO X!!!)
Muahahahaah! Don't I look smart now!
If you don't get the joke then don't mod me
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Oh, now -that's- funny.
We're going to be revamping the moderation system in the months to come, and we should totally provide a bonus for people who manage to write at higher than a fifth grade level. Well, that'd probably be way too easy to game, but still, it'd be interesting to see if that would improve the quality of discussion...
I guess this means we now know which computers George W. Bush and Dan Quayle prefer!
...in Japan!!
again, that is the kind of thing a mac user would use bbedit or subethaedit to do. Why worry about command line grep when any text editor worth it's salt has regular expressions built in? I don't see any since in switching to the terminal to do something I would do in a text editor. Whether or not one can use the command line equivilent does not make it any better if you are accomplishing the same thing. I never have found myself hindered by the fact that I rarely need to use command line tools.
Usually the first time a girl enters my room she is immediately drawn to my Titanium Powerbook. Soft coos are heard while she breathes in its elegant beauty and caresses its curves. "It's so thin!" she says.
She notices what's onscreen. I've been talking on AIM, but there's these little characters with colored talk balloons! That's just so cute.
She'll pick up the iPod next, and start playing with its little wheel. She flips it over and looks at herself in the reflective back. She likes how the lights come on when she touches it and the little red text appears on the buttons.
But I'm sure you get the same response from your "gaming machine" with a clunky CRT.
but I'm glad he chose to compare macintouch with slashdot rather than to compare macslash with slashdot. Had he picked macslash, he definitely would have made us Mac users look like abject morons.
PC users : if you answer "No", they win !
____
nico
Nico-Live
As we say at the mac user's forum, je prends le fromage dans mon pantalon.
The Mac is like a designer computer. It looks better and is designed better than PCs. It also has a much higher quality operating system design.
People who appreciate this tend to be better educated, higher income people, such as artists, writers and programmers. They unite to appreciate a designer computer and laugh at the vulgar boring Windows people.
This is remarkably similar to the behaviour people have who wear designer clothes, expensive cars, or any other hallmark of quality.
D
There are many areas one can be intelligent in. Sure, they are better at English and other "humanities" types of skills...
...so I conclude that Engineers, the ones good in math and science, use PCs.
This study doesn't say anything about the level of intelligence, but merely the type of person that uses x computer.
Teh Epress bettur tahn salashdottur? Me thinks not. Slashdot is teh people that are engineeres and scientets and techinal peopel that do stuff. Thier are also sudents and other rilly smary people who think and express them selves good.
Mac people aer dumbheads.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
you mean delusional and snooty.
why then yes
Okay first off lets understand something. Using a Mac or Linux isn't what makes you smart, or even arrogant. Using a PC doesn't make you dumb. This argument has been posed ad nauseum for decades as if to say one group just is smarter than the other.
One group may be smarter than the other, but it has NOTHING to do with actually using the type of computer!
It has everything to do with the life choices that we make and how we go about making decisions. It also has to do with how one has to come about making the choice of Mac or Linux over PC.
First of all, the easiest answer to the question "which operating system should I use?" is going to be a windows PC for at least one or two more decades. Since this is the easiest answer, its the answer most often taken. Lazy people, uninformed people, and people just can't possibly understand how a computer works will take the easy answer.
However, with Macs and Linux, the users arrived at that information differently. They've worked on many machines, perform various functions, and do more than email and surf the web. They are deeper into their computer experience because getting into that experience is important and they learn more. These same people tend to be mroe logical and research their decisions more because that's the nature of everything they do.
Second, the two above statements are not absolutes, they are tendencies. Apple and linux users tend to look more into their computer experience because they want more out of it, but that's not to say there are no PC users who do the same thing. However, due to the tendency that more PC users are simply looking for that "simple answer" this then skews the overall social makeup of the PC user base towards the less analytical and creative of the general american populace.
Third, its all about perception. The easy answer is perceived as easy. You can argue its not so easy, what with bugs and viruses and spyware, and that you will pay for it later. However, that's not what the general populace thinks. In my opinion they are misinformed, but they are definitely underinformed about their choices. Linux and Macs require a larger investment than most people are willing to put in, but if you make that investment it tends to be returned pretty quickly in one form or another. It's just like the way investment bankers work. They know you have to invest to get something back. Most people look at their PC as a TV or Microwave oven. To them it's just an appliance that needs regular updates. A similar investment can be made in a PC, you just go about it differently.
The phrase "Mac/Linux users are smarter/more creative/better than PC users" serves no purpose other than to get people riled up. There are tons of better ways to explain it but they take several paragraphs, like this post does.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Since the macs are much more expensive than PCs, I wonder if PC-users are better in math than mac-fans? :D
Value for money? What's that?
i.e. Is the average Mac user smarter than the average PC user? Come on, this is a nerd site. I'd think we'd be able to avoid linguistic blunders like making absolute statements about who is smarter than whom.
Mac = Boutique Computing
PC = WalMart Computing
Unix = DIY Computer
There's a correlation between quality and quantity of education and money, not IQ and money.
No way. Windows users are bunch of sissys, wimps, and p*ssies. I mean, can Windows users stand the pain of tattoos? Where are the sites of tough nerds with Windows tattoos?
I'll bet you Windows peeps start crying like little French girls at the thought of needles.
First thought when I saw this headline- "Wow, talk about a potential troll-fest."
I mean with a title like that on /. you're *asking* for flames.
-Valiss
Does this mean that Unix users have ADD?
What you need to realize is that Macs are no panacea. I have to fight the Mac to get things done, and there is NO way to tweak it. It's either their way, which may or may not exist, or the highway.
Ever used XCode? Tried to remove extraneous files from a project? Had it randomly delete a target with no warning? And you can't roll the damn thing back? Undo doesn't work? Hooray for Apple's vaunted user interface thwarting you.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I doubt these samples have anything to do with OS preference and more to do with Technical Knowledge. The "PC" sites he choices are also sites that are known to the general public, while the other sites tend to be more niche oriented.
At least on the exhibition floor (didn't go to any of the seminars)...
Lots of iPod stuff, lots of CD/DVD replicator stuff (which could become illegal if the INDUCE Act passes), lots of classes and presentations about how to use different Mac applications, lots of artist/hippie types. Very little technical stuff (programming, application development, sys admin, etc). Pretty disappointing overall. Take from that what you will about this intelligence of Mac vs. PC user thing...
The new Boston Convention and Exposition Center on the waterfront is pretty nice, though. Rivals the Javits center.
It's true! Not only has my IQ gone up since I bought my G5, but the ladies can't keep their hands off me! They usually have them balled up in fists and are beating the crap out of me, but a few use open-handed slaps about the face.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The intersection of Mac users and PC users is not mutually exclusive: many Mac users "use" a PC at work (and many even own a PC as well).
;-)
This also seems to happen a lot when discussing PS2 v. XBox: why do so many people assume everyone only has one console or the other, but not both?
Now, Ford v. Chevy, that's another story...
Running Linux on PPC isn't so hard as it used to be with distro's like Yellow Dog Linux and gentoo and such. But a couple years ago it took a lot of effort to setup, port and package together the applications and kernels that were readily available on x86.
I ran x86 linux for a long time, but turns out I didn't _really_ know anything until switching to PPC.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
helps Mac users sleep at night.
Since they aren't using their brains to select a good computer platfrom, they are free to use that brain power for other purposes.
...probably have better things to do than run a statistical analysis on Slashdot posts.
BIG DEAL...
Windows users have us slaughtered when it comes to troubleshooting skills...
Mod: -16 Humor
Disclaimer: Yes, I prefer my Mac, but I quite like WinNT/2000/XP/2003, too.
Well carp, apparently I can't spell.
Yes, you can't spell. Unless you were talking to a fish.
Wouldn't it then be
"Well, Carp, apparently I can't spell.", as the fish would be who the comment is directed at? And the capital letter was assumed...
Woohoo! Nothing like pointless grammar discussions attached to pointless tech discussions!
~jeff
king's English
This may be picking nits and I'm sure some English major will correct me but shouldn't it be Queen's English? There hasn't been a king in England for quite some time.
(BTW, if I'm right then must be a mac user cause I have a 17" iMac. If I'm wrong then I'm a PC user because I have a Dell as well. If I get flamed for either I do have a linux box or two under the desk.)
Speak truth to power.
Ah, I see. So just because the average middle-classer just can't afford the wonderful MAC computer, they'll bash them again and say that PC users are "generally" not as smart as your smart-cookie Mac user? Though I would say that maybe buying a Mac would be a smarter deal since. . .its value is higher,
This is. ..ridiculous. I wish I could just buy my vocabulary and download them into my brain, maybe by THEN would I be the ONLY eloquent PC user.
I can't just poop out 1500 for a powerbook.
It seems like all the Mac users I know buy the latest Mac every time they come out with a new one; and not because something's broke, but just to have the latest. Where do they get this cash?
At least with a PC, if something dies, or you want to upgrade, it's easy to buy the new pieces as you go... say for example if you need a new motherboard, cpu, power supply, etc, just go online and have it within a few days without shelling out tons of money.
Or, if you're lucky enough to live somewhere with stores that carry it, just drive down and pick it up. Your video card dies on a friday night? Drive 10 minutes to the local Best Buy/Staples/Whatever and get a new one. Pop it in, and there you go.
The Mac world is a strange one. From what I understand they're reliable and etc. But it's a strange, foreign world I'm scared to venture into. And I can't really afford the admission price.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Why English? There are many other languages in the world. English-handling skill is not a measure of intellect.
ASM
PRGZ
HAV
MST 1337
LANG
SKLZ
...only you can prevent forum fires.
If reality was like Slashdot, most people would be (-1) Redundant.
I don't remember getting any smarter when I scooted my chair over from my PC to my iBook.
Clearly, had she been in charge, there would have been no run on the bank. Given especially that she is practically perfect in every way.
As soon as women see that glowing Apple logo on the top of the Mac laptops they instantly perk up. Attraction to rich, stupid guys is what the majority of women do best.
A comment was made previously concerning the relative wealth of the two groups, but I think the heart of the matter lies in area of education rather than expense. To put it bluntly, Mac users are generally more aesthetically minded and likely to take more liberal arts classes. The hardcore *nix devotee or Windows programmer seems more likely to focus more exclusively on C.S./ math/ engineering classes. I have found this to be true in my own life. So it seems fairly obvious that statistical analysis of text typed by the two groups would have a wide disparity in vocabulary. One group took Advanced English Lit. while the other group was slaving away in Data Structures. Naturally the Arts devotee will speak or write in a more erudite fashion than the Geek next door. Does that make him/ her smarter? Not necessarily.
In a somewhat-unrelated vein, does anyone think that the penchant of so-called "script-kiddies" to use x86 hardware, whether Windows or *nix might be contributing to this? It seems likely to me.
As a personal disclaimer, I will add that I use and own computers of both platforms. Neither of them has been perfect, and neither or them is useful all of the time. They are both just tools. Sometimes one is more suited to a particular task than the other, but I can't say there is any sort of obvious advantage of one over the other. Perhaps enthusiasts on both sides of the fence would be happier if they reached a similar conclusion.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
Members of the Language Institute announced today the remarkable discovery that what currency you use affects your speech patterns. In particular, people who buy goods with pounds sterling have better British accents than those who buy theirs with US dollars. When asked by the AP reporter to explain these results to the press, the lead investigator replied "You are all fucking morons."
Unix is a shortening of Unics. As in Multics.
Feel stupid now?
Out of curiosity, I analyzed your above post, using only the non-italicized portions. Here's the result:
Kincaid: 9.7
ARI: 10.5
Coleman-Liau: 8.7
Flesch Index: 69.8
Fog Index: 13.1
Lix: 40.4 = school year 6
SMOG-Grading: 10.7
my source
Of course, that's like saying that the average Fiat owner is a better mechanic than usual. The ownership does create the intelligence, it just acts as a filter to reject those that lack it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There are plenty of reasons why this study is completely bogus. So many that one would think that the author was simply trying to start a flame war.
Anyway, one reason that I haven't seen mentioned is that Mac users tend to be more artistic (art users use photoshop, photoshop works best on macs). Humanities people tend to be good at using inflated complex expressions to express simple or nonsensical ideas.
The study could simply mean that PC users are more technical and concise, while Mac users simply bable. In other words, PC users know what they are talking about while Mac users use big words to make up for the fact that they are clueless. This would imply that PC users are smarter.
I'll just refer everyone to classic pennny arcade
By average YES. For example we all have friends and fam with an XP box so infested with malware that they can't even open IE to the page they want. That is your average Windows user.
Your average *nix user is probably closer to the *nix newbie then the power admin. That being said, your *nix newbie is "*nix user" because of their understanding of windows.
Therefor (most) *nix users are going to be very knowledgable Windows users, thus the switch. Therefor, any *nix user is going to be "smarter" then your average Windows user, plus they would appear to be a little more open minded and willing to learn something new, where your average Windows user just "wants it to work" and has no interest in "how it works".
I boycott signatures
Unfortunately, as a fellow mac user, I could not say that most mac users are smarter than PC users.
I work as tech support at an ISP, and as the self proclaimed "Mac Guru" I get most of the mac calls. Not only can mac users not easily operate an extremely easy to use OS, they usually cannot express their problems with any fluency. They are the most difficult to work with, most out of touch people I talk to on a daily basis. Most of them try to explain "can't check my email" as something ridiculous like "the stream won't continue" (to quote the most recent user in memory). I can forgive not knowing jargon like OS and application, but how in the world can you expect a person to understand you when you don't say anything about your problem. PC users on the whole are much more effective and concise in their communication, despite not being able to follow directions quite as well.
But the worst problem with mac users is that they will not stop clicking. If you try to walk them through anything at all, say opening safari it's "Hold on, let me see something" "hmmm" "what does x mean" where x has absolutely nothing to do with the problem, is in an entirely different application (usually Control Panels/System Prefs). Inquisitive is a good thing, but if I tell someone to click on 1 button, and they click on 20 different other things instead, how can they expect to have their problem fixed?
If you're going to typify people by the computer they use, then mac users are the spaced out hippies that stare off into space and say "what?" every time you talk to them.
"...the typical Mac user bought his machine because he was scared of DOS..."
I don't think it was fright that was at play the first day in 1984 when I first used a Mac at the computer store in White Plains NY - I can remember exactly when and where - and saw the Finder, MacWrite and MacPaint all playing nicely with wach other and doing incredibly useful stuff and all that useful stuff coming out of an Imagewriter just like it looked on the screen.
I daydreamed, goggle-eyed about what might have been in the preceding 6 years of undergrad/grad work with this on my own desk rather than the terminals connected to PDP-11s or whatever...
No, I definitely wasn't 'scared' of the DOS machine that sat next to it. The DOS machine was text-based and non-intuitive and did nothing to *EN*courage me to use a computer more (i.e. ADD to my computer-using courage) and since then my dealings with DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, NT, ME, XP have *DIS*couraged me and I expect others as well. Most people with Wintel stay with it for the same reason people stay with Ford Escorts. They move and it seems there are lots of them. Of course as you drive down the street you see everyone's porch lights flashing because they think you're the pizza guy... but you put up with it because it's not as bad as it used to be - XP sucks less than 98, Escorts suck less than Pintos.
It hasn't changed much - people bought/buy Macs because they do more things right out of the box, the box is better looking (you can make a dining room table out of sawhorses and 1x6 lumber - but do you? No.) and it's more stable (I know that's the UNIX heritage coming thru - that's nice - it could be its Magic Bunny heritage 'now with more spiffnoodle' for all I care - my iBook has had three kernel panics since the OSX preview thru 10.3.whatever, I can grab a new still camera like I did just last night, plug it in and it just plain works. Plugging that same camera into my wife's 3-year-old Presario laptop was just a sad, long series of installs, mutually exclusive dialog boxes, vaguely referenced suggestions and tentative downloads and some really hair-pulling eventual software...
it's not fear unless you count fear of inevitable frustration and wasted time.
And I'll have another iBook soon - three years is my cycle - lowest end, cheap but damned powerful... and pass this one on and it will still do a lot like my PBDuo and PB1400 are still doing...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
i guess us users of *nix OSes just far surpass the intelligence of pc users (because we don't use IE...) and transcend the reported intelligence of the mac users, as we can use more than one way of thinking (ext*,fat vs. HFS+; KDE, GNOME, WinMaker vs. OS X etc. etc.) ok, so this will be marked flamebait in short order. think humorous
sigSEGV - doy!
suck my chocolate salty balls. They're the size of grape coloured iMac's.
won way or another, lookout bullow.
all is not lost.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... distributing intelligence evenly (now featuring newclear power/kode) since/until forever. don't waste time being misled any further? see you there?
"..for the most part,..". I know people that are as you describe, musicians, artists and techno geeks at the same time, but they are, in my observations, a small minority. There are always exceptions. Oh, and the prime example that I am thinking of has definitely less than sterling grammar, spelling and punctuation.
I also agree that often the cost of a Mac relates to the economic and thus often the educational status of the user. PC's are cheap in relationship to Macs.
Please note that the only Mac I've ever had was the very first one that came with a single floppy and no HD, but I've played with a dual processor G5 with the big flat panel and thought it quite slick.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
This is not a surprising find IMO. For the most, the people that use MAC are in the communications arts (audio engineering, graphic artists, video editing), marketing and education fields. So it would seem logical that their communications skills are better. Their jobs require better understanding of communications.
The article presents statistics at its worst (read "How to Lie with Statistics" ...great book). The article leaves out extraneous factors such as the type of people who own macs and what socio-economic group they come from. Generally, the people who own macs have to have enough money to buy them in the first place. Many people WANT macs but realistically do not have enough money to actually BUY them.
Practically everyone grows up using Windows. However, at some point in type some people decide to switch. Now, I could very easily state that at this point in time the smart, curious, techno guys move onto Unix and/or its variants, the rich guys buy macs, and the rest (majority) stay with Windows.
Oh, but then I would be stereotyping just like the article does. :p
Sesequepedalianism does not, however, imply 'intelligence'.
Agreed! What it implies is literacy, if the words are used correctly, but malapropisms are so common online that the syllable counts here are essentially meaningless. Is this style thing smart enough to detect nonsensical usage? Unlikely.
Therefore, it may well be that Mac users are just desperate to look "smart" in front of their peers -- except that the numbers appear to suggest that they're more desperate than Slahdot users! I personally find that hard to believe.
I've never yet met anybody who'll admit to posting on Slashdot. So who are all these people?!
Here's the results of running `style` on my spam corpus:
readability grades:
Kincaid: 12.6
ARI: 18.3
Coleman-Liau: 11.0
Flesch Index: 69.8
Fog Index: 16.0
Lix: 56.9 = school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 9.1
Looks like the spammers are smarter than both Mac users and PC users.
That would just be bad sentence structure, forgetting the ",". Carp doesn't have to be capitalized as it could be used in the same way as one might use "boy" or "crazy homeless person". :)
Woohoo! Nothing like pointless grammar discussions attached to pointless tech discussions!
Exactly!
Casual Games/Downloads
Since most Mac users are forced to use a Windows PC anyway either at work or at school, they end up getting experience with multiple platforms anyway, just as you suggested.
Ergo, Mac users are smarter than Windows users. QED. ;-)
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
First of all, there is no variance value available for the given results. They may just be random and totally meaningless numbers -- even if assuming the method of measurement is useful.
Second, MSN's userbase may be more international than those of Mac related sites. So it is possible that there are a lot more foreign English speakers on MSN. (And Slashdot!)
Third, if you live in the USA, it is quite bovious that someone who can afford a Mac, may more likely afford good education.
Title: "Are Mac Users Smarter than PC Users?" ....'"
Subject body: "arminw writes 'Maybe not smarter, but according
Now *THAT* is one heck of an eye catching, provocative way of getting your attention to read this smarty thing.
Hey arminw, did you consider working for a newspaper?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Price.
I think PC users are simply more pragmatic. Mac users are usually using macs because their job descriptions are ones who are in a traditionally mac environment. Macs are "better" for what they do.
This includes, but is not limited to, graphics design, music, dna sequencing.
I came from that world and if you use a PC for your work, you simply aren't taken seriously.
Despite the fact that macs were better for these jobs, at one point, the reputation and attitude preclude common sense. Nowadays pcs are powerful enough to do the job, in some cases better, yet the mindset sticks.
I am using amd64 architecture now. It's simply faster than a g5 for moving hundreds of audio streams around the mobo. It allows me to use more tracks. The sound is the same, but the underlying architecture in the G5 is simply bottlenecked in the wrong place for what I do.
I am sure this post will invite lots of flaming, but I have benchmarks and real life situations to prove it.
G5's are overpriced and immature architecturally. They have a the engine of a ferrari as a processor, in a ford taurus chassis. Lots of power, but no road handling to support it.
This will probably change with the G6. Maybe I'll go back, maybe not. For now I am a PC user again.
l8,
AC
I want to see the numbers on the Battle.net forums.
Should make Slashdot look a lot better.
Some examples:
OK, back on topic: So, having this nitwit tell me who is intelligent, and that we can evaluate such by looking at which platform they use, rings a little hollow. Even if you did think those grammar checkers are accurate, you have to take into account anti-Mac trolls on the Mac websites, and people writing code on Slashdot. Is there a Perl/C/++/#/Java/Python/Ruby parser in any of those algorithms? Idiocy....
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Wait did he use a Henry James's novel as the benchmark? Ughhh. Reading Henry James is a better sleep aid than warm milk after drinking wine and having a valium! I think that the scores must measure how boring one writes...
not just to be academic/literary types, but academic/leteray... scabbed-together... abouit typos
Aside from your arrogant and condescending point (I would wager I am better educated and more literate than you), let's analyze your masterpiece...
Two typos (and I LOVED the one you made next to the word typos (emphasis YOURS)), and one use of a made-up phrase ("scabbed-together"?). And this after you made sure not to hit the "submit" button until you were "absolutely positive that (your) grammar and spelling (were) perfect".
Thank you, this was the funniest thing I've read today.
cause we wanna be more intelligent toe.
I think Absath had the right idea...
In my experience, the average mac user gets more action than the average pc user. Because they do their work, and then go OUTSIDE instead of reformatting their pc? maybe. Because there are plenty of materalistic girls? maybe. Becuase the shiny silver tower is sexier? maybe.
Smarter? doubtful. More appealing to the ladies? definately.
could also have something to do with the fact that mac people tend to have their shit together a little better too.
heh, i know... its ifconfig on osx of course... sheesh... no one can take a joke today :-D
sad robot making broken music
A synopsis of the article
A response to the article
This research article just seems to be flamebait and highly uncontrolled. Hell, I could give you papers from the Mac users at our school and compare them to the PC users and the Mac users would win by far. A computer does not influence a person's style of writing. If you were to get a good, large group of students, you would see that the results are flawed, and that Mac users would tend to outperform PC users.
...
Ofcource we are stupid!
99% of us are using Windows!
GNU/Linux is available, but we are using Windows!!!
You dont have to be a rocket scientist to see that PC users are stupid...
Then why did they pay so much for a computer with only a one button mouse?
:)
Eh? Eh? I thought so.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Should it not be the Queen's English?
I reckon that the current Monarch is referred to as Her Majesty, not His Majesty.
Coincidentally, you used a subject to open the sentence.
MODERATION: -1, dumb as a fucking brick
That entire paragraph contains more FUD than in all your quotes combined.
By "PC users" I assume you mean mono-cultural, ill-informed Windows users with penis envy who have nothing better to do than bash people for choosing another operating system.
There is no lack of applications (no, not even in games) and nobody is playing catch-up with anybody. PC users like yourself are too busy spreading just as much (more IMO) FUD and *that* is why they don't buy Macs.
... have seen my share of pretty dumb Mac users. Like the guy that lived in the same dorm as a friend of mine. He had an ancient milk carton in his room, and went to throw it away. But he couldn't work the lock on his dorm-room and had to climb out of the window. Then he proceeded to pour the sourmilk down the first stormdrain he saw.
Oh, and he was dressed in an old bathrobe, white shorts with red hearts on them, and had green flipflops on his feet. He looked VERY smart!
Brand new Powerbook on his desk.
Or the sysadmin (!) at a firm I once visited. He didn't know that harddrives could be emptied. When his harddrive got full, he bashed it with a hammer and bought a new one. Saw about five G4's in his office.
(note: this is NOT anti-mac. I love mac's. This is just my $0.02)
This is my sig, this is my gun. This one's for flaming, this one's for fun.
She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.
Yes that is a problem with Mac users now. They got Unix (underneath) and they think they are even better than before.
Well, the Apple Co motto is "think different." If we are going to use proper English as a measure for intelligence, should they be disqualified for using an adjective rather than an adverb to modify a verb?
An "unimpeachable source" by definition should be current, particularly with regard to computing. I don't know if you've noticed, but things in the computing world tend to change very quickly. Try and see if you can keep your sources at least within a half decade, 'k junior?
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
It's funny to see the boys fight over their favorite computer. Get an emulator for the other platform and shut up. I like PCs and Windows better, and don't like Macs, but that's just me. I'm not going to harass people about their choice.
Melissa
Ironic that the program used by this guy to analyze the intelligence of users based on diction, has misspelled 'sentence' on their webpage. Screenshot of typo. Funny!
Wow. I put this right up there with "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" and "Volvo, its boxy, but its good." I would say that the high percentage of known artists and academics that are Mac Users is what makes this urban legend keep getting bandied about. As a person who supported Mac's in an earlier incarnation of my career, I would say that the typical Mac user is one that "thinks" they are smarter than everybody else. Then they call tech support to come save them from their own superiority.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
Yeah, judging the posters in a forum by the messages they post in the forum is like...wait, WTF was your point?
This is the most idiotic article I've ever heard of. Hmm, the source is questionable (of course Mac World will say crap like this), the conclusion is a generalization, and the rest is crap!
A large number of Mac users are english teachers.
DUH!
The article is about scores from forums used by PC and Mac users, not about users themselves. I use a PC and some unix boxes and don't usually contribute to forums. :)
:)
I think that the typical PC forum user is young and looking for answers to their questions about e-donkey or kazaa, while mac people tend to be older and look for some other things (what? I dunno
While I'm not an English spoker, I've seen some of the best English arount in comp.lang.perl.moderated
Ric Ford moderates the comments posted to the Macintouch discussion. Unless Ric is a complete and utter moron I'd hope the comments he lets through were written with above average grammar and logic.
Stupid people buy what the smart friends have, so they can get help for free.
The statistics this article uses are readability statistics. They measure (duh!) how easy the supplied text is to read. This does not represent mastery of the language. In fact, way back in journalism school, we were all taught that our goal should be to write for the average 8th grade student. Writing clearly -- defined as easily read --is often far more difficult than using a larger, more precise vocabulary. And neither clarity nor vocabulary has anything to do with expressing complex ideas -- the most difficult task in writing. In summary, the article is nothing but a rhetorical flourish.
Ten bucks says Mac User also drives a Volkswagen, wears Diesel shoes, claims to have shopped at a thrift store, and is secretly ashamed that s/he only got into a state college.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Yes. Next question.
MAC are still sell with 1 mouse button and MAC users are so dumb, they have to buy ANOTHER($) mouse with their mac.
...Slashdot responses have jumped immensely in their intelligence and writing level. Police are reporting that they appear to have been edited and reread before they were submitted to the popular "News for Nerds" site. Rumors hold that Lix scores jumped from the 5th to the 7th grade level overnight! More at 10.
They bought a Mac; of course they're smarter. Is this a trick question?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
2) If I were implementing the metric, any text using "boxen" would be downgraded to "Idiocy". Anyone using "boxen" in the singular would be electrocuted.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Well I still paid around $1000 less for my faster computer which also runs a Unix-like operating system. And I didn't buy it because it was pretty and grape ! So Ha!
On a more serious note Mac users are generaly more computer literate than PC users, but thats not all of them. In fact, working in tech support, some of the stupidest people I've ever delt with were on Macs. I recently have fallen in love with Macs for graphic design after I was forced to use them at my college. However, before that I was quite anti-mac for a good reason. In addition to being some of the most annoying people alive "my computer is a new Mac, ok? it didnt break. i spent like $7000 on this. do you even make that in a year? its your service that is broken!" on tech support calls their whole community is a bit annoying. I remember back in high school we had a choice of macs or pcs in our web dev class. I chose a PC and my teacher gave me a 20 minute lecture on how much better Macs were. However, I got my revenge. These were the first iMacs (the ones with nothing internal) and for some reason I discovered playing a CD, having Eric's Ultimate Solitare, and a web browser window open at the same time would instantly crash the Mac, all of them. So every morning before class I would crash every since Mac in the lab. Showed her.
Basically the world is full of morons on computers and Mac users are no better than PC users. They just get a slightly more stable operating system at the expence of being overcharged and not being able to build their own system.
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
It was my experience that over half of the fifty or so students in the aforementioned class owned an Apple, even though our school is filled with IBM PC's. These people had ACT and SAT scores of 30+ and 1400+ - Harvard admitted four students, UC Berkeley 2, Wash U (St. Louis) 6, and Vanderblit 1, although few of said students could not afford to go to those schools.
By far the most popular computer was the PowerBook. Kids brought their powerbooks to class and connected to our school's crappy wireless network. There were also a great deal of iPods, surprisingly among windows users.
Apple is doing something right- the class of '04 certainly bought a bunch of Apples.
Mac users can't grasp things as simple as right click
x86 users can't seem to grasp that all one has to do in order to execute a right click on a Mac is hold down the Control key while clicking. If that's too much of a pain in the ass, plug in any regular mouse.
and totally wig out when they have to open a command prompt to do something like ipconfig.
You are aware there is this little thing called OS X, which is based on NEXTSTEP, which is UNIX-based, right? You are aware that at most Linux/UNIX conferences 60% of users have Macs, right? I didn't think so. Idiot.
I know I didn't post within the first 5 minutes so this will probably never get read...
The default browser for Mac OS X, Safari, contains a spellchecker. When all those Mac users post in a forum, just about every post is spellchecked by the system. In Windows, the default browser, Internet Explorer, includes no such spellchecker. I'm using IE on a public terminal right now and there's no way in hell I'm going to paste this post into Word just to spellcheck it. Because Mac users always have an easy spellchecker at their fingertips, they feel more confident in using larger words with more difficult spellings.
Oh, that and the fact the CounterStrike is available for Windows-only. That drags the whole community down at least a grade level.
What a useless response. It was a joke. It didn't require your commentary.
I have no idea what's going on right now
Perhaps because I'm anal, and a Slashdot reader, and a Mac user, but...
;) That is, unless I am wrong about "thing1 to thing2" corresponding to "numerator to denominator"...
If the signal-to-noise ratio of something increases, then what you're saying is that the signal is increasing relative to the noise, while your post (which I like otherwise) seems to indicate you intended otherwise.
What he has shown--not proven--is that from his sample of texts that the Mac users simply wrote longer sentences and used words with more syllables (two measures by which Flesch-Kinkaid uses to determine 'grade level' of writing). Nothing about the intelligence of the users (and this is ignoring how that word is vague and undefined) is shown in any form. We have numbers that are the result of simple analyses of texts. Those measures, as far as I know, can't process semantic meaning, and they thus show next to nothing about the 'intelligence' of the authors.
I think that the article is kinda interesting, in so far as Apple users seem to be quite good at expressing themselves; although as someone pointed out, that may have at least something to do with the economics of the wealthier and resultantly better educated owners of expensive Mac platforms.
I do think that "PC Users" is too broad in scope to really be applicable to any group of people. If you are a PC User, it means you could be using:
And any other of the many "weird and wonderful" operating systems that currently exist for the PC. Each of these Operating Systems may vary greatly in terms of the types of user they attract, the amount of skill/study they involve to install/use, which may or may not have an influence of the amount of literate users you find.
I think, for example, that many would agree that *nix users would tend to be somewhat more intelligent than many "average" PC users, who are simply running the standard OEM operating system that was pre-installed on their computer when they got it. Linux may be becoming more accessible to new users these days, but I doubt that most script kiddies, packet kiddies, and people who tend to break their computer by falling for yet another polite suggestion to fix whatever problem they are having with deltree C:\ /y, would even know where to begin on a *nix distro.
In saying that though, it is important not to directly link technical ability with literacy. It *may* be the case that people who run *nix systems are more technically minded than users running Windows, but that does not automatically mean that they are more literate. It *may* be the case, depending on how generally smart an individual user is, but they could easily have unparalleled analytical/mathematical skill, but very poor literacy/communicative skill.
One way or the other, it is just not a fair test to throw all "PC Users" together into one group of people, due to the vast diversity of the PC as a platform, and the amount of different operating systems and communities which rely on it.
I think us "PC Users" are just lucky he didn't go searching for his information on IRC. The average packet kiddie would have us looking like we have trouble walking erect, much less operating a computer. ;)
I'm a Computer/Electrical Engineer and all the computers we used in the lab for prototyping and research are PCs. However, I also produce music in a studio and all they use are Macs. Let me tell you one thing, artists are dumb as hell. They think algebra is hard. HaHa.. try a Digital Signals Processing(DSP) class. Sory if I offended anyone, but its true. Oh, yea if anyone here thinks Engineering isn't hard, go open an Engineering book and try to understand. My dad made that mistake and he's a medical doctor.
The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him;
he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more
convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they
have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to
which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London
much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a
case. If it was a question of an Imperium, he said to himself,
and if one wished, as a Roman, to recover a little the sense of
that, the place to do so was on London Bridge, or even, on a fine
afternoon in May, at Hyde Park Corner. It was not indeed to
either of those places that these grounds of his predilection,
after all sufficiently vague, had, at the moment we are concerned
with him, guided his steps; he had strayed, simply enough, into
Bond Street, where his imagination, working at comparatively
short range, caused him now and then to stop before a window in
which objects massive and lumpish, in silver and gold, in the
forms to which precious stones contribute, or in leather, steel,
brass, applied to a hundred uses and abuses, were as tumbled
together as if, in the insolence of the Empire, they had been the
loot of far-off victories. The young man's movements, however,
betrayed no consistency of attention--not even, for that matter,
when one of his arrests had proceeded from possibilities in faces
shaded, as they passed him on the pavement, by huge beribboned
hats, or more delicately tinted still under the tense silk of
parasols held at perverse angles in waiting victorias. And the
Prince's undirected thought was not a little symptomatic, since,
though the turn of the season had come and the flush of the
streets begun to fade, the possibilities of faces, on the August
afternoon, were still one of the notes of the scene. He was too
restless--that was the fact--for any concentration, and the last
idea that would just now have occurred to him in any connection
was the idea of pursuit.
He had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before,
and what had actually unsteadied him, as we join him, was the
sense of how he had been justified. Capture had crowned the
pursuit--or success, as he would otherwise have put it, had
rewarded virtue; whereby the consciousness of these things made
him, for the hour, rather serious than gay. A sobriety that might
have consorted with failure sat in his handsome face,
constructively regular and grave, yet at the same time oddly and,
as might be, functionally almost radiant, with its dark blue
eyes, its dark brown moustache and its expression no more sharply
"foreign" to an English view than to have caused it sometimes to
be observed of him with a shallow felicity that he looked like a
"refined" Irishman. What had happened was that shortly before, at
three o'clock, his fate had practically been sealed, and that
even when one pretended to no quarrel with it the moment had
something of the grimness of a crunched key in the strongest lock
that could be made. There was nothing to do as yet, further, but
feel what one had done, and our personage felt it while he
aimlessly wandered. It was already as if he were married, so
definitely had the solicitors, at three o'clock, enabled the date
to be fixed, and by so few days was that date now distant. He
was to dine at half-past eight o'clock with the young lady on
whose behalf, and on whose father's, the London lawyers had
reached an inspired harmony with his own man of business, poor
Calderoni, fresh from Rome and now apparently in the wondrous
situation of being "shown London," before promptly leaving it
again, by Mr. Verver himself, Mr. Verver whose easy way with his
millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the arrangements,
the principle of reciprocity. The reciprocity with which the
Prince was during these minutes most struck was that of
Calderoni's bestowal of hi
So here's an honest question.
.spec file tweak but then worked fine on RH9).
I downloaded the "diction" package (I found a source RPM from the PLD distribution using rpmfind.net - needed a little
I installed it, and lo and behold, I still suffer from excessive-passivitis. I always had that problem when I was in situations where my literary output was being graded, and it appears I haven't gotten over it.
So what I'm thinking is, why isn't there a thunderbird plugin that does style analysis, where you could have it analyze email pre-send and set thresholds to warn you when you're writing at too high a level or your sentences are all passive.
Does such a beast exist?
Mac users have more money (implied because they can afford Macs), therefore are probably better educated.
For this same reason, Mercedes owners are more intelligent (on average) than Ford owners.
The black/white intelligence thing just asks for irrational argument. Calm down.
But they are definatly gayer.
ha ha!
I bought the one of the first Bondi Blue iMacs for my wife for Christmas... she giggled and coo'ed over it as she was opening it. Ever since then life has been good.
:)
Oh, and I got a pair of socks.
A happy wife is a happy life.
Written at 5th Grade school level for PC Users
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
What is it? Ideology or self enforced denial which let's many people here believe that windows are no good?
So little is needed to make it problem free, a firewall, a third party browser and maybe email client.. combine that with a little common sense and that's it, done. And don't come with stability, since Windows 2000 that's no longer an issue.
Add to this the greatest selection of software, games, the ability to make the gui look and feel however you want and every reason to use another os is gone.
But no, people rather buy totaly overpriced macs, install a desktop linux distro, instead of giving up 5 minutes for windows.
Yeah, let's pay more, invest more time, to end up beeing limited and less productive.
But it come's down to this, why should i switch, if neither linux nor mac os offer me MORE than windows do?
Windows is where it is because it's good, not perfect, but perfect enough, not only for the novice, but also for the advanced user.
(speaking from the desktop user perspective)
If you had taken a course on labor economics, you would find that the amount of education you receive directly correlates with the amount of return you get for that education. The higher the intelligence, the greater the return for a given year of education. It only stands to reason that those who are more intelligent receive more education. Now the increased money is both a result of the signal that the education gives employers (how intelligent the employee is, as explained previously) and also because of the skills gained from said education (which those of lower ability or intelligence cannot use as effectively).
Furthermore, consider the number of relatively uneducated people who lead companies, but who are also very intelligent. Like Bill Gates: whether or not you like him, it's hard to argue that he's not intelligent.
So really, while money earned usually has a direct correllation with the amount of education received, the amount of education received has a direct correllation to the intelligence. Also, intelligence in and of itself also can lead someone to earning more money (Bill Gates). Thus regardless of the path taken, ultimately higher intelligence usually (note...usually, not always--it depends upon vocation) leads to more success and income.
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
This is the same Paul Murphy that was talking out his @$$ about Apple not having a CPU and how they should go with Sun. The Slashdot reference here makes me think this was written for Slashdot to get a link and hits.
Makes me wish the editors here would... well, edit.
they picked a Mac over a Windows box, that shows some thing right there.
Sounds like PC users got pwned....
Smarter than Windows Users ? Probably ... yes, but Smarter than PC users I thought the Mac was a "Personal Computer"... Lets face it.. as OSX fans will enevitably say MacOSX "It just Works" where as to use linux you need to be a "Ubergeek" etc.
;)
I prefer to think that if you are smart enough not to be a Microsoft following Sheep, and make a concious decision to avoid windows, then you know for sure that there is a difference between "PC" and "Windows".. One is a piece of hardware and one is a piece of software. PC is not Ubiquitous with windows.
Linux users generally smarter than windows users? Most probably.
Mac users smarter than Windows users ?
Smart enough not to line billy boy's pockets maybe. But i've come across Mac users that think that PC is synonymous with Windows, and I find that infuritating. OSX has certainly made Mac's more exciting to geeks, but before OSX came out Windows may well have been easier to get beneath the hood.
How about I throw this into the mix
Are Gentoo users smarter than Linspire users ?
Nick..
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Not necessarily that surprising when you think about it, for a variety of reasons. Macs dominate a much smaller sector of the market, and they are generally more expensive. So the people that buy them are more likely to be in higher income brackets, are more likely to have had more schooling, etc... Now this obviously isn't always true- just a correlation. Also, mac's are usually shinier.
What stereotype-fostering and biased "study"/editorial are we going to accept next? KKK Grand Dragon Presents Evidence That Aryans Are In Fact Master Race. Or maybe Mormon Scholar Confirms That Alcohol And Vulgarities Will Send You To Hell; non-Mormans fucked.
How about some better discretion when posting articles? The article author is an elitist hack, and the question he poses is one that shouldn't even be given any serious consideration. It's too absurd to even be funny, and everyone knows it's only going to start a bunch of silly flamewar and bitching here on slashdot...
Case in point: the post you've just read!
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
The earlier post was a slightly modified version of the output of the Postmodern Essay Generator.
They keep me warm.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
It's not that we are smarter, it's that we treat ourselves better. We don't put up with the same level of shit that windows users put up with, and that probably extends to efficiency in other areas of our lives.
Most MAC users don't even know how to use computers.
*Base model only. One at this price. 96-month lease, $14,223 due at lease signing, residual value $39,000. Annual mileage limit 6k miles, 90 cents for each additional mile. Participating dealers only. Customer must sell soul to the New York Times and submit DNA sample upon delivery. Void where prohibited.
This may not have been intended to be humorous but it sure came across that way to me. You first make a blanket statment about those who use Macs, then you make an even broader statement, comparing academics, artsy, and literary types on the one hand, and geeky technical people (all of which Slashdotters are supposed to be according to your broad brush portrayal).
Then you get even more reductionist by saying that these geeky technical pursuits are useful, by opposition implying that academic pursuits (you know, learning and stuff), arts (you know, self-expression and stuff), and literature (did an electrician write the Lord of the Rings?) are useless. Who is that Twain guy in your sig, anyway?
Finally, as an aside, you mention that better writing style might be handy in communication. You may be on to something there. Believe it or not, people who write for a living have to put a lot of work into it, because conveying information effectively is not something that just occurs spontaneously.
There are millions of Windows and Linux users who are creative, artsy types. There are millions of Mac users who are hard core technical types. There are even *gasp!* millions of technical geeks who are also artistic, and vice-versa. I know, it sounds like dogs and cats sleeping together, but it's really true!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's supposed to be funny, not scientific.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Are Mac Users Smarter than PC Users?
No.
that an article "according to MacNewsWorld" would say Mac users are better. Talk about pandering to you audience.
Or stated another way, Mac users' writing is harder to read and understand.
When someone told me to quit carping, I thought he wanted me to get off the stool!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
..and I can't say I've noticed Mac users to be any different from average PC users. In many cases they don't know their machine very well, and are still stuck on the old saw that Macs are somehow graphically superior to PCs, and that they *can't* get viruses. Trying to point out that nobody's really interested in writing a virus for a low-usage platform falls on deaf ears. If anything, a user of a more user-friendly OS is less likely to be brighter, not the other way around. Their tool requires less thinking on their part, and they like it that way.
Nah, I've never gotten a phone call from her.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I was actually thinking about this for the past few days. I came to the conclusion that PC users are smarter.
My experiences:
I spent a little time on a PowerBook G4 and Apple has written the OS to do everything for me (or the user).
I own a Dell i8600 with Windows XP and I enjoy it. I don't have any problems because I reserve a small portion of my time to maintain the PC. I clean up empty subdirectories, clean up errant files, update virus protection, clean ad-ware, et al. Some guys work on their cars, some guys build ships in bottles, some guys build ships, I keep a highly stable and secure Windows installation. At school, if anyone has computer problems like they can't print, or won't boot, they ask to use my computer because they know it's stable and won't let them down because it never lets me down.
My conclusion:
Apple removes all challenge and problem solving from computing. I didn't get a chance to, but I hear to install a program in OS X, you drag and drop the CD-ROM onto the Finder? I know if I had a Mac fulltime, that I'd feel like I was in the rubber-room of computing. An Apple would literally make me feel stupid because it wouldn't challenge me.
On my Dell, it runs fine. No BSOD, only crashes I see are third-party applications I chose to put on there (and are usually removed). I feel I'm very good at problem solving (almost finished my second engineering degree) and I like the challenge Windows sometimes gives to me. When I do solve the challenge, whatever it is, I feel smart because I solved a real world problem others probably have.
My conclusion:
If I owned a Mac, I'd feel like OS X thought I was some menacing child that needs protection from myself. I own a PC and the occaisional problems I face challenge me and entice me to fix. The solutions to those problems reward me for fixing something myself and when the solutions are shared to others with the same problem, it enhances my social situation with friends. My PC reinforces my confidence in myself in not only computing, but maybe mechanical tasks like fixing something complex on a car, or something else.
... Ducati bikers?
Sheeeeeeeesh fellas when do you actually plan to get over adolescence?
By the way Dr. Freud has an answer to the above question but many of the uR-so-lame-Im-so-c()()L crowd will not like it...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
I used some simple sed and awk scripts to filter my emails in a crude way to get as much of the paragraphs I actually wrote and to strip away all of the rest. I removed email headers, tried to only include the first part of multiparts, and avoided all attachments. I also replaced all email address and urls with the word 'address'. Finally I attempted to splice-out all forwarded messages and copies of what others had written. I expect that this script was not perfect, but it seemed close enough:
<snip - sigh...>
The lameness filter is preventing me from posting the scripts, and I could not get around it by pasting many copies of the lameness filter message here. Interestingly, I got to a page that seemed to have a form on it to add and remove active discussions. Interesting indeed :)
If people are considered intelligent for willingly paying three times more for less performance, then I'm proud to be a moron!
BTW, the my "three times" figure come from personal experience. I added up the cost of my home built system. I then added up how much a comparable system from Apple (and from third parties, since Apple doesn't offer everything my system has) would cost. As I stated, Apple's was three times more.
Which is truly shocking considering that Apple uses assembly-lines and cheap foreign labor to build their products, while mine was crafted by my own hands in real time.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
There are some serious goobs pushing the bell curve to the left... Rush Limbaugh, George Bush...
Similar "reports" (intended to be funny or not) were made back in the early-mid 90s saying the same exact things as this one, just using text that was generated back then. One particular one that I remember actually used papers written for classes in some universities or something instead of limited subsets as mentioned here.
In addition, in casual forums, words like "gonna", "kinda", "l33t", and such will be commonly used and will drive the scores down, as representing incorrectly spelled words if nothing else, (and it can be argued as to which camps will use these things) whereas formal writings will not contain such things. In addition, real-time spell checking functionality of most word processors today will eliminate most spelling issues and flag such casual language as being wrong.
Hang out in #mac on freenode to see where all the retards hide. You can really test out your wit there.
f4g: ne 1 hear?
JThundley: Not if you're going to say 'ne 1', no.
"Me fail english? That unpossible!"
Also, if mac users are so much smarter, how come they're allowing Jobs & Co. to leech them? I will never be able to justify spending $3000 on a mac when I could build a comparable computer for $700 (minus the sweet apple graphics display). For $3000 my computer would be able to take over the damn world!
I googled, wiki'd, used dictionary.reference.com, then thesaurus ... I was losing hope until I found this page.
Parent is not a troll, by any definition of the term. What crack are you people smoking?
This is with all of the MIME encoded attachments, headers, lines beginning with the '>' character, and whatnot. Notice that these results show both "below school year 5" AND "higher than school year 11"! Sure I believe in using style, don't you. And if you do, I have a very nice bridge I am interested in selling to you my friend...
It's not productive. Especially when it's common knowledge that Mac users are WAY smarter.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
2 werds: 1 buttan mouse
Thru some unexplainable* rift in the space/time continuum, this comment from 4 years ago somehow made it into the current discovery.
*Is this what led Hawking to revise his blackhole theory? Did the comment escape from a black hole? It is possible, but woukld seem to be irrelevant, as the comment contains no real information and seems to be a form of background radiation.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What exactly is the point of posting this kind of pseudo-science correlation crap? Editors must be bored and trying to incite arguments or something. I mean seriously here, come on. I think we can all sit here, sift data, and come up with all sorts of crazy correlations & conclusions, doesn't mean they have any basis in reality nor that they even matter.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
As a Linux user, I feel I simply must point out that you misspelled sesquepedalianism.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Why? Because it's white and sleek looking, if it's white and sleek looking it's got to be worth any price. Paper Chinese Throwing Star for sale on Ebay
uh... that's three words.
Is that after choosing PC over Mac I'm several hundred dollars smarter :)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
They have the courage to choose to be different. That in itself has alot to say about them. I still get the same old question from PC users about what software runs on a Mac.
/. crowd). It has always amazed me that we can choose from a plethora of car types, colors, and sizes. Joe Sixpack can tell the avantages of each but ask him to explain anything about computers and you will get a blank stare.
The same can be said for people that bother to use Mozilla (outside of the
Most of the Mac users I know decorate and name their PCs. They seem to have a more romantic relationship with this piece of equipment, whereas PC users consider their computers tools. Maybe this explains why Mac people are so defensive? It's like calling their girlfriend names?
Ever used XCode? Tried to remove extraneous files from a project?
Yeah. I selected the files I no longer wanted, hit the delete key, and Xcode asked if I wanted to delete the files or simply the references to them.
Damn, that sure was tricky!
Proof that debian itself is smarter than users, whether mac, unix, pc, or what have you, clocking in at higher than school year 11:
# style xv_3.10a-27_i386.deb
readability grades:
Kincaid: 19.9
ARI: 14.7
Coleman-Liau: -8.7
Flesch Index: 60.7
Fog Index: 24.3
Lix: 60.8 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 3.0
sentence info:
8760 characters
7240 words, average length 1.21 characters = 1.00 syllables
119 sentences, average length 60.8 words
61% (73) short sentences (at most 56 words)
25% (30) long sentences (at least 71 words)
1 paragraphs, average length 119.0 sentences
35% (42) questions
4% (5) passive sentences
longest sent 412 wds at sent 105; shortest sent 1 wds at sent 54
word usage:
verb types:
to be (5) auxiliary (0)
types as % of total:
conjunctions 0% (4) pronouns 3% (198) prepositions 0% (7)
nominalizations 0% (0)
sentence beginnings:
pronoun (4) interrogative pronoun (0) article (4)
subordinating conjunction (0) conjunction (0) preposition (1)
:)
copied the original speller's word and only fixed the one letter
Nepotism: Favoritism shown on the basis of {fleshly} relationship, e.g., in granting an appointment of responsibility, or in rendering a biased judgment.
Very close, but wrong... you must use a PC, right? ;-)
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
Hmmm. Slashdot commentors score "higher" and "more intelligently" than does the author. That's not something I'd put on a bio -- "My articles are statistically proven to be slightly less intelligently written than the average reader post on Slashdot" -- unless one was looking for a position at, say, the New York Times, perhaps.
But why stop our analysis there? How about an analysis of the grammar using diction? Here:
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
In the past he has often mentioned using Macs, including for reading his email during his show. I haven't listened to the lying druggie SOB in a while so I'm not sure if he still uses them.
I used to think it would be a gutsy move by Apple to have him advertise/promote the Mac on his show (more explicitly than he did by just mentioning them). 20 million "dittoheads" rushing out to buy Macs (and they would if he "told" them to) would really give a boost to Apple's value!
Of course they would lose all the Hollywood and "Artsy" types, and probably many educational users, so it would be an interesting gamble.
there, their, they're
Didn't you ever study english? God, you're soooo ignorant! BTW my titanium powerbook cost more than your house, you prole!
Regards, mac_zealot
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
Kincaid: 16.7 (James: 18.2)
ARI: 20.6 (James:22.2)
Coleman-Liau: 11.5 (James: 9.8)
Flesch Index: 47.7 (James: 46.7)
Fog Index: 20.4 (James: 21.7)
Lix: 64.6 = higher than school year 11 (James: 64.4)
SMOG-Grading: 14.3 (James: 13.5)
I think we can safely assume that some of Mr James's henchman have attempted to bribe the judges.
2) If I were implementing the metric, any text using "boxen" would be downgraded to "Idiocy".
And, of course, anyone reading your ratings would downgrade you to "humo(u)r impaired".
Now, granted, "boxen" is a rather old bit of wordplay that's not nearly as funny as when it was new. But it's still good for ferreting out the people who don't have anything more important to complain about. So we can expect that it will continue to appear here, until it no longer gets any comment from bored readers.
I wonder if there are any language metrics that successfully take into account things like geek wordplay humor? That's gotta be something that's difficult to measure.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
So, when did you "move up" to CompUSA?
i own a powerbook, to look pretty against all my x86 based workhorses.
That must have qualified you for MENSA.
oh ya, and these people always irritated the fuck out of me, and didnt understand half the shit i tried to explain to them.
Two parter here. 1) Use of profanity is the mark of high intelligence. 2) Electronics salesmen on the whole are smart and knowlegeable and know what's best. It goes wothout saying that people who were not willing to buy your reccommneded product were churlish dolts that should be put to death.
They're better at expressing themselves, because as gays, they are more in touch with their feelings and emotions.
Isn't the point of communication to get the point of the communication across?
When writing for a broad audience, you should write as clearly as possible.
Writing clearly means the readers will be less likely to misunderstand you. It also makes it less likely you will make a mistake, and not get your point across.
What the indexes in the article refer to are 'readablity indexes'. The lower the score, the more likely you are to be understood. A low is a good score.
Why?
The longer the average sentence is, the higher the index will be.
The longer the average word is, the higher the index will be.
Using shorter sentences and shorter words lowers the index.
A lower index means more people can understand you.
Someone who can communicate ideas effectively is more likely to get a low score on the indexes in the test. Try analysing a newspaper. The NYT has a Fog Index of 12 (according to a quick google), which is about the level of someone who has finished high school. Anything above about 12 severely limits your audience.
Hope that this was clear enough for everyone.
I'd be modding you down right now for sheer stupidity if I still had the points. Nobody cares that you already posted it, so STFU.
I beg to differ, although this argument can have no resolution: it all depends on how you define intelligence
Language skills are primarily built through reading and speaking, not writing. If you never read anything other than "Go Dog Go" and "Yo Mama!" is accepted as conversation, you shall never attain a greater skill at language in general.
Without the firm base of language, how can one build the theoretical framework wherein to store the facts and relationships which we would construe as intelligence? Without the framework, persons who achieve a narrow skill in areas such as creating spreadsheets are nothing more than an idiot savant.
Case in point: a software developer who lives in their mother's basement with a Grade 12 education (or worse, a C.Sc. degree). Great skill in memory managment or network protocols may be attained, but any clue as to how to connect these skills to everyday life or commerce is lacking. We used to have a guy with a C.Sc. college degree working here. He could argue all day long about the inefficiency of a solution, but could not communicate with any of our clients in an intelligent manner.
Therefore I define intelligence as more than a narrowly-focused skill. It requires a breadth of knowledge which comes from reading and communicating with others who have differing experiences and viewpoints. These communication skills will manifest themselves in writing ability.
Now, I don't agree with the original article's methodology, but I would agree on principle that if one is a clear communicator and accustomed to such, one would prefer an OS which endeavors to distinguish itself through a superior user experience (i.e. clearer communication to the user).
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
I'm a Mac user who did my BA and MA in English. I ran a paper I considered to be one of my best through Diction and Style's analysis and came up with these results:
Kincaid: 12.6
ARI: 14.3
Coleman-Liau: 14.3
Flesch Index: 46.0
Fog Index: 16.3
Lix: 55.1 = school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 14.0
After analyzing my own writing, I fed it one chapter from my friend's dissertation -- who is a non-native speaker. The results are really not that significantly different, though his writing is filled with many non-native quirks:
Kincaid: 10.9
ARI: 12.7
Coleman-Liau: 15.2
Flesch Index: 50.0
Fog Index: 13.2
Lix: 54.8 = school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 12.0
The bottom line is that this analysis really means nothing. Once one reaches a certain writing proficiency no computer can accurately measure style. Even many teachers' perceptions of 'good' style is questionable.
What's really frightening is that many schools/teachers are beginning to grade students' papers electronically, with programs such as this.
Yes, I readily admit I did use a pretty broad brush since I didn't want to get into a long dissertation here. I stand by my personal observations, but it's only my own opinion and worth what you paid for it.
My wife is one of those people who is both an artist and a professional writer. She switched from a Mac to a PC around 1997 so I won't disagree with you a bit that there are plenty of exceptions in both directions.
Oh, about that Mark Twain fellow, he didn't use a Mac either, he did use a typewriter, though. Well, after 1874 anyway.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The specs the $799 Mac are roughly the same as a $399 PC here (the Mac has Firewire, probably a more robust processor, and faster memory, while the PC has built-in ethernet, a *much* higher clock speed, and a memory reader). When most people consider their computer an appliance (versus a performance machine), saving $400 for a 'mundane' PC is a big deal.
Also, the person who spends $2,000+ on a PC is either a geek who's putting together an amazingly fast machine themself, or an average person who has the money to buy a top of the line pre-built PC. Neither fall into the category of someone looking for a budget computer.
Missing details: PC: Monitor sold separately, the emac has a built in 17" sony flat screen- takes much less space this way
Mac: also has built-in ethernet
Mac: if used as an 'appliance' will be much more useful since it's a single piece that can be moved from room to room more easily
PC: memory card reader- for mac just plug the camera, mp3 player or other device directly into the emac and it automatically mounts and opens the neccessary software- no drivers needed
I'm not going to argue clock speed, but if you've used a mac you'll know why I don't need to.
I have a client that was looking to pay $500 for a new home office pc without the monitor and they wanted an lcd monitor, which would have ran them another $500. I was able, without much effort, to convince them that the emac would fit their needs for less and when the company has more money in the next year or two it would be the perfect computer to hand down to their kids. They're buying it this weekend!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
And like to dress in tighter and liter colors. These users are usually not afraid of expressing their feminine side and are more sentimental...
Seriously, I doubt they are more intelligent. Maybe more creative, but just think of this: their PC are easier to use, thus they do not need to force their brains trying to figure out why the (windows) PC crashes, for example... nor do they need to learn all of the Linux world, etc...
I for one prefer to continue being a hard a** PC user...
Of course Mac (OS X, anyway) users are smarter. Most PC users (the average PC-using Joe) don't use UNIX/a UNIX-like OS for their daily needs.
I'd be modding you down right now for sheer stupidity if I still had the points. Nobody cares that you already posted it, so STFU.
And I'd be modding you down for not paying attention. The parent poster replied to *me* about something *I* had already said. Thus *his* post was redundant.
Now go troll somewhere else.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
really, well a magazine devoted to Macs seems to think so. Really its not biased, not at all.
This is as much relevent news as the posting a link to how much Jerry Fallwell hates gays, goths, the intarweb, aethists, etc.... We all know it, we don't care/wanna hear it.
We all know mac users think they are smarter than everyone else, so we really don't need it re-hashed.
This article is practially begging Slashdot to post these writing statistics on each article page.
Silly.
You might as well point out that BMW drivers have a higher average IQ and writing ability than Chevy Nova drivers. Macs are vastly more expensive machines to own than PC's. Folks with higher income levels corellate well with folks who are intelligent and expressive. Any time you've got a 'luxury' good, it will correlate this way.
Not news.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I run Linux on my Mac, and FreeBSD on my x86 PC, but I don't think one makes me smarter than the other!
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
This is an attempt by /. to make more money on advertising by running sensationalist stories b/c they know they'll get more traffic.
Or they are just boners.
Actually I think you mean the SNR has decreased but we know what you meant
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Those people are flamebaiting... the point is to make the message offensive to bug other people, not make it look nice.
Idiot.
definitely not from the well-yes-duh dept.
more like from the let-the-flamewar-commence dept.
And, since BMW Owners have more sex , would it also follow that Mac users have more sex as well ? Hmmm.
If you read his letter, he wasn't even coming close to implying that the Mac was a panacea. He even stated how he develops on Linux.
That being said, you don't need to use the IDE to develop on a Mac. Develop for X Windows if you prefer. The development environment for the Mac will let you do that. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Wot an styupid qestyun.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
This one would end up being 34% Flamebait, 33% Troll, and 33% Funny.
Damn, no mod points for me.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Come on now, industrial design? You're using a buzzword. I can claim that the trash can outside is "industrially designed."
I would say that the Mac is very good at abstraction: video is video, music is music, documents are documents. In a PC environment, things are files, and the files are what matter. For example, something is captured using iMovie. It's not a DV file, it's a DV stream inside. If I put it into final cut, it has to be rendered, which takes freaking forever.
On a PC I can put just about anything into VirtualDub and change the compression, the framerate, etc. With a Mac you don't really have that level of transparency -- it's just video. And that lack of information makes me uncomfortable.
Given a large vocabulary, we must consider two aspects when thinking about intelligence and writing in general. They are communication, and artistic values.
:P
Communication is the ability to get a message across. It takes a sender and a receiver. Assuming our sender has a large vocabulary, the receiver's vocabulary must be taken into consideration when communication occurs. Additionally, the ratio of noise to content on the communication channel can also effects the outcome.
Artistic value is our understanding of how language is used to entertain. It can be through the artistic twist of words in a poem, or the smooth flow of story that brings a reader to the end without his noticing the hours that passed in the interim. Everything written has some artistic value (whether intentionally, in the form of Shakespeare's "Othello" - or unintentionally, in the form of motherboard technical manuals - with their near hilarious translations).
Given:
1. Forums are a means of getting information quickly across to an audience - and that the posts generally 'fall off the bottom' in short order.
2. Average slashdot readers have the IQ of a chimpanzee, and the vocabulary of an orangutan.
Is it any wonder the articles and posts, herein, contain such a low rating? Conversely, would it be 'intelligent' to post articles that were not suitable for your audience?
The real question is, why are Mac users not smart enough to post intelligible articles on slashdot?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Im brasilian and live in brasil.
I've never seen a Mac.
Most Mac users are from USA.
Born english people naturaly speak better english.
This just migth be a reason for Mac users speak
better english then PC users.
then why are they only capable of handling one mouse button.
Look at all the posts modded Troll (or negative), and look at ones modded Insightful (or positive).
- Posts marked Troll/-1 usually contain claims of PC over MAC
- Posts marked Insightful/+1 usually contain claims of MAC superiority
Hmm...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
MACINTOSH BAD COMPUTER! HULK NO LIKE BAD APPLES!
Tiny keys too SMALL for Hulk hands, mouse only fit under TIP of Hulk fingers. No can READ EMAIL from mac or see GOOD HULK WEB SITES! THIS MAKE HULK MAD! Then plastic case SMASHES when Hulk turn it on, not good metal like Hulk's AMSTRAD with OVERSIZE SERIAL KEYBOARD!
Macintosh no have HULK VIDEO GAME me think so enyeweys. EVERY COMPUTER SHOULD HAV?E HULK VIDEO GAME, ME SMASH TANKS AND BIG, BAD MONSTERS! MONSTERS USE MACINTOSHES MAKE ME ANRGY!!!!
HULK SMASH BAD APPLE! APPLE BAD!!! AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Don't know the answer to that one, but I just finished reading replies to the I, Robot movie - subject line "dissapointment."
What is the windows equivalent of constantly leaking oil on the garage floor? Piss poor engineering? Shoddy manufacturing?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Okay, let's think this out. To me it looked like the article was simply comparing the gammar of the PC users to that of the Mac users. Could it be, that PC users are simpl more nerdy (and hence by defult use worse grammar) then Mac users. I'm sorry, but when it comes down to it, I have a really hard time beleiving that the avrage Mac user knows more than your avarage Linux user....
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
LOL. A piece of rock is better expressing itself than the average slashdotter.
Might one not see the humor in this when you realize the source is MacNewsWorld.
/now i wait the inevitable attack of retarded moderators
Only a wee bit biased. That said, a lot of the mac-only users i teach can't explain what happens when they have a problem with their computer. "it stopped" "it beeped" "uhhhhhhh, oh shit" and the dreaded "make it work, don't reboot it" after a kernel panick. They have similar problems with just about every other situation in life.
I digress perhaps, but I disagree with their conclusion. Mac users are just as bad.
Presently here, but not there.
It is more difficult to sound arrogantly condesending (as so many Mac users do) when you can only snarl inarticulately, even if you are a brilliant Linux programmer. I've met a number of very, very smart Linux programmers, and a few very, very smart Windows programmers who weren't all that articulate. As a result, they didn't sound nearly as smart as the Mac users.
But then, the measure of "smart" or intelligence, continues to be elusive, and difficult to separate from the use of language.
If they are speaking the King's English, then we would also have to add the accusation that Mac users are ridiculously out-of-date.
It's been the Queen's English since 1953 (6 years after the invention of the transistor!)
First of all think this has nothing to do with Mac's people being smarter than PC people or whatsoever. It is more an issue of the availability of Mac's in other countries. Since most Macs are sold in America, the average level of English knowledge at the Mac side is higher than at the PC camp, since it is their native language. Also more PC's are sold worldwide that means a lot of people use English as their second language.
Secondly most people know about PC's and not MAC's in fact they never heard of them. That means a lot of people from different 'classes' are using PC's, so the average intelligence of users is lower, but also more accurate for the intelligence of all average computer users worldwide.
Thirdly; we are living in a changing information age, look at simple things like SMS, we're used to compact our communication in small messages. At that time the usage of nice language gets compromised.
I hope you get my point English is not my primary language
btw, I'm using a Mac.....
Ok smartguy, I have a BS in Computer Science and Film Production, I work as a video editor/effects artist/programmer. After working with macs in all of my different aspects of work, I could say about a thousand things right now about your "technical claims" about why macs are better.
Lemme give u a little lesson in computer viruses. Say you want a write a virus, what is your common goal? Your common goal is to create the largest infection that you can create.
So here is the big headed Mac users say "Mac is so much better than Windows, there isn't any viruses on mac"
U wanna know why there is no viruses on macs, because a virus writer does wanna take the friggin time to write a virus on your small ass userbase.
and yes Windows works fine if you actually understand how your operating system & its security actually work. So if you have some stupid expensive made for you solution that runs a Moron auto update that is supposed to keep you safe. You might as well stick to your little yuppie artsy know it all userbase, and leave the other OS's to people who actually understand the tools they are using.
me no understand
me smart
me slashdot
what say bad man about me - me no know mac?
Overall, the results are pretty clear: Mac users might not actually be smarter than PC users, but they certainly use better English and a larger vocabulary to express more complex thinking.
I would argue that many PC oriented sites (especially those dealing with hardware) use very specific, exact language to describe the complex subjects they are dealing with, similiarly to the way any field of study develops their own terms and definitions to add clarification to concepts.
While such language may not be broad and flowing, it is precise, and meant to avoid ambiguity. It takes more thought to express yourself in such terms, though they might score lower on such a test.
On the other hand, there are a lot of L33T crackers out there that can't split an infinitive to save their life.
Well of course Mac users are smarter... they bought Macs rather than PCs, didn't they? :-P
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
think about what you're saying for a minute and then answer this question:
do you believe that the -1 comments are authored by the same ratio of PC users:Mac users as the rest of the comments?
- if yes, then including the -1 comments could not have affected the statistical results of his survey. so this is wrong.
- if no, and you think that -1 comments are mostly authored by Mac users, then the results should have reflected that more Mac users are dumb. but they didn't. so this is wrong.
- if no, and you think that -1 comments are mostly authored by PC users, then... wouldn't that imply that PC users are dumber anyway?
so again... wtf is your point?
Take 2 groups of 100 each, and let's say they have an equal amount of "intelligence" or "expressiveness" or whatever. Now add 10,000 more people to the group which has an easier learning curve, and what do you get? A different average for that group.
So this study essentially says nothing to the effect of comparing the "best" users of both worlds.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
In other news, thesaurus.com was slashdotted today as numerous Slashdotees attempted to artificially sound more intelligent in their posting.
My experience with Mac users have been: they have all been artists. They may be more "expressive" with their art, but try getting them to save a file in a format legible by the rest of the world. All I ever get are stuffit, quark express, appleworks, etc. from them, and they just can't seem to think YOU should be able to deal with it.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
That statement isnt really all that impressive. If you vocabulary extends beyond "D00D!!! M1|I'm not going to comment on the PC side of the issue, but am tempted to call bullshit.
All of this is pre-OSX, of course:
Apple's tradition of donating Macs to liberal arts programs all over the US goes some way towards accounting for the supposed greater 'expression' skills... at my university, Macs were used almost exclusively for graphic design and in the humanities department, while in the engineering program we had *nix mainframes and PCs with linux and NT. The Mac users could express themselves all they wanted, but when it came to using the computer for anything outside of it's 'Microsoft Bob'-like interface, they'd call one of us unexpressive PC guys over to help them.
When I was first looking at computers, I asked a friend who was familiar with both Macs and PCs which he'd recommend. He told me that the Mac was so simple that "any idiot can use it".
I figured if "any idiot" was Apple's target audience, I'd go for the PC.
-AC Out!
and they annoy the skiers (for no good reason, they're just annoying)
As an occasional skier myself, I can say there is a very good reason why snowboarders annoy the hell out of skiers, it's because they do sort of crash very frequently indeed because they can't stand still properly, they basically have to sit down to stop. They tend to do this in big groups right in the middle of ski slopes which skiers are trying to go down, I've crashed into these people a couple of times, very annoying!
This may be true, but the girl that runs "cubeowners" in insufferable
me lik win doz
win doz gud
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
This is getting tedious. I propose we take a break and debate the spelling of "Supercalafragalisticexpialadocious" instead.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
another industry like it... drugs(from coffee to cocaine... though i like those two much more then making something in powerpoint.)
Most of them want to be in a self-selected "victim" group. Insurers don't like to insure Mac users because they have a higher incidence of psychosomatic illnesses (like Epstein Barr, allergies, or colitis), and are more likely by a factor of 56% to contract AIDS than the general population.
.... and certainly are better at handling the king's English than the average PC operator."
Euh, afaik Apple has a far larger marketshare in the USA than e.g. in mainland Europe due to it being entrenched in the US educational system.
So if you have a higher percentage of native speakers, no wonder they write better English on Slashdot on average
I'm sure we could fix that with a little Astroglide.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Saying Mac Users are smarter than Volvo/Mercedes Users is like
saying Mercedes/Volvo Drivers are smarter than, say KIA/Ford Drivers. If you have $ you're likely to pay extra for top quality integrated hardware and software (including Unix). Besides, who wants to hassle with viruses, worms and other Microsoft gocthas.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
95% of us prefer women.
that is: Mac Users smarter than PC/Microsoft Users.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
One of the big Windows-users things is that Macs must be wimpy because you don't have to wrestle with your computer in order to get it to work. Why shouldn't setting up your computer be made easy to do and appealing to look at?
Me PC user mad that mac user smarter den me! Me angry that mac user look cool with titanium powerbook! Damn mac user get all da women!
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
I wonder if this has anything to do with it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I try to point out stupidity wherever I see it. This is bogus.
:-) - my first-ever smilie on slashdot.
The windows sites are all unvetted off-the-cuff posted comments, like Slashdot. macintouch.com takes reader submissions, EDITS them for spelling and grammar, tosses out the lousiest ones, and posts them.
This mostly explains the higher readability quotient. And the fact that people are trying to work up to the level of the previous posts explains the rest, and also explains the larger vocabulary.
Basically, this is a totally bogus way of proving something that we all know is true anyway.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
When my mother went and bought an off-the-shelf PC from a big-name store I popped to my favorite little computer store and bought a cheap NIC to go in it. Imagine my surprise when the PC was delivered a few days later and it had an on-board network interface!
This prompted me to go into a few stores and poke around. It seems that the increasing popularity of DSL and cable alongside cheap home networking hardware have made on-board Ethernet standard issue.
(That redundant cheap NIC later went in my new router. It's nice to have some spare hardware lying around sometimes. :))
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07 -12&res=l (take out the space between the 7 and the dash)
Yes, they bought a Mac.
-tom
I'm freggin America's Ladies' Man and I'm interesting in chicks, dern it. My G5 is the ultimate geek machine and my PowerBook is a chick magnet.
The statement that "Mac" users are "smarter" than "PC" users is fundamentally flawed. The term "PC" describes a general concept in hardware architecture, while "Mac" refers to not only the computer itself, but the operating system for which it is designed. Publishing comparisons such as that which is the subject of the article only helps to perpetuate the misguided notion that the two can be directly compared. A similar comparison is that of Linux to Windows. While Windows is a package made up of a bootloader, kernel, shell, GUI and applications, the name Linux describes only the kernel which lies underneath what the user sees. Comparing "Linux" to "Windows" is invalid; instead, compare Windows 2000 to, for example, Fedora Core 2. The "bottom line" here is that the only case in which directly comparing "Mac" and "PC" systems or users is acceptable is when you are referring specifically to the computers themselves. In this article, this is clearly not the case.
Yet again.
look at the site it's on.
Anyways, what they dont account for is the fact the Mac user base is very tiny. So you'll get a better concentrated result. However, the PC userbase is more than just windows, it can be any x86 based OS out there. and the userbase is a lot larger, so there is a harder comparison there. However, if they compared, say, linux users to Mac Users or Freebsd users to Mac users, I think it might be a better comparison than just comparing mac users to pc users, since pc users is a very broad statement.
I really cant begin to point out where this survey is wrong.
I'm a Mac user, and somehow I still get suckered into helping a bunch of dumb people with their Windows problems. Hell, I'm the IT manager at my workplace in all but title and paycheck.
Glog!
God, the hot designer chicks that I hooked up with - the things these girls would DO for a copy of Photoshop.
Absolutely amazing.
I miss the good ol' days!
that it requires more smarts to figure out how to use a Macintosh. In different, the Mac UI really has become more difficult than Windows or Linux. Mac is apparently not the computer for "the rest of us" anymore, but the computer for nerds.
Registered and subscribed (a gift), thanks. How else do you think I managed to look up the old story before posting.
:-)
Well, I hate to point this out but that means (a) you did not in fact figure out how to register yourself, and (b) you can't seem to figure out how to post with the registered account!
I think you are digging a deeper hole. Or at least providing me with lots of ammunition for the flippant remark in my original post!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...because it would have to be -1 Troll.
While I'm not a great fan of Macs in general, to say that one group holds some kind of superiority over the other is just plain silly. The only purpose for articles like this is to incite the age-old flamewars between Mac and PC users.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I am a Mensa member, a PC user and an admirer of Mac hardware. However,I would like to point out that this kind of article by Mac zealots is just one more reason why I never get involved with the Mac community. The first thing the Mac evavgelists will tell you is how user friendly Macs are and preach to you about how any illiterate dumbass can use one. Well guess what, a product whose number one selling point is that any moron can use it is not exactly made for the intellectual elite now is it. If you are not a graphics or music professional using a Mac, you are some vegged out hippie who has just paid three times what a PC would cost you to do very little else than surf the web and run dated versions of Microsoft Office. Congratulations on your brilliant insight. Wait you say, Macs are so much more stable and secure. Ok, what you are now saying is that since you are too stupid (or lazy) to patch your machine and run anti-virus software you must pay three times the cost for an overpowered workstation not to have do so. Another sign of your doubtlessly superior insight. With their expensive cost, propietary architecture and limited software availability (especially video games) Macs are very much a niche market product right now. Having a user base who describe themsleves as evangelists and feel the need to insult the other 98% of the computing public to justify purchasing a Mac does not help either. Although I admire very much the intricate beauty and power of Macs especially now that they run on Unix. I PERSONALLY see no need to purchase a Mac. I also see no need to insult those that do. A flame baiting troll of an article like this never should have made it to the front page of slashdot and will effect my decsion to further support this website with my money and time if articles like this continue to be posted.
It's been said, "If you torture the data long enough, it will admit to anything."
My clients' Mac-filled design departments have more hot ass in them than a mule barn in August.
Spending a day on-site at any of them is like a beautiful, billable dream.
With all the programmers out there, one might find writing the 'first' mac OS X virus a challenge or a feather in their cap - yet there aren't any to be found. If a virus writer wants recognition, what better way than to attack the 'virus free' mac?
I guess I will stay with my 'yuppie artsy know it all userbase' and enjoy not having to purchase a firewall, virus software, and all the other crap that is necessary to run Windows with an internet connection.
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
A: No.
-- Mike
iBook Owner
We're talking about real knowledge here, not sports.
Mac users seem to be more aesthetically pleasing as well.
See, this is where you being an AC does not really help things. Are you the same AC? It's really kind of hard to say you know...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Three Laws:
A Mac User may not use a computer running Windows, or, through inaction, allow others to use a computer running Windows. (advocacy clause)
A Mac User must buy products given to them by Jobs, except where such products would conflict with the First Law. (Windows iPod clause).
A Mac User must protect the existence of their Mac as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. (No Windows based security systems).
RESTRICTED - change to, TO BE REVEALED AT WWDC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Hong Kong it seems that the ratio of people using Macs over PCs is totally out of whack with the 2.8% you hear touted around town.
... so I don't have a big problem with the guess that Mac people are smarter. It is a self selected group. I think Unix users are probably smarter again.
Fully 50% of people I know are using Macs. The ones who aren't are still working for some corporate. Almost everyone who is out on their own is a Mac freak. It is perhaps a symptom of the fact that once you get to my age 38 you either break through into the corporate hierarchy or you are out setting up your own business.
Running a Mac based business is way easier than doing the same on a PC. Totally.
So is my experience indicative or typical enough to be relevant? However I think that people who are individualistic enough to go against the grain are more likely to reject MS and go for Mac. The Think Different moniker is probably true. To get that individualistic attitude I think you need a certain amount of confidence - and confidence comes from success.
So I think perhaps the link is success breeds confidence to think different that leads to Mac. Confidence and success comes from people who are smarter (euther in personal skills, business skills or academic skills)
It might be more relevant to check the following: -
The percentage of people with Macs with their own business vs those with PCs
The percentage in creative industries.
The sence of confidence and perhaps sense of being individiualistic of Mac users and PC users.
However - there is a complicating factor due to my age group...
One big reason for Mac and Apple use is that my age group did not grow up with computers. In my first year at High School (1979) we go our first computer - a TRS80. The next year our second computer was an Apple ][ and by the end of my schooling (1983) we were using lots of Apples and a lab full of BBC acorns - not a PeeSee to be seen.
So there is a certain amount of bias towards Apple just from our experience.
But I repeat - I'm continually amazed by the low Mac percentages published as it does not compare with my personal experience. If I had to make a guess PC users are in the minority amongst my friends and associates - and these are people who only have me in common with them - we're not some Mac Cabal or anything.
As someone with a top end Intel system (P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB DDR400, Radeon 9800 256MB, SATA RAID0) and a high end PowerBook (1.5 Ghz, Radeon 9700 128MB, 1 GB RAM) and a long time multi system owner (I also have dual Sparc box) I can testify that Intel/AMD based systems are cheaper than Apple branded equipment, with the sole exception of in the Laptop arena (where Apple actually offers very good value for money, in stark contrast to their desktop range).
After a couple of years you can take your PC into a store, have them add some more memory, a new CPU, and new CD-RW or DVD drive, a new sound card, or a new graphics card, maybe even add an SATA drive.
With your Mac desktop all most users will be able to do is upgrade the RAM, and that only goes so far, the users end up tossing the system out, or donating it to a local charity or community group (where it sits abandoned because it's too slow to use all the latest sofware).
Hey sure if your a ricer you *can* buy a new Radeon AGP card off ebay, or an Intel based one, borrow a friends PC and flash the Firmware and put it into your mac, or even a new CPU daughter card that allows you to add a second CPU by doing something funky like going in via your graphics card slot.
But realistically, users don't even know that's possible, and it all sounds too hairy for them to try themselves and certainly Apple stores and even Mac retailers won't suggest anything like that to them. It's weird ricer behavior as far as they are concerned, best left to the fanboys on ebay who perform insane mods on those cute little Cubes (which now sell second hand for more than they cost origionally).
The end result is, it's far cheaper for an average person to own an Intel based system over the course of 2+ years, especially when you consider people are able to scrounge second hand parts from other PC owners (like a friends old CD-RW drive, CPU, or Radeon/GeForce card), something Mac won't be able to do.
I certainly recommend Mac's to those who I know can afford to spend 2000 UKP on a desktop every 3 years or so (though also based on an individual users circumstance), because I know how much better the user experience is.
But for those on a budget it would irresponsible of me not to suggest an Intel/AMD system when I know they can get one for 250 UKP and then blag a free 17" monitor (and probably future trickle down upgrades like new graphics cards/CPUs/etc) from someone like me.
The mentioned article compares the quality of english language postings in internet forums.
;o)
What about foreign users of these forums (like me)? Although most of us can express well in english language what we want to say I cannot state that we all can compete with Henry James or even a normal native speaker/writer.
We surely decrease the quality of the language used in these forums.
Now my thesis:
Suppose unix and windows users are so smart that they freely use english internet forums (I mean there are a few hundred million native speakers out here compared to billions of non-english spekers). And assume Mac users are a little bit dumb so they only use forums in their own language.
If this would be true, the article compares native speakers with a mix of native speakers and non-native speakers and thus the result would be worth nothing.
Can the writer of this article prove that he only used postings of english native speakers? No, he cannot. So what?
Michael (Windows user between 1990 and 2000, Mac user since 1999, Linux user since 2002
I believe this article reflects more upon the sexual make-up of the two groups. How many alpha males use a Mac? Not many.