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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!
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.
No, there not!
Sincrly,
PC User
Doesn't that only include Gentoo users who are running on a mac? ;)
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
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
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.
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
Just to get to "Yes".
...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)
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.
- 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
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."
Dont descrimnat! Us PC users can lern vocabularee gud an uther things gud to! Jus cuz us got no fansee buk lernin duznt meen us dum! Maybee them Mac users think they ar betur then us but they ain't! Them dont unnerstan what us has bin threw animore. Us have to grow up with onlee 100000 $ a years had a hard lief! Us maid stong cuz of that! Them liv in soft wile us gets hard!
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
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*.
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?
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."
better style can result in better communication
... and a better chance of getting a date.
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)
...you have to be smarter than average to use the quaint Mac interface. I sure never managed it :-/
That was the first thing I thought of too. And not just the h4x0r-speak, but most posts are fired off pretty quickly and carlessly, and often with a focus on being funny or interesting, and not on making sense. I wonder how "In Soviet Russia, our new overlord Beowolf clusters don't have an imagination to imagine you, you insensitive clod!" (or other nonsense) would rate on one of these systems. It doesn't check for content, right?
Anyway, the funniest thing about this article has to be this guy's picture. I keep thinking he looks like my grandfather, stoned, being distracted by 'pretty lights'.
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."
It's in the "It's Funny. Laugh." section - this is supposed to provoke a flamewar just for the sheer hell of it. As a Mac, PC, Solaris and Linux user, I intend to sit back, have a chuckle, and toast the marshmellows using the searing heat radiating from my browser window...
Cheers,
Ian
If one examines the Macintosh camp, one is faced with a choice: either accept postcapitalist patriarchialist theory or conclude that discourse is created by the collective unconscious, given that the premise of Jobism or the Jobist image is valid. Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a Macintosh camp that includes art as a reality.
In the works of Steve Wozniak, a predominant concept is the distinction between figure and ground. Woz suggests the use of the neostructural paradigm of narrative to read and analyse class. But if the Macintosh camp holds, we have to choose between the Jobist image and capitalist subconceptual theory.
"Reality is part of the dialectic of language," says Jordan Hubbard. Hubbard implies that the works of Jobism are empowering. Thus, an abundance of theories concerning cultural deconstructivism may be discovered.
In the works of Steve Jobs, a predominant concept is the concept of patriarchialist culture. Hubbard uses the term 'Jobist image' to denote a posttextual paradox. Therefore, the subject is interpolated into a capitalist discourse that includes sexuality as a totality.
The main theme of the works of the Jobist is the role of the observer as participant. In The Cry of Jobs, Hubbard examines the macintosh camp. The meaninglessness, and subsequent paradigm, of cultural deconstructivism depicted in Jobs' "Art in Technology" is also evident in The Moor's Last Sigh, although in a more mythopoetical sense. However, Wozniak suggests the use of the Jobist image to read class.
~
They have to be to by laptops at twice market value. Noting that high pay isn't always representative of intelligence.
The PC is merely a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians. The haecceity of the enchiridion of arcane and recdonite elements of the Mac gestalt appeals to the oniomaina of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis find more than fugacious fullment in its felicific experience.
(Written on a 2x2.0 G5. But you knew that already, I'm sure.)
"Higher income IS correlated with education and intelligence." Paris Hilton. 'Nuff said.
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...
As we say at the mac user's forum, je prends le fromage dans mon pantalon.
You mean "Sesquipedalianism" not "Sesequepedalianism " right? Because misspelling that could be confusing. :)
Then you would be a very dumb smart@ss.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I mean with a title like that on /. you're *asking* for flames.
-Valiss
Not to mention the way these places keep crapflooding the industry by advertising on radio and TV that computer people are in demand and highly paid: Come to DeVry and within a year you'll begin your new career as a highly paid Information Technology Specialist! [cut to footage of guy wearing suit & tie standing over a computer while holding a multimeter]
I wonder if Mac users got penalized in scoring for improper spacing and capitalization for all of the i[Product] names (e.g. iTunes, iBook, iMac). Because if they did, these results would be iNconclusive.
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
> Show off.
;-)
Floccinaucinihilipilifist.
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.
...and then she pulls back the curtain, and there you ARE.
>> Sesequepedalianism does not, however, imply 'intelligence'.
;)
> Sesequepedalianism? That's not even in most dictionaries!
Even more disturbing, check out the first google result!
The unofficial
The PC is merely a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians. The haecceity of the enchiridion of arcane and recdonite elements of the Mac gestalt appeals to the oniomaina of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis find more than fugacious fullment in its felicific experience.
I get SPAM e-mails with all those words in them. I just thought they were putting random words in the message, I didn't realize that it's Mac users who are peddling Viagra.
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?
Somebody got a thesaurus for Christmas!
I'm not sure that needs any kind of qualification, or even comment.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
He got married eh?
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
That's primarily because the original poster spelled it wrong. It's Sesquipedalianism, not Sesequepedalianism.
PC user.
Not Viagra, Orexis! Can't you read?
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.
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?
I think that would depend on the definition of the word "is".
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
Just for fun, my mac summarized this for me (services->summarize):
:)
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."
My Mac is colorless, well it's gray anyway. So yes technically it is a color. Also my mouse is not round. It's oblong with 5 buttons and a scroll wheel. I guess I just don't understand your point. If I look at Apple's site I don't see and pretty colors or round mice. But if I look through TigerDirect, New Egg, Alienware or any other pc catalog, man the colors they area a nausiating.
Oh wait, if I recall back a few years ago they did put out a line of home user based computers that did come in various colors. That must be what you are refering to.
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
"Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - some PC user.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer