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
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
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
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.
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.
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!
Just to get to "Yes".
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)
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".
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.
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.
How about having both PC and MAC?
Subzerorz
More Articles
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.
Then how come when I put a two-button mouse on my grandma's Mac, and she tried to use it, her head exploded?
This reminds me of the shock I got a few months ago when a Mac user buddy of mine was showing off the G4 he had bought on clearance when the G5s came out. I didn't think of him as a power user, especially since he never shelled out $20 for a better mouse. But I almost fell out of my chair when I asked him how many iTunes songs he had purchased... he did a command-tab to cycle thru his apps, stopping on a terminal window, and did a "find . -name "*.m4p" -print | wc -l"
Someone was doing their homework!
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!
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 mean, those Macs are 50% more expensive than a functionally-equivilant PC...
Funny, the same can be said for someone who buys a pre-built PC with a Windows license included.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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...
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.
As we say at the mac user's forum, je prends le fromage dans mon pantalon.
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.
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"
-_-
I mean with a title like that on /. you're *asking* for flames.
-Valiss
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.
I'll just refer everyone to classic pennny arcade
"and did a "find . -name "*.m4p" -print | wc -l"
Someone was doing their homework!"
Obviously not, because you don't need the -print. Mac users eh...
"...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."
"Mac is best for desktop publishing"
I've heard more PC users say this than Mac users. It's indicative of the lack of general education about computers, and how little Apple spends to combat FUD. Apple has changed a lot in the last 10 years, but it seems that the general 'mindshare' is stuck back in '93. Still, I'd rather do DP on a mac than a PC anyday. Considering that's what I do for a living....
"Mac is best for video editing"
The TV show Scrubs is made with FCP - hardly 'prosumer'. There is the 'Sky Captain' movie that was done mostly with Macs. Renderfarms may be PC, sure. But the cutting and editing are done on a Mac in most cases.
Most PC users I know use a PC because they don't buy into all that Mac FUD.
heh. Most PC users I know have a PC because they have the appearance of being cheaper. At first. They also don't bother to educate themselves. Add up all the time/$$$ spent battling viruses alone, and you got yourself a Mac.
I know that what takes several hours on a PC (reinstall WinXP, apps, and drivers) takes less than an hour on my mac. I'll sit out on my deck having a beer or get some work done while you guys dick with Windows.
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.
...
...or he could have just opened iTunes and looked at "Purchased Music."
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?
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
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.
The earlier post was a slightly modified version of the output of the Postmodern Essay Generator.
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
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.
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 :)
There are some serious goobs pushing the bell curve to the left... Rush Limbaugh, George Bush...
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?
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.
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")
BTW, the my "three times" figure come from personal experience. I added up the cost of my home built system.
And what value did you place on your time?
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
All of this is funny! Stupid generalizations piled upon stupid generalizations. As an almost 20 year Mac user, I'm pretty adept at not only using the system, but also with just about every design and multimedia program out there. I know I'm not average within the Mac community though. I've had to learn it to the level I have out of professional necessity.
I also know Windows to a relatively high degree of copmpetency. Not an expert level by any stretch of the imagination, but again out of professional necessity and definitely not by choice!
As for the "average intelligence" of users of different platforms... well, it's a seriously stupid topic to begin with. Granted, Mac users might tend to have more of a right brained approach to the world and learning and expressing themselves and Windows and *NIX based oeprating systems force more of a left brained approach, I don't think it's fair to say that one is smarter or more expressive than another.
There are those that express themselves through coding which is an awe-inspring combination of left and right brained thinking and there are those that express themselves through graphics, multimedia, and office apps. It is truly Apples and Oranges.
I do tend to believe that the tendency for abuse of grammar and spelling tends to be higher on the Windows/*NIX side of things, but that's just my personal experience.
Basically everyone should ignore this gigantic troll of an article and subsequent news posting. WHoever wrote and researched it has successfully filled up a portion of their brain and harddrive space with essentially pointless bullshit.
Pooty tweet
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!
There was a time when the Mac was definitely a superior platform to do graphics work. I recall when Ulead's photo editing packages was the only thing the PC users had. But I digress.
Forward to today. I no longer have my printing business and am now doing network diagnostics/repair etc. I also have many clients from my old industry and most of them are Macintosh based. (they might have a PC sitting alone in the corner for the occasional PC job) I would not consider any of my Mac-shop clients to be any more intelligent than my PC-shop clients. Truthfully, it seems that the Mac users blissfully forage ahead *knowing* that they have chosen the superior platform, without any real knowledge to back it up.
Just like back in my printing days, you are generally more likely to find a PC user that is capable of giving the Mac shop the type of file that they need, vs. a Mac user being able to give the PC shop the type of file they need. PC users seem to be more comfortable with different file formats and such. This may be misguided, or at least offset by the few extremely stupid people I've come across.
Also, don't forget, but the Mac was extremely virus prone in the early days. Hell, it was one of the humorous points I used to make. On the pre-BSD Mac OSs, you could contract a virus just by inserting a disc. Yes, it was actually running a program when it placed that icon on your desktop, but since there weren't ANY computers connected to the internet (Yeah, I even ran a dial-up BBS for my company circa 1989-1994) viruses didn't get any real attention.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that *most* people really don't know why they like what they like, but I'll bet that there are plenty of blinking 12:00 (or 88:88) VCRs in both Mac and PC users households.
-FB
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
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.
Mac users seem to be more aesthetically pleasing as well.