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Return of the Mac
Ben Gutierrez writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay on the Return of the Mac which begins with: 'All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs.' Tim O'Reilly said some similar things in Watching Alpha Geeks . From the article: "My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get."
I think you're completely missing the point of the original poster. They were saying "Last year's Usenix conference was full of Powerbooks. Most of the top dogs in the industry." You consider the "top dogs" at the Usenix conference "smart"? Are you out of your mind? I'm talking about academia and the like. Some people at Usenix fall into that category, sure, but most are hasbeens and never-wasses deparately clinging onto 20-year old patents to make a quick buck.
"I said that when you see somebody smarter than you carrying a Powerbook, you notice."
Personally, I don't take notice of the kind of computer someone is using. I take notice with what they use it for. Someone can pull out a 286 orange-screen CGA bricktop for all I care. If they got it to do something insanely cool, like squeeze significant performance out of it, that's worth seeing. Seeing someone carry a Powerbook (which, incidentally, I see a lot of PR and politicians use -- do we also consider them smart?) doesn't qualify.
"Okay, so your definition of "smarter" hinges around having a pathological interest in stuff that's utterly obsolete and of no practical use to anybody."
No practical use? Gee... all these kids I hire for their exceptional assembly programming skills, who honed their skills taking apart Speak and Spells, obviously don't belong in crafting 64-bit chips, correct? I'll just take a Powerbook user with a flashy case.
"You know, I really wish your nickname were literally true."
You know, I wish yours wasn't. You spout just about the same amount of bullshit as the tube.