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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."

13 of 1,499 comments (clear)

  1. Captain Obvious Strikes Again by stlhawkeye · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news, open source fanatics dislike Microsoft.

    --
    "I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
  2. Funny... by neonstz · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...as this is the first time I read slashdot on my new Mac Mini.

  3. Of course. by Patrick+Mannion · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's UNIX-based! What hacker doesn't want something that uses UNIX. Besides... Linux is sooooooo 90s.

    --
    In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
  4. Let the flame war commence! by goldspider · · Score: 5, Funny

    Self-righteous Apple fanboys in one corner.

    Foaming-at-the-mouth Linux zealots in another.

    This could get ugly, folks. I'm sure the *BSD crowd would chime in too, except that a judge recently orderd the feeding tube to be removed.

    --
    "Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
    1. Re:Let the flame war commence! by FidelCatsro · · Score: 4, Funny

      Im confused , im sitting with a mac running OS X on my left , an old IMac running
      FreeBSD compiling a kernel to my right And behind me I have an x86 laptop running a Dist-upgrade to an install of Debian (unstable)... Its sitting on my sparc server running solaris 8 ...
      So what corner do I go to
      Ive been running around in circles for half and hour now!!

      --
      The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  5. Expose by Ghetto_D · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sure we'll see a sharp decline in the number of ingenious hacks out there as these developers spend their days holding shift and watching expose in slow motion.

  6. Re:I would buy a Mac... by beatdown · · Score: 4, Funny

    He said one, not half of one.

  7. Marketing people love you! by sg3000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Last year's Usenix conference was full of Powerbooks.

    This is an example of Principle of Similarity and Principle of Social Proof including "The Number of Sources" Effect.

    > Most of the top dogs in the industry.

    This is an example of influence using authority, including High Status

    > That prompted me to buy a PowerMac.
    Aha! The requested target action!

    > It's the best computing decision I've ever made.
    Principle of Consistency

    p.s., I'm not mocking you. I just noticed a bunch of statements that match the midterm I have Thursday night. Thus, this post counts as "studying"

    p.p.s., I love my PowerBook

    p.p.p.s., Please note, reading the above post qualifies you to place out of a graduate level Consumer Behavior marketing class.

    --
    Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
    1. Re:Marketing people love you! by idontgno · · Score: 5, Funny
      Remarkable.

      "Marketing Principle" = "Logical Fallacy".

      It makes a strange and liberating kind of sense.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  8. Re:I would buy a Mac... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    My kid brother can aforde a mac mini on lunch money...

    Tell your kid brother that I and all my geeky friends would like our lunch money from the last six months back, uh... please?

  9. Re:Malware, Viruses by WhitefishMT · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ruthless, maybe, but if she's good looking enough, screw the mini, you could buy the dual G5!

  10. long background in C by Shag · · Score: 5, Funny

    Heck, it's even attractive to those of us whose background in C is more of the "int" variety.

    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  11. Totally OT, The Return of the Mac? by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 5, Funny

    I missed the first two installments of this slashdot story, i.e., The Fellowship of the GUI, and The Two Kernels. I can't find the links. Can anyone help me?

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.