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Ground Rules for the Windows vs. Mac War
FreshlyShornBalls writes "The New York Times is running a story that I think needs to be seen by everyone on both sides of the on-going Macintosh vs. Windows debate (i.e. just about everyone who posts on Slashdot): Some ground rules for the Windows vs. Mac War." From the article: "Last week, I wrote about some of the changes Microsoft has in store for the next version of Windows, which is slated for the end of 2006. Interestingly, very few of you responded to that column, probably because so much may change in the next 19 months. But a few of you fired off diatribes about how I'm either a Microsoft 'shill' or an Apple 'apologist' (or maybe it was the other way around). It's not just me, either; it's a running sardonic joke among tech columnists that you can't even USE the word 'Apple' or 'Microsoft' without getting hate mail from somebody or other."
From bugmenot.com, u/p: yourmom915/yourmomshouse
I'll flame you into extinction for not mentioning Linux!
And what about my BSD brehthren?
I think we've been far to lax for some time... time to take up arms.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I love getting my news from Freshly Shorn Balls. In this age of no media credibility (Newsweek, NYT, I'm looking at you), Freshly Shorn Balls are clearly the answer. :)
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I don't know what this guy's on, but Thomas the Tank Engine rules.
from the users-need-to-think-before-they-pick-names dept.
How excellent.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
Last week, I wrote about some of the changes Microsoft has in store for the next version of Windows, which is slated for the end of 2006. Interestingly, very few of you responded to that column, probably because so much may change in the next 19 months.
But a few of you fired off diatribes about how I'm either a Microsoft "shill" or an Apple "apologist" (or maybe it was the other way around). It's not just me, either; it's a running sardonic joke among tech columnists that you can't even USE the word "Apple" or "Microsoft" without getting hate mail from somebody or other.
It's kind of amazing that various extremists could find the same column too pro-Microsoft AND too pro-Apple. But hey--that's the nature of ideological soldiers, whether they're in the conservative-liberal war, the evolutionist-creationist war or the Hummer-Prius war.
The Mac-Windows war, though, is especially pointless, protracted, and winnerless. There will always be people on each side who are every bit as rabid and un-convincible as those in any other religious war.
Still, I'd like to suggest, as a starting point of civility, a few pointers for participants in the O.S. war. Consider it one man's version of, "Can't we all just get along?"
1. Hate something for its failings, not for its success.
It's totally fine to criticize something because of its flaws--to hate Windows because it's bloated and cryptic, for example, or the iPod because it's too easily scratched. But condemning something just because it's the dominant product is just sour grapes. Arguments along the lines of "I hate Bill Gates because he's rich" or "I hate the iPod because everyone has one" add nothing to the dialogue.
2. No condemning something until you've tried it.
If everyone abided by this idea, about 95 percent of all the Windows-Macintosh diatribes would evaporate overnight. But here it is: If you haven't tried something, then you really have no basis to comment.
3. Execution matters.
I'm so tired of reading discussions like this: Person A: "I love Mac OS X Tiger! That Spotlight thing is so cool: press a keystroke, type a few letters, and get an instantaneous listing every file, folder and program containing that text."
Person B: "You pathetic loser! It's called hard-drive indexing, and Windows XP has had it from Day One." Of course, the truth is that Windows Indexing Service is to Spotlight as Thomas the Tank Engine is to a bullet train. In Indexing Service, you can't search with a single keystroke, the speed is nothing like Spotlight's, you can't search for metadata (115 kinds of secondary information, like music genre, Photoshop layer names, camera settings in digital photos, etc.), the index isn't updated in real time as you create or delete documents, and so on.
It goes the other way, too. "I love how Windows XP lets me delete or rename files right in the Open or Save dialog boxes."
"What's the big deal? On the Mac, we just switch to the desktop and delete or rename things there."
Sorry, but that's just not as good as being able to do it within the dialog boxes.
The bottom line: How well something works and how elegantly it's been built is also relevant to the "which is better" discussion.
4. Don't make grandiose purchasing plans by guessing on technology's future.
This pointer is directed exclusively at Mac-bashers, particularly the ones on the nation's boards of education.
If you decide to standardize on Windows across all schools, fine. But make sure you have legitimate reasons like economics or the need to run some Windows-only software suite.
"We want the kids to learn what they'll one day use in the business world," however, is NOT a good reason. If you think you know what anyone will be using in 2020 (when today's first graders will graduate from college), you must have a heck of a magical crystal ball.
Truth is, by 2020, no operating system will look an
Neither of them is the perfect solution to every problem (and no, neither is Linux or any other OS). I work for an art and design college, and our labs are split about 50:50 between Windows and OS X, depending on the academic program (interior/industrial/furniture/jewelry design classes use Windows, fine arts/illustration/digital media/print media use OS X). My own home network contains multiple Windows, OS X, and Linux boxes.
So when people come to me with problems or for advice, I don't preach from the Gospel According to Steve or the Revelation to St. Bill (or the Epistles of Linus). I listen to what their needs are, and I suggest whatever offers the best solution for them.
When crafting your flames, follow the guidelines below to ensure the highest troll-to-signal ratio.
1. Always mention gaming as the pinnacle of computing.
E.g., "The Macintosh has not proven itself to the gamers market as of yet, but excels in media production."
"Windows, whatever your complaints, has wide support for a variety of gaming technologies not yet implemented on other platforms."
2. Refine to make sure it doesn't make sense:
E.g., "Apples suck because my friend tommy once he tried to play a game on his apple iie and it puffed smoke and i was like wtf??!! WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO??!"
"I JUST PRESS A BUTTON IN MY WINDOWS SYSTEM CONTROL PANEL AND BACON COMES OUT!!!11one"
3. Make sure you're l33t. If you're not, girls won't like you. They also won't like you unless everybody else is a homosexual.
"FARGOT!! jesuz christo wtf MY 4PPL is T3H L33T BOMB ROX0R!! micro$0ft sux0rs to play fallout and i dont evan LIKE BACON"
"YOUR MOM like to play counterstrike and my W1NDOZE MACHENE IS WIN-WIN SITUATION!!! onbly liberals like bacon cocknut"
4. For clarity, just translate it into Spanish and ROT13 it. It's not like anybody's gonna read it anyway. Then go do your homework like your mom told you to half an hour ago.
vi!
I prefer, an Apple box, runing Ubuntu Linux with a Microsoft mouse and IBM Keyboard. There is everyone happy now?
You're describing zealots of all kinds there. Swap "Mac" for "Windows", "Linux", "GNU", "closed source", "open source", "Java", "C", etc etc and you can have exactly the same kind of story.
Zealots are the problem, not Mac zealots.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I hear that all the damned time. I'm a former computer engineering guy who has recently taken up with a group of artists and industrial designers. Obviously, mac users the whole lot (well, so am I, but at least I get my facts straight). As far as I can tell, the difference between an apple zealot and a wintel zealot is that a wintel zealot doesn't even know why wintel is supposed to be better, but the apple zealot is prepared with brochures straight from marketing.
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Crudely Drawn Games
First you'd have to get people to RTFA, for starters.
I'm often amazed however at how many non tech literate people I know simply refuse to even try OSX even when I offer to show them how to. These are people who are completely frustrated by Windows but stick with it only because it's what they know and cannot even fathom an alternative.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
If everyone abided by this idea, about 95 percent of all the Windows-Macintosh diatribes would evaporate overnight. But here it is: If you haven't tried something, then you really have no basis to comment.
That 95% -- probably more like 99% -- of Windows fanboys have never tried a Mac, I can well believe. But the reverse? Uh-uh.
Windows is everywhere, and unavoidable. Anyone who uses a Mac, or Linux, or any other OS that's not Windows, almost certainly has made an informed decision to do so based on harsh experience with Microsoft's crap.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The problem is, if we /don't/ go ahead and make this comparison, then Microsoft has lost on all accords, or has won on all accords, depending on which side of the fence you are on.
.Net 2, buzzword after buzzword, but no real evidence of anything. This means that either a) Microsoft's ideas are SO advanced that they're YEARS beyond us, or b) Microsoft has nothing. I know which side I'm on if you're looking at it from this perspective.
/now/. Microsoft has a fancy alt-tab skin.
If you don't make the comparison to future software, Microsoft can claim anything in the world, as they have been with Longhorn to date. WinFS, Avalon,
So what if 19 months is a long time. _Both_ companies have 19 months, and as I recall, the release cycle of OS X has seemingly hit that miraculous 18 month interval, meaning that when Longhorn actually does come out, so will Mac OS X 10.5.
At this point, we can only compare what exists, and what doesn't. Dashboard and Spotlight exist
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Or, as we say around here, "+5, Insightful"...
I'm inside of a doughnut shop and I need to find a way to get fat. Does anyone know how to do this?
At my work, all the cute ladies are the mac users so the war would be very short lived. The ladies would toss the cocktails. The geeks would stare in amazement, each thinking "wow, she noticed me" as they all went up in flames.
I don't know anyone who's ever claimed to pick a favorite platform just to stick it to another platform's fans. Sure - people get offended or puzzled by zealotry. But who puts down chunks of cash just to upset that know-it-all fat kid?
I never went down the Mac road because I liked the commodity hardware direction happening with the IBM PC compatible crowd. And I think you'll find that is the same reason that Macs ended up in a niche market.
Great point. Keep in mind that, as others have pointed out, this should be applied to anywhere there is a coroporation (and even where corporations aren't directly involved). No specific platform or technology has a monopoly on zealotry (whether you call it that or not). And nobody is beyond criticism.
2. No condemning something until you've tried it.
If everyone abided by this idea, about 95 percent of all the Windows-Macintosh diatribes would evaporate overnight. But here it is: If you haven't tried something, then you really have no basis to comment.
There is an interesting corallary to this, which to this day amazes me. The token zealot (on either side) appears to believe that the world is divided amonst though who don't have either "competing" product, those who own A, and those who own B.
Apparently, the notion of owning - and perhaps more importantly, enjoying - both products is so counter to the agenda of your garden variety fanboy, that it is anathema to their very dogma.
Actually, I was discussing this with a cow-orker today. You can use the White House's response to something as a barometer as to how much validity it has. When they start jumping around and pointing the finger at the "liberal media" about making things up, you can sure as hell bet that it's true.
Keep in mind, every OS has things it's good at.
Most OS's get two of the following:
Cheap - The combination of operating system, hardware, running software and updates is below or on par with the other choices.
Easy to setup/maintain - You average inept home user can shove a disk in, follow basic directions and expect to end up with working apps, sound and video and peripherals. If any problems arise they might be able to stick in a disk that came with a piece of hardware and remedy that problem without in depth knowledge of system editors. Updates should be easy to find and nearly automatic to install. Choosing and running updates should require little to no knowledge of computers. Joe user should also be able to walk in to the nearest wally world, pick up a slide scanner take it home and get it running without calling their family computer geek.
Stable - Would you want this OS controlling a robot doing eye surgery on you? Well you probably wouldn't want that in any case but you get my drift. Will this system do that it's intended to do without failure? Can the system be easily compromised due to minor operator oversight or ignorance?
On my desk sits a Mac to my left, an XP box to my right and a FC3 box straight ahead.
What the Mac does, it generally does well. Looks are obtained at the cost of speed but not so much that it makes the experience painful. It's very stable but it lacks good apps without a lot of money invested.
The Mac is the business guy in the tailored suit, a professional but he doesn't come cheap. He isn't really any better than anyone else, but he looks the part. He's pleasant to be around and if experience matters more to you than money, he's your man.
The Linux box is Fast, what it does, it generally does well. What it doesn't do by default requires endless toil and RTFM. It's rather stable and you can force it to do just about anything if you have enough time. Once you have all the stuff in the right places it's not hard to use but getting it to that point on all but the most generic hardware/software requires an experienced hand.
The Linux box is the genius teenager, You can dress it up, take it out, it's a cheap date and very able. It lacks refinement and organization but makes up for it with flexibility and low expense. If you can figure out how to motivate it, minimal investment can prove a staggering return.
The Windows box is pretty fast, fairly cheap but it takes a lot to keep it in proper condition. There's a large collection of free software that does a descent job though there's a large collection of expensive software that arguably does the job better. The biggest problem is that it will continue to work if it's not kept up to date. Eventually it will be struck down through it's unpatched insecurities. You can't leave it alone. If novices understood how important patching and not running too much cheesy third party software was, the competition would have a hard time holding on. Windows has great flexibility, unfortunately that usually comes at the cost of stability. It's all in how far you take it.
Windows is that lazy uncle that never seems to get things right. If you keep on him he's ok (if not pretty good) at what he does, just not very trust worthy if left alone. He's pretty cheap to impress and can be dressed up, you can let him house sit, but you don't trust him with your china. Whether it's society that makes him that way or his own shortcomings is irrelevant. If you need to deal with him, keep him in his place everyone will be OK.
With the exception of marketing gimics and minor tweaks in the product lines, Mac will continue to make moderately expensive hardware that gets combined with moderately expensive software with the main goal of providing a fantastic user experience to the unknowing public and a fair amount of flexibility to the experienced public that can afford the platform.
Windows will continue to be reactionary to the markets needs. They will continue to create ne
Irony: you're currently modded insightful.
;))
(Now, anyone who mods me insightful, don't - it's funny
Yes, I see it now:
The Windows users building some kind of overcomplicated Molotov-cocktail which ignites with the least effort and causes most of them to get blown up. The balance of Windows users have already by chance attended Molotov-cocktail University and are certified to make the basic explosive.
Mac users, on the other side of the office, order theirs from molotovcocktail.com. Each one comes in box so pretty that few ever remove the contents and those that do, adorn their person with multiple cocktails. Although still heavily outnumbered, they are quite skilled at throwing. The battle plays itself out to a near draw, given the ratio of Windows users left to the Mac users who can get the cocktail out of the box and through attrition there are only two users left standing.
After that, in walks the Linux user with a mini-nuclear-bomb which he took 20 years to construct in his basement. He rids the office of both Windows and Mac users.
Afterwards, a race of mutant Linuxes grow up to inhabit the Earth.
Well, as a fairly laid back apple fan boy, it's been my observation that Apple's fans are also some of its harshest critics. For example, when Aqua was first announced, plenty of hardcore apple websites were nitpicking it to death, despite the fact that their own exposure to it was a webcast of a demo that Steve Jobs did for a half hour.
.doc compatibility issues, and a million other things seemed to be doing their best to take the fun out of computing, even when I consciously avoid MS software.
They just tend to get really defensive when "outsiders"(meaning windows users) start criticising the mac. Partially because windows has been such a POS operating system. It's like someone driving an old rusty noisy car driving up to my cleaner, well kept vehicle and giving me crap because he doesn't like my hubcaps. Maybe my hubcaps could be better, but if you're not offering me something superior, then you're wasting my time.
Secondly, there's been a lot of bitterness because MS and their windows monopoly has made things a lot tougher for other OS'es. Their breaking HTML,
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The polite explanation for this might be Stockholm Syndrome*. The impolite explanation is pig ignorance.
you had me at #!