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Is Apple & Community Evangelizing Into Uncoolness?
kbeischer writes "John Kheit followed up his MacObsorne article, which others have since covered minus the parts detailing a Steve Jobs uncanny ability to repeat his own mistakes, with a scathing editorial damning the most of the Mac Press, Apple's managment and parts of the user base as a bunch of deranged goose-stepping lemmings that are ignoring the costs associated with the Mac PPC to Intel switch. In the editorial, he links to an older article on BOZO (bitter obstanate zealot order) users causing market share loss. All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform?"
Here's a quote from TFA (the very first sentence, as matter of fact...):
Nice going, Sarcastro. Nothing opens up the floor for rational discussion like howling ad hominem attacks.
I thought that the rest of the article would prove to be more substantive, but no, it's pretty much all like that.
Perfect article for Slashdotters, though. Let the flame war begin.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The evangelist tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. They get so caught up in what they are preaching, they don't have time to learn about other things.
Overall, it's the same thing as before, the evangelist damning things that the normal user will not even care about, as long as it works the same way.
Loving a product because it is of high quality is OK, Loving a product because its made by a certain manufacturer is a problem .
People all too often insult those who like the product for what it is, bycalling them fan-boys when who they really should insult is the people who blindly love something because its made by the manufacturer
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
"They get so caught up in what they are preaching, they don't have time to learn about other things." That reminds me of Linux zealots on Slashdot talking about Windows -- they don't know what they're talking about.
A good evangelist, though vocal and possibly in-your-face, is rational and can explain why he believes as he does and why you should too, but will not insist you beleive as he does "or else."
A zealot will drown you out and/or attempt to make life rough for you if you disagree with him.
Some people get turned off by evangelists they disagree with, almost everyone gets turned off by zealots they disagree with.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are zealots on both sides who will argue until they are absolutely blue in the face over what is better than what. However, how does anyone ever plan on being able to prove it? Mac Zealots evangelize Mac just as much as Linux users do Linux....But while linux may be ridiculously stable and open source....try getting any ported game to run as fast on it as it runs on windows.
My point is that there will never be a "winner" in this debate. They're all here to stay, and the more griping and screaming that's done about how much better one product is than the other, the more people won't want to use those products simply because everyone supporting them seems like a blathering idiot... They all have good and ad points and all this screaming is retarded.
Neg Mod away...
I didn't pick Apple for their marketing, their fanatics, or their devoted press. I picked Apple because the platform suited my needs. I liked the design of the PowerBook and I liked the design and feel of the OS. Those are the most important factors in my book. In fact, I got my PowerBook because I enjoy my iPod Mini so much. I recognized good design (at least, good design for my purposes, YMMV). Zealotry never really was a consideration.
I tend to buy systems based apon sound reviews, personal experience, and technical documentation, not what a very vocal minority or majority might be ranting on about.
--
The Zealots hurt the platform.
... Profit?
First it places it on a pedistal so high that it can't possibly reach.
Secondly when the normal person uses it they find that it isn't as great as the Zealot advertises they feel ripped off and will likely make an other choice in the future.
Third, excessive love for a company will only lead to pain. A company (espectially a public traded one) is in it for the money. And they will do what ever makes the most bucks for them.
Forth. Forcing decision just by strength of conviction is not a good way to make a good argument. Sure you may win the battles but overall you can loose the war.
Fifth. Dissing you competitors zealotly can make one blind on what good the other guy is dooing.
Sixth. Blind to what you being zealot about faults.
Seventh. When you do make a true balanced point you will be classified as a zealot and not listened to.
Eighth. Situations occure that forces you to flip-flop on your speach. ie "Classic Rules Unix sucks" Now "Unix Rules and Classic Sucks" or "Command line is for loosers" now "Command line adds more power to the system"
Ninth. You spend more time defending yourself then actully enjoying your life.
Tenth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users
>and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform?
I think AmigaOS is the greatest, it's easier to use and customize than blah blah blah.
Guess what? Every time someone says a good thing about Amiga, zillions of Slashdotters attack, calling the poster nuts, stupid, dead, and other things. I'll probably get called names or told my platform is dead just for posting this satirical evangalistic nonsense here.
So it's not good or beneficial to all platforms. You all used to think Mac users were a bunch of weirdos too until the switch to OSX, right? Suddenly Macs became cool and accepted on Slashdot and other places. Why did the Mac Mini get popular here, because someone went on and on about how cool they thought Apple or Jobs was, or because a tiny quiet computer with a BSD based OS was actually useful for new space-sensetive applications?
I don't think that evangelizing changed that, the better technology did.
The article makes a common mistake. Before, SOME mac users claimed PPC was THE way to go. Now SOME Mac users are saying Intel sounds like a good idea. Hey, guess what? They are not the same people saying this. The author is just being silly. I don't think many people have changed their positions about anything since Jobs made his announcement. The people who were saying "Mac is better because of PPC" are now saying, "Damn, this is a bad move, what's going on?" But most people don't give a crap. It's just about making the best Mac possible. If it's built on Intel, great.
Currently hooked on AMP
This article doesn't know what it wants to be.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
You gotta admit though, that the article has more than a touch of flamebait itself. I'm as worried about possible repercussions of the Intel switch as any other Mac user, but the author seems to take a lot of negatives as foregone conclusions.
Apple is well known for abandoning old hardware and software... that's one of the reasons its so much cleaner than Windows. A processor change now doesn't seem to raise the risk much higher than it's ever been. If XCode seamlessly compiles to both as well as Jobs claims, then the shift should be a lot less painless than OS 9 -> 10 or even 68k -> PPC.
Also, why is the possibility of no classic support a reason not to buy a Mac now? If you need classic then you damn well better buy a new Mac while they can still run what you need...
Bottom line is, I buy a new machine when I need it. I might shift by 3-6 months according to perceived value, but really I can't be bothered to guess what's going to be happening a year from now in the computer industry. Sure, there are lots of reasons to wait for Intel Macs if you can, but nothing is really a sure bet anyway, so why hold your breath?
What I don't understand is why Apple doesn't port OpenFirmware to x86 and have OS X require OpenFirmware. If x86 Macs didn't have a PC-compatible BIOS, and OS X for x86 required OpenFirmware, then it would be practically impossible to run OS X on non-Apple PCs, and practically impossible to run Windows on an Apple PC.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Steve's been trying to kill Classic Mac OS for longer than that.
Steve to developers in 1997: Rhapsody will only run OS 8 apps in an emulator, start using "Yellow Box" now.
Steve to developers in 1998: If you port to Carbon, you'll be able to run on Rhapsody and OS 8/9.
Steve to developers in 1997: If you develop for Carbon, you'll be able to run on OS X and OS 8/9.
Steve to developers in 2000: If you develop for Carbon, you can run on OS X, but Cocoa is really the way forward.
Steve to developers in 2001: We really have OS X working properly now, switch to Cocoa.
Steve to developers in 2002: OS 9 is dead, stop developing for it.
Steve in 2003: You should all be developing for OS X now, OS 9 is dead.
Steve in 2004: Develop under OS X Xcode, OS 9 is long dead
Steve in 2005: It'll be much easier to port Cocoa apps to OS X Intel, and did you notice we don't sell OS 9 bootable Macs any more?
Steve in 2006: It's much easier to port Cocoa apps to OS X Intel, you don't need to keep OS 9 compatibility, honest!
Steve in 2007: WTF is wrong with you people, stop developing for OS 9 already.
John Kheit followed up his MacObsorne article - which others have since covered (minus the parts detailing Steve Jobs' uncanny ability to repeat his own mistakes) - with a scathing editorial, damning the most of the Mac Press, Apple's managment and parts of the user base, as "a bunch of deranged goose-stepping lemmings that are ignoring the costs associated with the Mac PPC to Intel switch."
...and that's all there is to it.
Nothing's a sure bet, but there are such things as sucker bets too. The Mac Platform is about to go through serious changes, I'm not about to invest $3,000 on a cool PPC Mac because I haven't been assured the transition will work smoothly.
My other car is a Popemobile
Oh really? Now that sounds like the dying gasp of another zelot. Having had Steve Jobs finally tell you it's okay to condem the processor, you still claim everything else Mac is better than the PC.
What exactly is ahead hardware wise? PCI slots? Nvidia video cards? AGP slot (oops). USB keyboards and mice? Audio? Just what other everything are you talking about? The power switch?
And how much of that will make the transition to an Intel Mac? Jobs is going to be using Intel chipsets in conjunction with his Intel CPU's. Same thing Dell uses.
You, Sir, are still a zelot, and one grasping at crumbs. Mac hasn't even gotten to an onboard RAID controller, although they'll get one with Intel finally.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Your comparison fails right after "...but Windows NT-based x86 workstation.". This pretty much means that SGI tried to be yet another PC vendor (I saw the boxes and they were pretty, but they were really just another PC).
Now if SGI had ported IRIX to x86 and still failed, you might have a point, but since the story doesn't read "Apple switches to Intel, ditches OS X for Apple-branded Windows," I'm afraid your comparison falls short.
>How much do you want to bet a bunch of those developers drop support for PPC Macs far sooner than the
>aforementioned "3-5 year" period and claim that the games demand the "performance" of the faster Intel
>machines. We already saw that when Doom 3 was released for the Mac. It supported only the very fastest
>Macs while leaving many other current and/or new Macs out in the lurch.
Does he think we just sit around and say "Lets just not support the rest of these macs because we want to screw the user base!"
We work with Apple, ATI, and Nvidia to make everything run as well as possible. Doom 3 had AltiVec code in it, and there were driver changes to make things work better. The bottom line is that the compiler / cpu / system / graphics card combinations available for macs has just never been as fast as the equivalent x86/windows systems. The performance gap is not a myth or the result of malicious developers trying to make your platform of choice look bad.
Yes, it is always possible to make an application faster, but expecting developers to work harder on the mac platform than on windows is not reasonable. The xbox version of Doom required extensive effort in both programming and content to get good performance, but it was justified because of the market. In hindsight, we probably should have waited and ported the xbox version of the game to the mac, which would have played on a broader range of hardware. Of course, then we would have taken criticism for only giving the mac community the "crippled, cut down version".
John Carmack
>>> All of which makes me wonder, do evangelical users and press help or hurt the popularity of a platform?"
You mean like Linux.
Hmm, had no idea about the timeframe there. The first PowerPC chips were excellent in their day... I remember our school getting the first batch of PPC processors in the form of "Power Macintosh 7500's" and the performance gain was enormous over the LC's that they replaced. No one complained about the PPC chips after we saw the huge leap in productivity.
Keep in mind the date of that market share drop coincides with Windows 95's release. Windows 95 is really what killed Mac, because the main reason for using the Mac was a far superior user experience over DOS and early versions of Windows. With 95 out there, the user experience was "good enough" and offered a lot of things an average user would have bought a Mac for. So the creatives kept moving on with Macs, mainly due to having $3000 invested in software and fonts that wouldn't work on the PC, and most new users just went with '95.
Back in 1995 you could buy a couple of different Macs at OfficeMax. When Steve took over again the Mac's disappeared from common retailers like OfficeMax, which also helped to kill off buying. There was also so much talk of Apple dying that no one wanted to make a huge investment in something that was going to be dead in a year.
So basically what I'm saying is that during that time period there was a lot happening besides an architecture change to kill Mac popularity. Going from 68000 to PPC was great if you needed the performance and were committed to the Mac platform.
There have been a multitude of slashdot stories posted all filled with angst ridden comments. But the simple fact is this move, while it may hurt in the short term simply had to be done, or the consequences would have been worse in the long term.
Quite simply IBM was not competetive, had very little driving it to be competetive with general desktop CPU's. To hang on in hopes of better days ahead would have been easy destructive way out.
Now Apple will NEVER again have to worry about having to fall behind on the CPU curve. It can tap the dominant x86 rivalry to always get the best chips going.
There are added bonuses of common architecture for code porters, and better migration paths (dual boot/wine) for windows escapees.
I have never purchased an Apple Product before, so I don't think I am subject to the reported Steve Jobs RDF, but I am keen on this move and the possability of getting an x86 Mac.
The enviro that will stop working with Rosetta is Classic. Carbon != Classic and will continue run as long as it meets the other requirements for Rosetta.
I am quite confident that nobody* has been developing for Classic since 'round 2001. That doesn't mean that certain-people-that-won't-be-seen-dead-changing-th eir-software-in-any-way-ever (frequent in the publishing industry) still run Classic apps. Moreover, even if there actually were Classic/OS 9 apps developed right now these users still would not use them for the same reason.
* I do know of a few audio apps. But they've been simultaneously released for OS X so it's beside the point here.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
I wish all these crazy computer-as-religion types would grow up and see the computer for what it really, truly is: a tool.
Computers are JUST TOOLS that help you accomplish useful tasks. That's it, guys. They're not religious artifacts, they're not fetish items, they're just the equivalent of a good set of socket wrenches.
You should choose the best tools available to you at the point when you're buying them, and you should try and squeeze some mileage out of them (this means, don't buy new tools every couple of years! Mechanics don't replace all their wrenches every two years, do they?).
Mac O/S is an excellent tool. So is Linux. The two are essentially interchangeable, given that Mac O/S is somewhat better at working with media files, and Linux is somewhat better for software development, especially web development.
Of course, whereas Mac O/S and Linux are roughly equivalent to Craftsman or Snap-On, well... Microsoft is kind of like the cheapo tools from Taiwan you see on Canal Street. They work, but they break a lot, and they don't have as fine a finish. Still, I suppose you might find a use for them.
Whatever! Back to the point! Relax, everybody! This shit isn't life and death, it's not even Red, white or Sangria! REEEEELLLLAAAAXXXXX!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Funny, but not true.
Apple is still alive today *because* of their evangelist users, not despite them.
Can you name another manufacturer of personal computers in 1984 who is still in business?
For some reason everybody wants to compare Apple to Microsoft (who never sold computers), and then use that to make Apple look like a loser. If you compared them to other early 1980's computer companies, like Commodore, Tandy, Sinclair, and BBC Micro, then Apple doesn't look like a loser, but *the* survivor.
(A couple years ago you could have said "IBM", but apparently that was such a profitable division they dumped it on some Chinese company.)
This leads to the fundamental point, which is economics. Sure. But do you remember how it took a year to scale from 450 to 500 MHz? And how it's been tooth-and-nail for every extra cycle since? The G4 was always the "better" CPU, but the P4 consistently ran at more than twice the frequency. Even today, the race stands at 3.8 vs. 1.67. Freescale has barely managed incremental upgrades to the G4, while Intel has been plowing along with a variety of architectures, one of which was bound to not suck. The M is 70% faster per clock than the P4, already runs at much faster clockspeed than the G4, and is scheduled to be dual-core in the same timeframe as Freescale's e600.
Mot/Freescale has, since 2000, shown the classic symptoms of a company trying to compete in a capital- and R&D-intensive industry without sufficient resources. In reality, they haven't been trying to compete - they focus very effectively in the embedded market, which has had just enough overlap with Apple's designs to enable dual-use products. But the embedded market still has different economics and incentives than the PC market, and Apple's suffered enormously for that. IBM's motivations for diving in with the 970 remain obscure, but may have been marketing as much as anything else. Having secured their spot as manufacturer for every next-gen console CPU, they have little incentive to both keep up with Intel (who's going to buy these chips, and who else are they trying to impress?) and invest the cash to differentiate the 970 (for use in what else, consoles? IBM laptops?). There's just nothing in it for them. And the next-gen console chips are great, but they're subject to console-chip rules. Apple would be insane to bet their business on them.
For better or worse, Intel is the only major supplier of PC CPUs in the world - aside from AMD, which shares a common platform, anyway. It was only inertia that made the switch seem unthinkable - it was really inevitable.
"Aren't most of those Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes?"
Yep.
"And aren't they illegal because Watterson never sold the merchandising rights?"
Right again.
I get a sick feeling every time I see one on the back of some redneck's truck; I live in Kansas, so they're all over, too. I imagine anyone who's read Watterson's writings about comic strips being a medium for artistic expression gets similar feelings.
Then I come home and read the last strip in "It's a Magical World", and I feel better.