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?"

Comments

As long as John Carmack is commenting here...

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

Mr. Carmack,

Thanks for posting to the thread. As long as you're here, and given your previous statements of support for Mac OS X's NeXTStep derived development environment, now that OS X is going to be on Intel, how difficult do you see the task of converting Active X controls to OpenGL? Or, for that matter, reverse engineering the entire Active X control set for OS X?

Crow T. Trollbot

Re:game performance

[jkheit]

Actually, the comment was not meant to be a slight on ID or Doom 3. I think the fact that you guys got it working well on the Mac/PPC *is* a feather in your cap. Espeicially when you consider just how different the development/platforms are as between Windows and OS X.

The comment was to show that Game developers are likely to move to Intel as fast as possible and will concentrate their development there because 1) Intel has a pretty good shot at offering better performance for games, and 2) PPC adds costs to your development and it is more difficult to get a broad array of PPC machines to work well for games.

Of course, that's my speculation. You certainly will have a far better insight on those items. Anyway, it seems at least some game developers are eager to move over to the Intel processor and I think it's fair to speculate that it may mean they move away from the PPC side of things (on OS X) sooner rather than later.

Regardless, I certainly did not mean my comments as a put down on ID or Doom. I've always had the upmost respect for you guys and the way you really brought game development to a new level. The way you approached the original Doom and game development back in the NeXT days was beyond impressive and I am a big fan.

Hoping this finds you happy and well John.
Best,
John

Re:Talk about missing the point...

[ErikZ]

The answer is simple: Mac OS X, unlike Linux, doesn't have an interface that is cloned from Windows. It's a totally different experience, and if you want to be successful in "figuring it out," you're going to have to accept that there are different ways of doing things, and that doesn't make it inherently bad.

For the next month, I want you to replace all numbers with Roman numerals. Use them in math, giving out phone numbers, etc.

Roman Numbers aren't inherently bad, they're just different. You're not used to it. You're comparing them to Arabic numbers that you've used all your life.

Re:I expected it to be better

[ErikZ]

Well, it would have allowed you to see all the things which you seem to feel are glaring flaws (one menu bar, dock etc etc). All of the things you mentioned are evident after a few minutes use.

Everyone who has posted about adapting to the Mac says it takes a month to really get used to it. I have never, ever, seen anyone go "Poke around for 15 minutes, if you find anything that bothers you, then it's not worth it for you to get a Mac."

Sweeping generalisations are not often useful. If you're happier on Windows, that's great, why the need to judge others and pretend to know their motives?

Because I didn't. Because after going to all my Mac using friends, (looking for help) that's what they ended up saying. Because that's how they all, all used the Mac. That isn't a sweeping generalisation, this is what I found out by talking to experenced Mac users.

I imagine it's cmd-delete because it's a destructive action, and you wouldn't want to do it by mistake

First, how the heck is moving the file to the trash can a destructive action? You can do it by mistake, and if it's a mistake, you just put it back.

You can right click on the file and delete in one action, no problem. No extra buttons need be pressed. Come on, there is NO reason at all to require two buttons to delete. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Most of your comments boil down to 'Argh, it's different from Windows, how dare they'; they're neither constructive nor attempting to be objective, that's why I said you're not trying.

Sit back, an imagine for a minute. What if there's a perfect way of deleting something. What if Windows does it? So, is it the Windows way, or the right way?

As for remedies, you'd have to actually *want* to accept something different from the conventions you're used to. If you're complaining about the position of buttons on the windows being on the left or right, I doubt you'll ever be happy but on Windows/Windows clones.

Actually, I'm angry at being scammed. I was told that the Apple UI was a superior product, and after using it for a month, it certainly is not. I spent hundreds of dollars to learn this lesson. Even though my Mini is a month old, I'll lose a good chunk of cash selling it. Other Mac users don't seem concerned about that, it seems that they just have money rain down from the sky at them.