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The Wrath of the Apple Tribe
Narrative Fallacy writes "If you've ever written about Apple products with even a hint of negativity, you'll appreciate Salon's excerpt from Farhad Manjoo's True Enough, about why the Apple tribe is so rabid. 'There are many tribes in the tech world: TiVo lovers, Blackberry addicts, Palm Treo fanatics, and people who exhibit unhealthy affection for their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners,' writes Manjoo. 'But there is no bigger tribe, and none more zealous, than fans of Apple, who are infamous for their sensitivity to slams, real or imagined, against the beloved company.' Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg has even coined a name for the phenomenon — the 'Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation.' 'If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it's partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy,' says psychologist Lee Ross at Stanford University. 'You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.'"
Anybody who wants to experience this first hand.. just flame apple on slashdot :) and see your post mod down to hell
There is at least ten mac hater for every fanboy, each posting ten whining comment for every adulation of apple.
You can't take the sky from me...
..and their ad campaigns.
Seriously, market a product as "stylish", "hip" and "different", and you'll raise a troupe of people to whom presenting themselves as different is pretty much their only end. I personally find it one of the most disgusting facets of consumerist capitalism.
Step 1: Troll Apple users
Step 2: Write an article about all the hate mail you get
Step 3: Ad revenue
Goto Step 1
Dvorak has done this so many times he should be selling his technique on an infomercial at this point.
Sometimes evenhandedness is inappropriate. It elevates the wrong position to the same level as the right position. For instance, intelligent design.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
+1 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
I use Apple products all of the time; the only personal computers that I ever have powered on anymore are all Macs. My "promoting" of Macs to friends and family has been more beneficial in convincing some of them to buy Apple products more than any clever advertising. I've even brought Apple into my workplace and who knows, it may even make a decent foothold in the formerly all MS shop. I would consider myself a fan.
But I will point out the negatives in their products where I see them. There is no point in pretending that they don't exist as all that does is give them time to fester. I am a realist. I'll also point out issues with the company when they deserve it. Yeah, praise is better but only if they are going to work for it.
I am more judgmental because I've been in the IT field for years and have used, and I mean really used, many different OSes out there. I also wouldn't have considered calling myself a Mac user before OS X. Sorry fans, but OS 9 was pretty terrible.
I suppose Apple needs the rabid fanbase as they are advertisers that pay the company for the privilege. Maybe Apple should even thank them every now and then for keeping the company afloat for so many years. They also need the realists that speak their mind and truthfully say what is good, what is bad, and what is downright idiotic. Yes, this means that these groups will clash but it is needed.
How else are they going to move forward?
While the employees and shareholders of Apple have every right to boast of its success, I fail to see why fanboys can make any kind of claims as a result. "Hah, I'm superior to you because these people that I am unaffiliated with are better than some other people!" isn't a sane position.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The real reason Mac fans tend to be overly defensive is that they've felt marginalized by software and hardware vendors for years due to Microsoft's dominance in the desktop computing arena. I'm not blaming the vendors, sometimes fiscal reality precludes making a version of their product for a relatively small market, but it can be frustrating to Mac users who are convinced that their platform is superior to what Microsoft has to offer but still have to wait months or years, if ever, to get their hands on a desirable product.
It's not unlike other minorities--African-Americans, gays etc., (not that Mac marginalization has anywhere near the same significance as the often violent discrimination that gays and blacks have experienced in their lifetimes)--who react to discrimination by the majority by developing a sense community "pride."
Granted, though, many of Apple's fans go way overboard in it's defense. This, BTW, is from a long-time Mac user and recovering "rabid" fanboy who converted from Microsoft way back in DOS days who now uses OS X, Kubuntu and Windows XP interchangeably as necessary.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Why are Mac fans so quick to see bias everywhere? On issues we're passionate about, we all tend to think our own views are essentially reasonable. Thus when a reporter, editor, news network, or pundit mentions the other side's arguments, it stings.
That's basically all the article says. And we knew that, of course. But why are Apple fans so extremely sensitive to criticism? I've said many 'bad' things about Apple on this forum, and it inevitably got me modded down. Apple zealots are even worse than the Linux zealots of ten years back.
-- Cheers!
His columns for the whole past week were excerpts from his new book. And now he's getting air time from /. His basic thesis is - GEE who's a thought - people on the internet all flock to likeminded opinions to the exclusion of all rational discussion about anything that deviates from their gospel. Wow, never saw that coming.
BTW Farhad is the biggest Apple Fanboy in the world. Before this week 80% of his columns were about iPhones, iPods, Macs and Apple.
You allude to one of the most annoying facets of the fanboy wars in your post. If I criticize anything Apple, I'm always called a Microsoft fan. Yeah, I use Windows, and yeah, I'm fairly happy with it. No, I have no emotional attachment whatsoever to MS. I've used OSX, XP, Ubuntu, and KDE, and XP does what I need while the others don't. For me, it just works. I'm not switching to Vista for the same reason I'm not switching to OSX: I'm NOT an OS fanboy, and accordingly I'm not willing to give up functionality to fulfill my pseudo-religious needs.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
The article starts off fine enough, with notations of the fanaticism of *some* Apple fans. I myself like Apple; if I was buying a pre-made computer, it'd probably be a Mac. Imo, very nice build-construction and quality (aside from their keyboards and mice, which are no-where near as good as MS keyboards or mice). But even more-so than Apple, I'm a big big fan of Lian-Li cases. Yet, I have some complaints: the usb-panels on the V1200 and V2000 are at the bottom of the case, instead of up top, or on-top of it, which is more accessible for big cases (which will likely be placed on the floor); and their new V-series have fixed that, but also reduced greatly the ventilation holes on the front. I doubt there'd be many Lian-Li fanatics bashing me for that.
Some Apple fans do really annoy. E.g., the tendency for claiming that Mac invented everything. They accused Lian-Li of copying the G5's holed case-design; yet, servers used ventilation holes for a long time, and my year-2000 Gateway had them on the front. They also acted like the wire-less hard-drive replacement on the new G5's is some new invention of Apple's: it's juts hot-swap, which has been around forever (and Apple's implementation isn't that great, as you have to open the case to do it).
In any event, those kinds of comments are perfectly fine. They're regarding largely matters of personal opinion. And the issue isn't so much that Apple fans disagree, but the way it's done; provide evidence, don't accuse writers of "ball-licking".
But then the article digresses into the pits of moral relativism with talk about the Israel-Palistine conflict, or the abortion issue. These are issues of right and wrong. There isn't a real middle ground. Either something is right, or it isn't. There is no "plusses and minuses". How about we talk about the pro's and cons of rape, too?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
IMO, the Linux zealots are less scary.
I'll agree with you on that
Linux is about freedom and choice.
So it seems, as long as the choice is *NOT* Microsoft.
Take the guy who did Linux boot benchmarking -- it quickly resulted in optimizations of the process.
Unless we're discussing the scheduler!!
Now try to do the same with Apple. Apple is about the "experience".
Unfortunately the experience involves giving up even more freedom than a GPL license or MS involves!
I've never seen a fan reply to the complaint of the iPod's lack of ability to play Ogg Vorbis as "You know, they should really include that".
The should include it but won't & for good reason, the Vorbis codec is rapidly becoming dated and was almost all hype. Whatever happened to bitrate peeling anyway? I love FLAC
If it was a Linux device somebody would have added that within a month of the iPod's release.
You can run Linux & Vorbis under iPodLinux.
But seriously... I prefer the Zune interface & if they ever get around to ramping up the capacity & vastly improving their playlists to equal or better than the iPod then I'lljump ship in a heartbeat. Of course I sure do miss the ability to record with my Nomad Jukebox3! That was the bomb diggity...
You can't have been very clever if you didn't figure out you can SSH into a OS X box and manage them via command line. Too used to Windows where that's really mandatory? A GUI never used, does not crash.
Obviously the platform you were used to was more stable.
The whole dig at the single mouse button is so 1980's, since all serious Mac users have been using three button (or more) mice for decades.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, it's too bad Apple hasn't just released development tools for the thing. Now we'll never get third party applications.
She *did* install iTunes on the PC, and it still wouldn't let her copy or play her music. She couldn't "use them in any way she pleased." It was all locked down, nothing made sense to her, she was pissed off, and spent the next hour on the phone all pissed off and trying to get me to help figure out why it wouldn't just work. I really didn't enjoy that phone call.
If you want to talk to her while she's pissed off and trying to make a piece of hardware that's supposed to "just work" work, be my guest. Post your phone number and I'll have her give you a call. But as far as my experience with it went, it doesn't "just work" -- it locked her out.
I even asked my Apple buddy if he could help me, and he said (and I quote) "Think about it from Apple's perspective selling this to the music companies. They don't want you to be able to copy your music to another computer." So I thought about it. Fuck that, and fuck Apple.
John
I couldn't help noticing how Mac fanatics kept on touting their superior OS, until OS X came along, which fixed all of these problems that they never acknowledged having before.
Windows didn't have an ounces worth of usability and security until Windows 2k was released in February of 2000. When was Mac OS 10.0 released? September of 2000.
Same thing with the switch to Intel. They kept saying how superior their Power PC chip was, then with the switch to Intel they're saying its now working so much better. WTF?
Because the G4's and G5's were superior chips to the Pentium's, especially the P4. The problem is that IBM is a shitty fabber. They weren't able to deliver on what they promised (3 ghz G5's within a year of the release of the first Mac G5) much less continue PowerPC development. If IBM had kept up development and you could get a 3ghz dual core G6 in a laptop Apple never would have switched to Intel.
Well, square corners slightly bothered me for all of the two minutes it took to find Displaperture.app, which restores the roundness and lets you set how much roundness you want. :D
But, yeah, I do find some amusement with the ultra-super fanbois who simply lack the ability to get over it or find another solution instead of bitching and moaning.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Why would reviewing a product, for the pros or cons, be taken personally or as trolling though?
I don't see cries of sacrilege when I post a gripe that SoundBlaster hasn't made suitable Linux drivers for my X-Fi card, or that I give a thumbs down to Belkin keyboards. The very concept that stating likes / dislikes of Apple products should be conceived as trolling rather proves the point that this stuff is taken way too seriously.
Modern journalists are taught that they must always balance their pieces. That there are always two sides. That sounds fine and is fine if the matters they are dealing with are of no consequence. The problem with it is that they tend to equate the two sides even when they are not of equal merit. Sometimes this is because they cannot or will not take the time to become knowledgeable enough about the matter to evaluate the data they have. They find an expert, get some information. Then they say, I need a balancing opinion, and find another source to provide it. Then they find the most "entertaining" way of presenting what they have and give both sources equal weight. But what if one source was an intelligent, dedicated researcher who has spent many years becoming an expert and the other was not...
... It's just... ranting is so much fun.
I can't speak for other Mac users but my experience has been such as to induce a certain vehemence in supporting the platform. I have used Macs, PCs and many other micro-computers since they each became available. Despite its shortcomings it was clear that Apple had had a fundamentally good idea from the moment the Lisa and Mac appeared. CP/M and DOS immediately seemed dated. If you were a Mac user though, the DOS crowd spent years telling you it was a worthless idea... right up until Windows appeared. Overnight the story changed to; it's no big deal, Windows is just the same as a Mac now. But it was not just the same. In fact most of the people saying this had only a very superficial knowledge of the differences. "They both have windows..."
These days I have (almost) given up discussing the matter. Life is too short. It is the nature of people that they do not like to think that they have made an incorrect or ill-judged decision. They will "invest" their own sense of worth in the decisions they have made. It is human nature but it is not science. As it has been most tellingly put: It is difficult to reason people out of something they were not reasoned into. Most PC users today were taught on PCs at school. They use them at work. They never even got to make that "decision" to use a PC. They know many of the idiosyncrasies of the machine. They are comfortable. They do not wish to hear that they have wasted serious quantities of time doing things that could have been avoided had they used a different system. Better to let them discover it in their own time... possibly by watching over your shoulder. Then their disappointment at realizing they have wasted much time may be mitigated by their pleasure at realizing that they have improved their position by their own efforts. In a cynical age, enthusiasm disturbs people. They are suspicious of it. To display it can have quite the opposite effect to that intended.
Enough. More than enough.
Sorry, but I'm calling BS on this one.
Here is a site partially created to praise the glory that is(n't) Linux, and I have written strongly against it on these very pages. I have been modded down accordingly. I have gone months without seeing a mod point.
But I have never been banned. Never even close.
You pay the price for going against the herd, to be sure, but ultimately, the fact that, despite feeling the need to kind of throw a bucket of cold reality on the Linux orgy (oh, let's be honest here--this is Slashdot--the Linux circle-jerk), I'm at least trying to do it fairly and even-handedly.
I'm sorry, but if you were really as vilified as you say, then you were either being a jerk or there was a glitch or something.
And I'm writing this from a Mac (which I switched to very recently, largely because VMware Fusion is so damned good that I can run Windows and Linux software I like on top of OSX with very very little trouble).
Hence, I get a little annoyed.
If the situation is as bad as you describe, you should indeed be annoyed by the departement unwillingness to train one of you on Macintoshes. It would look like to be the most rational way to resolve those issues.
...they all have their zealots. They are devout defenders of what they love but, at the same time, they are adverse to change. That's why Balmer can say, with a smile, "I think there is value in Windows Vista" when asked about its instability; that's why Apple machines will continue to be more expensive than PCs at similar performance; that's why Linux will fail to go beyond the limits of its little world.
Of course, Apple can improve things.
What I'm saying is that the fanboys' perception is that whatever is current is the absolute perfection. Take OS 9 for instance, where you had to set manually the amount of memory an application could use. If you brought up that setting memory is an oddly unfriendly characteristic for an OS that aims to be user friendly, you'd get a reply along the lines of "Lets see, I select the app, "get info"-->Memory and then set the amount. What's hard about that?"
Of course now that OS X is here, it's OS X what became the definition of perfection. I get the impression that many people refuse to acknowledge the existence of any faults until they're fixed, then the subject is quietly forgotten. For instance:
Everybody swore that a mouse with more than one button isn't needed, until Apple suddenly released a computer with one.
The memory limit was an "advantage", because Windows would die a swap death, and "Whgat New user is going to jump in and go manilulate large excel files?", anyway?
etc.
This attitude turns many people off, because: It creates a feeling that there's some sort of apple collective that many people aren't interested to join, because for them computers are a tool and not an object of religious worship. It creates the feeling of that it's hard to get a honest opinion about anything because many people are dedicated to sweeping faults under the rug. And it creates an impression of inflexibility: Either you accept the package in full, or you'd better not get it at all, because there's nothing in the middle.
Agreed, many Amiga fans were very religious about their advocacy, and it often got quite scary. But we must never forget that there is still one tribe in the history of computing which trumped even the Amiga fans in the brutality and savagery of their lynchmob mentality.
I am, of course, referring to Team OS/2.
Actually, all he was saying was that the CLI is inseparable from the GUI.
A shame that people keep saying that, since it is wrong.
The Mac has a window manager too, just not an X11 window manager. And as with any UNIX system you can disable processes you do not want or need.
If you leave the GUI up, but no-one is using it - what exactly is it then going to do to cause a crash? If it's not in use it's not really "running", or at any rate not changing state.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only safe way is to run the machine without a GUI. Is this possible on a Mac?
Ofcourse it's possible.
Either you can disable the gui entirely, booting straight into text-mode console:
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/h/348
Or you can boot to a console + gui mode, where it doesn't load the full gui, but you can still launch individual gui apps:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=24259
The architecture of OS X is not that different from other unices, except that instead of running X for the graphics, it runs Aqua, and instead of using init and a collection of shell scripts, it uses launchd and a collection of xml files.