Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
..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?
The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
make world, not war
Anybody who wants to experience this first hand.. just flame apple on slashdot :) and see your post mod down to hell
;-)
Been there, done that. Points drops almost as fast as when you suggest Linux may not represent perfection.
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!
He didn't compare the situations, but he compared people's pyschology, and the fact is we all like to have a tribe to rally around and see others as the enemy. A bit of maturity is hopefully learning when you're doing that and try to avoid it.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
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.
By my highly unscientific and unsubstantiated count, the number of highly vocal (postal?) pro-apple and anti-apple slashdotters are about equal.
If I have ato make a choice I'd rather read someone unreasonably gush about something they love rather than someone vent spleen and name call. That is the important divide, not which computer or OS you like.
Luckily there are still a few people posting thoughtful arguments and comments. Those are a pleasure to read. Please save your mod points for them.
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.
Hah! Wanna see a real shit storm go down? Suggest the possibility that automobiles are not God's Gift to the American people. The merest hint that people ought to think about Public Transportation and the benefits that a robust transportation infrastructure could provide, and you'll hit 0 faster than you can say "RDF." You'll also get a ton of posts about how Public transport sucks from people that have never been to Europe, or Asia, and who's only experience with Public Transportation is "That one time I had to ride the bus when my car was in the shop." Which totally ignores that, Duh, Public transportation in the USA does suck, because everyone is expected to drive a car.
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.
The author of the article (yes I actually read it) went as far as comparing the pro/anti Apple crowd to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yes, he seriously did. And not by briefly alluding to it, but over the course of several paragraphs.
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
Not really - he referred to an academic study on perceived media bias to illustrate his argument; that study happened to use the P - I conflict as its basis. He was interested in the conclusions and how they relate to readers reactions to stories; which is different than the comparison you purport him to make.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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.
And looking at that profile page, he's certainly been modded into submission -- ten posts in a row of the last 24 modded down as trolls, when they were in fact nothing of the sort. I'd say he's got a fair point that the
I had an excellent karma. I decided to ban the "Apple" section (I don't know why there's only ONE single section of a brand, and the others are generic, quite suspicious). However, by the time of the iPhone release, they decided to place iPhone articles on "Hardware", "IT", obviously on "Apple" and I was getting a little upset about it, more when I don't share the belief that Apple does everything right.
However, I posted on one of them, and that was the end of my excellent karma. Since then, I stopped posting on Slashdot for a while, and decided that I can only read some "funny" comments and that's it.
The "mod" points are falling into wrong hands at some points, and some people only reads comments feeling they are offensive. (It appears that I'm sarcastic, and that makes things worse).
I can't agree with you more, and now that I have mod points, I try to use them wisely (Always trying to put funny ones). Good luck with your karma, cause it took too much to me to be an excellent, and took only 1 second for a person to take it down.
Secondly, I guess you haven't been paying attention, but comparably spec'd Macs are generally +/- $100 of the competition. Just because Mercedez-Benz doesn't make a $12,000 economy car doesn't mean their cars are expensive. All the entry-level luxury sedan cars cost roughly the same and the same goes for Apple's products compared to the competition.
The last thing I'd like to point out is I find it interesting how PC users constantly talk about the need for Mac users to justify their expensive purchases, when most Mac users don't really put cost at the top of things to consider when buying a machine. Apple doesn't really pander to cheap people because that market is already flooded.