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Review of 'MacHeads' Documentary

An anonymous reader writes "Just prior to its premiere at MacWorld later this week, CNet has a review of MacHeads, the new documentary film covering the obsessive world of Apple fanboyism. MacHeads features commentary from original Apple employees, the self-confessed Apple-obsessed and girls who claim they'll never sleep with Windows users. Summed up by CNet: 'MacHeads is a superb film that will give Apple haters a few cheap laughs, and Apple fans a few cheap thrills. But it'll entertain both equally, while educating everybody else.'"

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I prefer to stick to more healthy obsessions by HadouKen24 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that DS9 was the best of the Treks for reasons which have nothing to do with the above.

    The ethnocentrism and blind idealism of the Federation is brought into view. Though supposedly welcoming and accepting, it views races like the Ferengi with distrust and even disdain.

    Religion is treated more directly and more honestly than in most television shows, period. Almost unimportant (except as an occasional plot device) in the other Treks, now questions of personal religious conviction are addressed. And religious extremism and religiously motivated violence as a result have to be dealt with.

    The question of the legitimate limit of violence when under occupation is brought up--and we don't get much of an answer at all.

    Potential consequences of genetic enhancement are not only considered, but humanized in the figure of an important character.

    In general, DS9 manages to help us get a grip on contemporary problems and worries by putting them at a distance from us (and, to be fair, by oversimplifying and exaggerating them). In doing so, it becomes much more interesting.

  2. Re:Fanboys by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Im convinced that most people who talk about OSX being superior are windows users who have built up some kind of weirdo OSX fetish fantasy. At my old job I supported several OSX machines and they were as much trouble as anything else. I loved sitting there watching the spinning rainbow do its thing for no reason and trying to navigate to the command line to run top while it was running so slow. There really should be a hotkey to top or a GUI-based task manager equivalent.

    Apple does a good job of forcing a lot of features into its OS but that usually translates into a slow experience, especially coming from XP on an modern machine.

    As far as the lying goes, well, exaggeration is human nature. Its really your job to filter out the BS. This doesnt just apply to computers, but to everything in life.

  3. Well there's three reasons by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1) People who have crap hardware. A number of people I know who got a Mac and find it to be much better find that mostly because they had a really bad PC. It was a cheapie and slow right when it came out, never mind the 5+ years later when this is. Also means they were running a rather outdated OS. So it isn't a surprise that a massive hardware + software upgrade gives a much better experience.

    2) People who have an extremely broken system. Their system is full of crapware and breaks basically all the time. Software doesn't install, etc. They are finding it a major improvement because it was effectively a wipe/reinstall.

    However by far the most common

    3) They are lying to themselves. Seen this time and time again. They want/need to believe that this change is 100% for the better, so they tell themselves there are no problems. My best anecdote for this is from when I was in university, back before OS-X. I was in a friend's dorm room and his roommate and I were discussing computers. He had a Mac. He was telling me that the thing he liked was that "Macs never crash." As he was talking and noodling around, his system bombed. You know, the old bomb error. He clicked the restart and continued on. I interrupted him saying "Wait, right there! Your system crashed!" He then argued that no, it wasn't a crash like Windows does and so on. He was just lying to himself. He'd convinced himself that his system just didn't have problems like Windows did.

    So that's the biggest reason they won't admit it: They really don't acknowledge that they are having problems. They lie to themselves, which then leads them to mislead you.

    The truth of the matter is no consumer computer is perfect, and none likely ever will be. No matter what your OS, when you have an environment as complex and uncontrolled as one where people can install whatever they like, problems WILL happen. Certainly some OSes will have less problems, but anyone who tells you there's no problems is full of it.