Slashdot Mirror
The Apple Paradox, Closed Culture & Free-Thinking Fans
waderoush writes "The secrecy surrounding the expected Apple tablet computer is only the latest example of the company's famously closed and controlling culture. Yet millions of designers, musicians, and other creative professionals love their Apple products, and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity. How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful? This Xconomy essay explores three possible explanations. 1) Closed innovation, overseen by a guiding genius like Steve Jobs, may be the only way to build such coherent, compelling products. 2) Apple's hardware turns out to be more 'open' than the company intended — Jobs originally wanted to keep third-party apps off the iPhone, for example. 3) Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
This is probably the first time in history a cult has been described as "free-thinking"......
I would argue that most Apple fanboys (the real hardcore ones anyway) only THINK they're "free-thinking." They're original and free-thinking in the same way that hippies thought they were original and free-thinking in the 60's--by acting, dressing, and thinking like every other hippie. Real free-thinkers don't start out with an set ideology, and they certainly don't have a cult leader or product line that they worship.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Most of the "free-thinkers" who buy Apple products are just hipsters who think it's cool to be different, not people with genuinely "free-thinking" or radical minds.
"customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone."
No.. they just created what runs on the them, that's all..
Meh.
"the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as ... the iPhone"
I'm not sure whether this is due to the difficulty getting make and gcc to construct things out of plastic, metal and semi-conductors - or a lack of configure options...
If *only* there were a freely available OS to us on phones that wasn't from Apple - hmmm
the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone
Many users of Android, Linux, and many other open source products might have some serious disagreements with that statement.
Apple products are trendy and artisans aren't the social outcasts and special snow flakes they think they are.
Seriously though, my college aged daughter says the PC we sent off to school with is not good enough. She _needs_ an Mac. When asked why she can't say specifically why a Mac would be a better choice other than "everyone" has one. It's the way the product has been marketed - as a tool for the elite or more discriminating user. Translation, status symbol.
The difference between Apple and say Microsoft, has been that Apple is more like a smooth Vegas hooker taking your money and Microsoft has been more like a crackhead in Atlantic City using a lead pipe.
/.'ers get their panties in a wad about when other companies do it. Proprietary formats anyone? Remember how when Microsoft does it it's bad? Apple = good, Microsoft = bad. It's not that simple and it's naive to think it is.
Apple, as a publicly traded company, only has one obligation: to make a profit for shareholders. That means doing things like closing off Darwin for developers and totally locking down the App Store to only provide apps friendly to Apple, then they will do it and from a business perspective rightfully so. Of course I'm still gonna break my iPhone because I don't care about five apps on the App Store that make my iphone a flashlight. I need tethering and even more useful apps like blacklisting SMS messages and phone numbers that call me who I don't care for.
Apple does and gets away with a lot of things that
That being said, I only use Apple products. Apple makes products that work. That's all I ever wanted from my computer and cell phone. They do it, I'm fine with their business and Steve Jobs deserves all the zillions he's worth. Actually making products that work and listening to your customers forgives a LOT.
and the Apple brand is almost synonymous with free-thinking creativity
Yes, just like cigarettes make you healthy and slim, alcohol makes you attractive to the opposite sex, junk food makes you popular, and Nikes turn you into a long distance runner, weight lifter, and all-around bad-boy. Branding is great, isn't it? Of course, it has nothing to do with reality.
Repeat after me, Mac users: "we're all different".
Related to #1: customers are pragmatic about quality, and the open source and free software movements haven't produced anything remotely as useful as Mac OS X and the iPhone.
Funny, I think Apple has never produced anything remotely as useful as the open source software movement, in particular given that probably the majority of the code Apple ships with OS X is derived from other people's open source projects to begin with.
Actually, there is some correlation between creativity and homosexuality; you'll find a larger percentage of gays in art school than studying any other discipline.
But the disparity TFS speaks of isn't real. You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands. For a long time, Apple made the only computers that you could do art on; the Mac was graphic when DOS was text-only.
Free Martian Whores!
From my perspective, getting an Apple laptop is the easiest way to get a nice, portable laptop which runs a Unix system (which, with MacPorts, I can get all the unixy goodness) AND to make sure that the hardware is guaranteed to work. I don't need to worry about whether the new kernel broke support for ndiswrapper, I don't need to worry about the regressions in hardware support that have hit my Linuxy friends, and I have a GUI that gets as close as I've seen to the DWIM pattern.
And I have a scriptable GUI. Say what you will about its syntax, AppleScript allows some wonderful scripting possibilities. And you can call out to a shell script, so it's also powerful :)
:wq
My personal opinion is that the main reason a lot of creative (both "artsy" types and developers) like Apple's products is because the user interface and the physical products are designed to, as they say, Just work. This includes staying out of your way and letting you get to work but also to not pull the "Microsoft approach" to user friendliness by renaming things to make them "easier". There's a reason the market for customization of the look and feel of OS X is a lot smaller than the market for similar products for Windows.
Of course, there are several reasons why this works for Apple, a couple of these are partially because they have full control over the hardware and operating system which allows for tight integration and coupled with this are the development tools and the user interface guidelines. Another influence which I think is major is that third party developers know that Apple's customers generally expect software to behave in a certain way, something which isn't true to the same extent with Windows and other *nix systems. An example of this would be drag and drop, if a Windows application fails to handle drag and drop properly most people just dismiss the error message, restart the app and think nothing of it, after all, drag and drop is generally hit or miss with Windows apps, if an app for OS X failed to handle drag and drop properly most likely users would complain and consider it a screwup on the developer's part.
So part of the reason is the centralized control from Apple and part of the reason is that users have come to expect little to no user interface issues which forces Apple to make good development tools and developers to put in extra effort to make sure things work.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
4) Slashdot readers and contributors are on the geeky, bleeding edge and do not represent 90% of the population, most of whom could not care less about 'openness'.
Eric
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
The statement "haven't produced anything remotely as useful" is also nonsense. Let's see, how about the Internet, including TCP/IP and DNS? Web servers? As far as end-user products, Android phones (including Droid) and the XO are certainly useful. OSS has produced lots of useful things.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful?
Really? The first thing you should always question is your assumptions. Does Apple have a "philosophy of information sharing" and if so, what is it?
The company is secretive about upcoming, not-yet-available products. Which is not information that customers require in their day-to-day work anyways. As a user or as a developer, it is information about the current, existing products that you need most. And as both I've always found that to be readily available whenever I needed it.
So how does a philosophy of "not talking (much) about unreleased ideas" merge with the mindset of a designer, artist, programmer or any other kind of creative person? Quite well. A lot of creative people don't talk (much) about their work-in-progress, either, until it's finished. Programmers are about the only kind who feel that putting a half-finished thing out for the public is the thing to do.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
From TFA:
The programs people are inspired to write for the Mac OS X operating system are routinely more elegant and useful and less annoying than their Windows counterparts.
Quite the claim! Yet there are no examples.
I own a Mac. I've not installed much extra software on it. But what I have installed appears very similar to its Windows equivalent.
So can anyone give an example of what he's talking about?
I guess iLife should be showcase software for Mac.
- iPhoto is a confusing mess compared to Picasa
- GarageBand has some pretty neat amp simulation software in it. But the UI is the opposite of intuitive.
- iTunes is clumsy and inconsistent. I've been using it for over 5 years on Windows and Mac, and it still throws me curveballs.
- I once put together a slideshow in iMovie. I still don't know what was going on.
- iDVD is pretty easy to use. But that's because it's basically a wizard.
Just because you are in art school doesn't mean you're creative or a good artist. I'd bet money that there is the same percentage of shitty gay artists as straight ones in a given school.
I don't want to start a conspiracy theory or anything, but I have a cousin who only turned bender AFTER he bought an iphone and mac book.
Coincidence or causation? Has anyone checked the iphone source code for back-doors?
I'd argue that the "free-thinking" aspect comes from Apple's somewhat paradoxical "white box" branding.
Let's start with design. Their products are as faceless and devoid of nonfunctional design features as possible with the exception of the Apple logo (so you have a disk drive, but not one shaped like an alien's face) and consequently the product design is rather decoupled from the user. An Alienware laptop projects a certain image, and consequently Alienware laptop users are going to disproportionately be adolescent male gamers, regardless of the hardware's usefulness as a workstation for making scientific visualisations. An Apple laptop, by virtue of being a big featureless slab of whatever it's made out of, could be used by anyone.
Similarly the OS, hardware and so on are heavily abstracted to make it easier for the user to get on with what they're doing. It's basically a box which does some computer stuff, and if all goes well you don't need an awareness that you're using eighty yottabytes of hyper-RAM and a BMX derivative OS. All that stuff is thrown to the background in much the same way that the case design is made as bare as possible. As a result, things like hacking the OS etc. don't really enter your mind. There are apps, you run them, you get things done... ideally the software ecosystem is such that you never have to tinker around and realise that you're using a platform that's locked down.
Now, this also goes into their corporate image, and this is where it gets really tricky. Their corporate image is the products. You are to think about the processes which went into them as little as possible. This is part of why they crack down on leaks so much. Ideally, they want you to think of the product alone. So naturally, the fact that it's probably made in some poorly-paid factory in China doesn't enter your mind. That's maybe not as true with a Microsoft-carrying machine, where you think of the Microsoft corporate entity and so on.
Essentially, the stink of corporate is less obvious in Apple's products because they put a big fat cloaking device on the corporation. That means that self-described free thinkers, who are likely to be anti-establishment, and thus anti-corporate, and thus repelled by something with an MS logo, go with them by default.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I want to buy a mac because I'm a geek and have never used MacOS. Then again I've never used it because I'd rather pay off my house...
Somebody has conflated the kind of "free-thinking creativity" of artists, designers, etc. with the kind of free-thinking of the open software movement. "free thinking" to an artist means the freedom to create her own vision without interference by anyone else, not freedom to collaborate on or elaborate someone else's vision. This artist's "free-thinking" often looks more like the Jobs method of top-down control than like the open-source movement's wide-distribution collaboration philosophy. Which isn't to say that artists never collaborate, of course.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Or perhaps there are simply more openly gay people in the arts?
I took some art courses working on an undergrad Fine Arts program at 2 different colleges and I didn't see an unusually high number of gay students. I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I suspect you're peddling bullshit stereotypes you picked up from watching some lousy TV sitcoms.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Elitist really? You are simply jealous and I'll bet that you can't even comprehend the refinement and engineering that goes into Apple's devices, but then again, it is so hard for those so far away from the apex of technology to understand such things.
Actually, there is some correlation between creativity and homosexuality; you'll find a larger percentage of gays in art school than studying any other discipline.
I don't remember that many gays (some, but not that many), but there were a lot of left-handers... And crazy art chicks. THAT was memorable.
If you want to take a dip in the gay pool, it's the theater you'll want to visit, rather than the art gallery.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm as much a fan of open-source as the next guy and I've contributed to some projects and asked for features, etc. However, I find that the whole "designed by committee" that *many* open source apps have reduces the overall quality. Those OSS apps that truly shine generally have either a strong leader or a single author. You know the old saying, which is true, as well as witty; that a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.
As far as openness goes, Apple doesn't announce vaporware like most other companies do. This means when they announce something, they are going to sell it. Usually their products have taken old ideas and looked at them from a different angle opting for being very good at a few things rather than poor and many things. Let's face it, Cmdr Tacos' famous assessment of the original iPod is a classic example of how "the masses" would design a similar product. If Apple would release an "alpha" product to "test the waters" like so many other companies do, the iPod (and iPhone, for that matter) would have died at birth or would be so hideously deformed that it would be unrecognizable.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Mac OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, WINDOWS KEEPS PROMPTING ME USELESSLY. OSX thus gives me more time for creative effort instead of technical troubleshooting.
Apple's history of "just works" allows people more time for creative effort. BECAUSE it is closed, there is not as much complication to have to figure out. There's no registry, no need for scripting, and if something crashes it tends to recover on its own. THAT'S why "creative" types use it, because it allows me to REMOVE one more OBSTACLE to my workflow.
I'm not a "creative" in the typical sense, I'm a neuroscientist. Every time my Windows XP system crashes on me, or my network didn't initiate correctly, that's wasted time, effort, and it means I need to learn a new skill set to correct the problem.
The few times my OSX machine crash on me, it self recovers. OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, where as Windows and Linux KEEP PROMPTING ME WITH USELESS STUFF! The fact that fewer exploits target OSX is also a great benefit, and I don't have a billion choices for which hardware to buy so it's easier for me to choose the "best" one available to me. I don't want to spend a month figuring out if the Acer, Panasonic, or Dell is going to be the most ergonomic for my uses. With Apple, it's not even a question, because it's irrelevant insofar as I do not have a choice.
Also, by being an "outsider", there is less push to conformity. I don't know anyone else that uses a Mac, so I'm not being told which software is the "best" or how I should organize my workflow, thus allowing me to make my own decisions about what's important. This is critical in Science, and has been shown to be important in Sociology studies of how Science gets work done. "The Neuroscience of Screwing Up"
How can a company whose philosophy of information sharing is so at odds with that of most of its customers be so successful?
Just seems like a non sequitur to me. Or it illustrates the fact that people who gravitate to the Mac are interested in a tool they can use and, say, Linux users are interested in a toy (and I mean that in a good way- I love me my toys) they can fiddle with. Windows users (those who choose it when they don't have to for some reason), well, who can understand them? ;-)
Does a an artist care about the inner workings of the companies that makes paints and brushes?
Mac users are bought
Where do I get one? Is there a code word I have to use at the Apple store? When I get it home, will it, like, you know, do "stuff" to me?
At least by the convention in question. "Apple is the choice of creative types" is juxtaposed against the "PCs are for techies and nerds" stereotype.
Mac users are bought
They sell Mac users in Spain?
Mada mada dane.
by acting, dressing, and thinking like every other hippie.
You clearly were not paying attention; they dressed in a similar STYLE, but there was wide variation. They WERE free-thinking and individualistic compared to the people who went into work wearing the same color shirts (usually white), ties, hats, shoes, slacks, jackets. Streets of major cities at rush hour at the time were a sea of men dressed the same.
Also: anyone who claims Apple has an inside culture of creativity and free thinking is full of shit. A few idea people bring ideas to the top, and everyone else is told exactly how to implement things, with strict parameters. It's one reason a friend of mine left- he spent several years working on Apple's flagship software components and hardware, but had no say in anything. Now he makes less money but at a smaller company, where he also felt his input would matter.
Another culture shift at Apple: remember when there were credits? No more. Apple now refuses to recognize to the public the contributions its employees make, except for 2-3 top-level people. Jobs, Ive, etc.
Both the top-down ideas and refusal to recognize employee work are cashing in short-term profits for long-term stability. I wouldn't invest in Apple long-term if you paid me to; the day Steve Jobs or Ive retire, get hit by a bus, or just drop dead- Apple stock will crumble because everyone is under the perception (correctly) that they are the driving force.
When your brand is as much your top level executives as your products, you have a big problem down the road.
Please help metamoderate.
That depends on the "you" doing the buying. My daughter is in college, and although she doesn't like to admit it, she wanted her MacBook because of its coolness factor, not just what it can do. That, and she hates Windows. With that being said, it does suit her needs nicely.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
As engineers, we ought to know that sometimes we want things that are contradictory. We'd like this airplane to be strong, but it also must be light. You can't have unlimited quantities of both.
The same goes with creativity. We say we want originality, but that's not really what we are looking for most of the time. What we want is something derivative enough to be certain to work but original enough to be an improvement. Any idiot can be "original". Just take whatever is being done and do it a different way. The problem is that most different ways aren't better.
That's why "creativity" can't be treated as a "core organizational value". It's not something you can pursue in any meaningful way. What really distinguishes "creative" organizations is that they have greater insight into their problem domains.
Apple's most admired products each embody an insight about what the users they are after want to do. The iPod was not the first portable digital music player, nor has it ever been the best going by specs. The user interfaces on the iPods have been well designed and have featured innovations like multi-touch, but the killer feature isn't a feature at all. It's how the iPod, iTunes and iTunes store work together to make managing your media convenient.
That said, nobody can be all things to all people. I hate the iTunes search interface to the iTunes store, because I don't use it the way Apple's target users do. I don't watch TV and don't care about being part of popular culture. I'm more interested in finding oddball, eccentric stuff. If Google ever opened a music store, that'd be for me; YouTube is more what I'm looking for. The iTunes store wants to steer me to the latest episode of whatever TV show is the rage, and discourages me from finding what I want.
But it doesn't matter because catering to the oddball whims of very eccentric people isn't the business model for iTunes.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But the disparity TFS speaks of isn't real. You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands.
But for some people, their purposes include social, as well as technical, requirements. e.g., everyone else has a mac and they don't want to stand out, or they buy in to the whole "image" thing.
You don't buy a computer because of its culture, you buy it because it serves you purposes better than other brands. For a long time, Apple made the only computers that you could do art on; the Mac was graphic when DOS was text-only.
I'd say it's more because if you're an artistic person, you don't want to fuck around with the technicals that don't relate with what you do. You want to buy a computer that works to your specifications out of the box, because that's more time for artsy stuff. Macs fit that bill pretty well, so of course it's a good thing for the 'technical' side (Apple engineering) to be as closed as possible, letting the artists who use the product actually use it, rather than customizing or working out compatibility issues.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Well hell, with those sorts of risks I may as well just run linux...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Mac users are bought by those that want to distinguish themselves from the rest in terms of money or social class, more in the lines of "I can afford an Mac and you are a poor blue collar bastard"
I really can't stand this. This line of thinking comes up at least once per Apple article anywhere on the internet, and it's always taken as truth for some reason. I own a mac that has been used in public all of once, in an airport. I own it because I prefer it to any other laptop and was ok with spending the extra cash. It has nothing to do with showing off or demonstrating my superiority. I know plenty of other people who own macs and would agree. I'm sure some people do buy them with that intention, and I wouldn't mind people saying so except that every time they do it's always referring to "mac users" instead of "some mac users". I really hate being lumped in with a group of smug assholes just because of my laptop choice.
Agreed. Just because the maker of a tool operates in a closed manner doesn't mean that the tool itself is closed or that users of the tool are closed-minded.
Yamaha is closed when it comes to production of their pianos. Cross is closed when it comes to production of their pens. And Ford is closed when it comes to production of their cars. But it's no paradox that anybody is creative, productive, independent, or expressive with those pianos, pens, and cars.
The Unix foundations of Mac OS X appeal to technology geeks. The Just Works interface appeals to artistic types who want to create without hacking or fighting the tool itself. And the high quality hardware appeals to anyone who favors reliability and sturdiness.
Yep, every single thing costs money.
And there's absolutely no compatibility with any linux software at all.
You're 100% correct.
Wrong. Artistic people generally care a lot about technicalities, and guess what? Apple has exemplary colour management (not necessarily correct colours out of the box), which Linux just doesn't have. It's got a lot of fairly decent audio software that works well on Apple's limited range of laptops. Buying Windows is more of a risk (some times it works, some times it doesn't), and Linux is great if you have the time and knowledge to tailor-make your system to your needs. Some artists actually do that, most don't.
Oh, and the Mac is something of a standard for graphical work. Some people feel it's easier to collaborate with others when they use the same system, just like some people think using Microsoft Office is absolutely necessary in the real world. It isn't, but it can save you from a lot of problems.
Don't take the bait. You bought what was right for you and were willing to pay for it. What you are hearing from them is jealousy, sour grapes or some other mental disorder. Let them scrabble around together at the bottom, congratulating themselves on how little they spent for their cheap plastic boxes. It obviously works for them. They think everything should be free or cheap, that they're somehow owed it. Great! There's a market there and Dell, Gateway & MS, et al are there to fill it. That's what they want, that's what they deserve, that's what they're happy with. Why they feel so strongly about our preferences and why they feel the need to attack us so vehemently is a question they probably don't want an answer to. Be true to yourself. Don't be ashamed that you can distinguish, prefer and afford quality. They're just trying to drag you down to their level, thinking it will somehow validate them and make them better. They are wrong.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I switched to Mac from PC because I grew tired of Windows enforcing its dull, witless paradigms on me, but there are many things I actually miss about Windows/hate in Mac culture:
Anyway, at least it *is* shiny.
Vincent Van Gogh didn't have enough talent to make decent money at it. In fact, he only sold one painting in his short life, and that was to his brother, for a pittance. But I've seen his work (photos don't do them justice) and they're indeed breathtaking.
There's more to life than money, and how much you can earn at it bears no relation to how good an artist you are. Art is one of the disciplines that you don't expect to make money at it, just like music. One studies art and music because they love art and music, not to get rich at it.
Free Martian Whores!
Gem was first launched in 1985, whereas the Mac was launched in 1984. Apple actually sued Digital Research (and won) because it was such a blatant copy of the Mac's interface. Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I've always been into computers, and was a die-hard Windows fan until the Intel macs were released. I made the switch, and haven't looked back; HOWEVER, I didn't make the switch "to be cool (as was discussed above)," nor did I make it because windows = bad, apple = good. IMHO, they're both computer industry giants whose main interest is (ding!) PROFITS.
That being said, I'm in the "Free-thinking" business; music is what I do, it's who I am. I choose Mac, NOT because of it's affiliation with the "young, hip, etc." crowd, but because when it comes down to it, Macs are simply more stable than Windows. The MAJORITY of creative software - audio, in my case, but artwork and video as well - is run on macs. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great software selections on PC; however, when I walk into a studio (and this also goes for film/photo editing) chances are 9/10 times the main computer will be a mac, typically running Pro Tools (which also runs on windows). The reasoning behind this lies in the fact that Pro Tools, and pretty much every major Digital Audio Workshop (DAW) runs incredibly stable on the Mac. Pro Tools doesn't even support Windows 7 yet! The thousands of high quality plug-ins out there for purchase? They all run incredibly stable on a mac, too. Why? Because Mac has become the "creative" industry standard, an attribute largely due to its stability in the first place.
As a music professional, I take great care to make sure my data stays uncorrupted. I back up EVERYTHING multiple times, JUST in case my computer crashes/gets wiped, etc. My computer IS my office. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without one (unless I have an analog studio - anyone want to invest $30,000?). I don't need the cost-effectiveness of a PC, I need the guaranteed stability that comes with buying a mac.
On a different note: Apple's do-it-yourself recording, filming and photo editing software is big business. It remains powerful enough to produce professional art, while remaining cheap enough for practically anyone (college hipster kids included) to purchase. Tie that into a couple generations of internet users who drown themselves in media, and what do you get? A few million you-tube directors who all want macs, because it's what the professionals use, and there's a chance in hell their parents might actually buy it for them.
I think it's funny. I bought a Mac Powerbook 5 years ago because it met the needs for what I wanted. It was lighter than anything comparable and did what i needed it for. I quickly grew to like it a lot. The main reason at the time? Sleep/hibernate actually worked reliably. That was it.
I then experimented with some other features included with the OS such as photos and videos. I then noticed I spent no time dealing with the OS or application bizarreness, and realized I was starting to use it for everything I normally do in my personal life. I bought a MacBook Pro as it was comparable in price when spec'd out against a comparable Dell or Compaq. (Yes, it really was in fact $200 less for the same basic hardware - CPU/Hard Drive/RAM/Video/Screen Resolution)
I then decided to look at how it would work out with development, and within a couple of days realized that it was far superior, primarily because of the reliability and speed. I'd reboot maybe once every 2-3 months, a darn sight better than my work windows machine, which I then replaced with Linux. The main issue with the linux box I found is I had to spend too much time dealing with OS/application issues. And thus the promotion of the MBP to my full work/development machine. I now spend 99% of my time dealing with what I need to spend time on vs dealing with OS/App issues or rebooting. (Bringing up an entire system that runs 4GB plus across multiple components takes a significant portion of your time if you have to reboot once a day a more often, which I found was the case with Windows.)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This is the most boring argument on the internet. But I will say that I switched to Mac because I could afford it and because I was tired of the same-old with Windows. I paid about $300 more for this Mac than I paid for my last PC, which was about a thousand bucks. I bought the basement Macbook. It wasn't until I bought my first iPod in 2008 that I even considered buying a Mac. I first got an old iBook and tried it out, just to get a feel for the system. Then in March 2009 I finally bought this Macbook, and I have no intention of going back. There are very few times I've been anywhere near as frustrated with this system as I used to be on Windows. I also think the prevalence of people who pirate Windows is very telling: you love it so much but you're not willing to pay for it. It's like stealing a car with three wheels. I get all my work done faster and more efficiently on my Mac. I'm less distracted by viruses and other things that used to suck up an exorbitant amount of time in my computing. Since I've switched, three of my friends have switched when it came time to buy new computers. They of course gave mine a try first. The truth is that most people aren't wanting to play games and do all this other bullshit that Windows users are talking about. The other truth is that the crazy Mac users you're talking about, the ones who think they're better than everyone else, they are more easily identifiable by their @me.com or @mac.com e-mail addresses. That shows true, baseless loyalty. I can think of two times I got angry at Apple. One of them was unrelated to my experience, the other was directly related. In both cases I made my resolutions. I own more Apple products now than anyone I know. And I see no reason to switch back to the wide and virus-infested world of PC computing. I also have a Linux netbook and an IBM thinkpad, both running Ubuntu. I use those for specific purposes. This Mac is my general purpose computer, and pound for pound I spent a lot less on it--I won't upgrade for another three years, you'll surely be upgrading next year. Shit, the iBook would have suited me just fine had it about 200Mhz more. And that's the truth, and that's all I have. Fuck Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I make my decisions based on my needs, not my image, and people who criticize me for using a better computer well, fuck you too.
That's fine so long as your specs are fairly limited.
If all you want to do is run a single kilobuck app, then all is fine and dandy.
Most graphic designers and artists do just that, run Photoshop CS, or Elements, or Final Cut, or Logic, whatever. They don't care to recompile the kernel, or fix driver compatibility issues; all they want is to be able to run their program.
If you want to be "creative" about how you use your Mac then it won't be "non-technical".
Computer creative and art creative are different. Computer geeks write scripts and software to automate annoying tasks. Art geeks create, you know, art. Only one of those tasks is technical and may require an 'open' platform. The other has no need for technical modifications or an 'open' platform, closed works just fine as long as it's closed in a workable configuration. Which is which is left as an exercise for the reader.
Heaven forbid an artist actually customize something... [snicker]
They do, they just want a nice clean aluminum canvas for their customization.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Apple users embrace the "free-thinking" mantra because that's the image Apple's served up. In short, they were told that using a Mac makes them free-thinking. And no, I'm certain the irony is not lost of those of us who abhor Apple's general policies, which are nothing of the kind.
Apple found themselves, entering the early 1990s, as the lone major computer platform other than Windows, and they had arguably better graphics and a few pretty good music applications, which were struggling to actually function on the PC/Windows until well into the Windows 95 era (UNIX-like OSs didn't do audio well at all... you needed a DSP subsystem, as on the SGIs and the NeXT machines, to do audio at all in the very non-realtimey, who-cares-about-interrupt-latency versions of UNIX/Linux at the time).
So they used this as a sales pitch. The PC equals Windows, it's from IBM, and it's used in business... thus, its only uses are business-related. They weren't selling Macs to computer experts who knew this to be false, and certainly not those of us who actually did the PC work as well, then better than the Mac on media content creation of all sorts. They're selling to users who are fairly clueless about PCs.
Apple always had very good marketing, and both that, and their message, continue today. They were selling a slightly more capable 8-bit machine, back in the early 80s, versus Commodore and Atari machines at 1/5th the price (they had slots... that's the "more capable" part). The Mac came in, with hardware so oversimplified it was actually kind of creepy (the "Ready" pin on the SCSI controller drover /DTACK on the 68000, for any bitheads in the crowd) and cheap, but got huge margins. Today, a Mac is exactly a PC in a fancy case without a battery door... there's nothing different about an Apple PC, and yet they still get 2x-3x the cash. That pays for a ton of brainwashing.
And it's also something like human nature. As some may know, I was a senior hardware designer at Commodore on several high-end models of the Amiga computer. There was a time when the Amiga was the best (only) personal computer for color graphics or video work. Like, the mid-to-late 1980s. Today I do my video stuff on a PC running Windows 7 and Sony Vegas, with 8GB of RAM, a Quad-core CPU, and Terabytes of storage. But I still hear from people talking about how the Amiga IS better (not was, but IS).
When you join an exclusive club, you immediately embrace all the positive memes associated with club membership, and you employ these to justify your decision. This isn't restricted to computers, it's found in Video software (Vegas vs. Avid vs. Premiere vs. FCP, etc), cars (Ford vs. Chevy vs. Dodge), still cameras (Canon vs. Nikon), videocameras (Sony vs. Canon vs. Panasonic vs. JVC), soft drinks (Coke vs. Pepsi... sorry, Rock Star rules here, folks), etc. And sure, the cultier that club's culture becomes, the more the users grab hold of it.
Apple is one of the few remaining exclusive clubs in computing, and they're perhaps the cultiest and most exclusive there is in just about any discipline. Ok, Amiga fans could have given them a run for their money back in the early 1990s, but not since... the Mac hardcores have expended to embrace the iPhone. The iPhone has delivered new converts to the alter of Mac. There's a persistent meme that "Windows is hard", bug ridden, full of viruses, and of course, MacOS is impervious to any and all problems, the only way to do media content in computing, and so simple your cat can use it without reading a manual. Apple works very hard to keep these memes alive, in the general population to an extent, too, not just among the Apple Faithful.
Another factor, among those in a successful cult, is that they reinforce one another and don't pay much attention to the outside world. You can stay blissfully within your world of Apple -- magazines, web sites, etc. and never hear more than frightening stories about the world outside. This is also something that Apple cultivates...they were among t
-Dave Haynie
That is not Window's fault that you can't figure out how to properly use a computer. It's like a guy at work the other day trying to blame Outlook / Exchange because he couldn't figure out how to make an archive properly.
Yes. That's exactly what it's like. Blaming the computer because the computer is hard to use. If you think computers need to be hard to use, then it is YOU with the elitism problem, not Mac users.
The few times my OSX machine crash on me, it self recovers.
Really? When I've had OS X crash on me, it's always been a "the system is so screwed up that you have to hold the power button to turn it off" situation.
Anecdotal evidence cannot invalidate other anecdotal evidence. Quit wasting time.
OSX GETS OUT OF MY WAY, where as Windows and Linux KEEP PROMPTING ME WITH USELESS STUFF!
With Windows at least, you can turn that off. You claim to be a neuroscientist but you can't take 5 seconds to find out how to turn off UAC?
Again, the answer is Yes. And I claim to be an audio engineer, and I can't be bothered to take thirty damned minutes to figure out how to use the proprietary network driver's stilted crap UI to turn on 802.11, enter a WPA key, set my service order, and turn on DHCP. AFTER I've used the built in Windows Network UI to connect to a wireless network and had it mysteriously fail, twice, because the network driver stubbed out Windows' own API for the hardware when it was installed at the OEM.
You know what it takes to join a new wireless network in OS X? ONE SINGLE DAMNED CLICK, on a menu whose icon LOOKS LIKE AN ANTENNA, then a password if necessary. THAT'S IT.
Stuff like this makes a REAL difference. Take your haughty incredulity and shove it up your ass.
If it takes you more than an afternoon to find out what the best system is, you're doing something horribly wrong, and I think you're beyond help if you spend a whole month looking for the best system.
O RLY? As an avid bicyclist, I can tell you, that if it takes you LESS than an afternoon to purchase a new bicycle, then YOU are doing something horribly wrong; because if the decision is that easy for you, you obviously don't know enough about how to properly fit a bicycle.
Be careful with your analogies.
Just a note for everyone else, I use all OS's and they all have ups and downs. I have nothing against OS X, but I find this particular persons reasons for using Mac's to be pretty bogus.
What constitutes "use" to you? Did you install 10.5 on a hackintosh for an afternoon and diddle around in TextEdit, before declaring yourself an expert on all things OS X?
Did you know that in bash, the default shell for OS X, you can hit "ctrl-A" to move to the beginning of a long command line?
Did you know that EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE OS X UI, even including text boxes in Safari, you can hit "ctrl-A" for the exact same behavior?
No, you didn't.
As I said before, stuff like this makes a real difference.
"They put commodity parts..."
Yeah. Because Apple doesn't tend to use higher quality caps and fans and other components than HP or Dell. Apple doesn't use Intel's high-end processors. Apple doesn't use custom formed LiPo batteries and customized power controllers. Apple doesn't design their own ASICs. Apple doesn't use custom glass trackpads or create innovative connectors (Magsafe) for use in their designs.
And Apple doesn't create, maintain, and run it's own OS.
Oh. Wait. They do.
"... into slick aluminum casings."
They are, aren't they. (grin)
And combined with the above, that's better than 90% of the other manufacturers who shove actual commodity parts into cheap plastic cases and stuff Windows Home Edition on the hard drive....
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You know the GP referred to "some Mac users?" He was talking about you, douchebag.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
It's because they can see in more than 16 colours.
I'm a straight male and the females I know all have TERRIBLE color coordination. Not only that, they seem to not have any heightened acuity for it.
The myth that women see colors better than men is just that - a myth. Women are simply socialized to act as if they give a shit about goldenrod vs canary vs saffron vs paella. There are cases where women DO see more colors (due to a sex-linked trait causing them to have more distinct sets of cones), but this essentially results in a tradeoff between scope and resolution as the raw number of cones is not increased by the trait.
I am thoroughly convinced that women simply are conditioned to think they know about color and the resulting overconfidence results in men thinking "What? That's terrible." or "They're almost exactly the same and it's gonna fucking fade anyway." while only saying "Uh, ok dear".
Also -
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=fashion
Scroll to red lipstick section.
I cant make the association between free thinking and Apple.
Everyone I know who bought Apple did so because of the marketing, the artist "says" it is better but is completely unable to quantify it beyond "but everyone says Mac is better". Most Mac do not understand computers particularly well, thus they turn to an OS that limits what they can do. We call Apple a cult for a reason. I really cant see Mac users being "free thinking" about tech, especially as one of Mac's biggest selling points is that it Just Works(TM) meaning that you arent meant to think about using your computer..
I know a few designers having done tech support for a Marketing company before (so glad I'm out of that gig now) and the most talented designers can do everything they can do on a Mac in Windows, unfortunately the reverse isn't true due to the limitations of the Mac OS, it's not hacker friendly and was never meant to be.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.