I agree with you, but in the case of Firefly I think a word of caution is in order in regard to the way it's introduced to people.
The biggest factor that killed Firefly, IMHO, is that the episodes were shown out of order. It's not a serial per se, but given the heavy emphasis on character exposition and the relatively large cast of central characters a person coming into the middle of the series will likely find themself lost.
I saw the show exactly once while it was on Fox. It looked like it was probably a nice show, but I had difficulty following what was happening (it was the episode where Serenity got boarded, and River and Simon ended up hiding on the exterior of the ship while everyone else is being interrogated) and why the situation was supposed to be tense. I didn't watch it again.
Mind you, I'm the target audience for this. I watch very little TV, but adored the Buffy and Angel series, and all of my friends raved about it. Despite being a fan of Joss Whedon, I thought "eh, space western", shrugged, and went on with my life.
Until the DVDs came out. My wife received the box set as a Christmas gift from one of the aforementioned pushy friends, so the family all sat down to check out the first episode. 6 hours later we were completely and utterly hooked. Any time we got an hour free we were watching Firefly, and even took it with us on a camping trip. (Side note: watching Firefly on a high-tech laptop while snuggled around a campfire on a cold night is a wonderful thing, and fits the show perfectly!)
There's a reason why Firefly fans are so rabid, but to get the full effect it's important to watch the episodes in order.
You're not locked in. Just keep a Wintel box around for gaming! There's nothing that says that you can only use one platform- use whatever works best for the task at hand.
After being a PC user for a decade, building my own machines from scratch, running dual boot with first Windows & OS/2 and later Windows & Linux, I switched to a 12" PowerBook as my primary machine just over 2 years ago. It changed my whole idea of what using computers is supposed to be like.
Today I'm a raging Mac fanatic. I'm completely unashamed about it. My PowerBook goes with me everywhere. My wife has her own Mac now, and Macs outnumber people in our house. And yet the last computer I purchased was a Shuttle PC, into which I've dumped a pile of upgrades. I don't see any hypocracy in this at all. I play a lot of games, and only about half of the ones I like are available for the Mac. The shuttle is strictly for gaming, because frankly that's the only reason I have to touch a PC outside of work. I take it to LAN parties and play Matrix Online with it pretty regularly. The PowerBook is for everything else.
If games are what are keeping you using PCs, I highly recommend going this route. It's the best of both worlds.
True, he did leave out 2 very straightforward drop-down list selections and the actual typing of the IP and subnet in the Mac instructions. The intent of his statement stands.
Oh, and if one misses the Apple logo by a little bit it still works- the button is actually mapped to a rectangular field around the apple, with plenty of room for error. Fortunately, the menu bar is layed out so that the options aren't crowded together.
It's funny you should mention that, because I saw Gene Siskel just the other day and, for the very same reasons you mentioned, I asked him what he thought of Episode III.
His review was succinct, but to the point: "BRAINS!!!!"
So there you have it! The other reviews who claim that the Star Wars films are mindless have been rebuffed by *both* Siskel and Ebert! With an endorsement like that, I can't wait for this movie!
Very cool. If you happen to still have them, you can use your original Atari controllers with the Stelladaptor (http://www.pixelspast.com/products/). I have one, and it works wonderfully! It's great being able to play classic games as they were meant to be played.
I have to differ with you here. SubLogic's Flight Simulator II was the best-selling flight sim for the Commodore 64 (which was itself the best-selling home computer throughout the early and mid-80's), and for many people (myself included) it was their first exposure to realistic (in physics if not graphics) flight.
I'd always wanted to visit Meigs field, as I had the location, layout, and even the radio frequencies memorized. I was saddened when I learned that it had closed, though I didn't get the full story until this thread.
The mayor wrecked the runways with bulldozers? Heh. *I* ruined that airport countless times with my virtual Piper Cherokee Archer!:-)
I played Archon on my Mac just yesterday, using the Power64 C-64 emulator and my old Epyx 500 XJ joystick (via Stelladaptor).
The golden age of classic gaming is today, my friends! Sure, I could dig out my old 64 and the original Archon disk, but why bother when emulation lets me cram all of my best C-64, Atari 2600, and arcade games into a 12" laptop and play during my lunch hour? Hell, I've got a ZX81 emulator as well, though admittedly I don't have much use for it.:-)
FWIW, I've been quite pleased with the durability of my 1st generation 12" PowerBook. It's always on, always with me, and has suffered nearly constant abuse, and I have to say that it's worked for me much better than I've worked for it.
The virus/spyware issue is where I think that the Mac gains a significant edge over Wintel machines in TCO. In my work environment it's nearly impossible to keep a Windows box spyware free for longer than a week, dispite a robust corporate firewall and significant web site blocking.
However, that's not why I'm replying to your message! Completely off-topic, I'm doing a little side project for which I'm considering cannibalizing the LCD from a Compaq Contura. I've been having difficulty finding some reliable specs, however, so maybe you can help. Specifically, is it color or monochrome, and do you happen to know the display's maximum resolution? Thanks!
My family was eaten by a grue! It was the worst moment of my childhood- almost as bad as all of the random strangers that kept breaking into our house through the kitchen window and eating my lunch!
[and please don't buy an iMac for the purpose of playing Doom 3 acceptably - the 'Ultra' tacked onto the end doesn't change much].
Huh? Doom 3 isn't available for the Mac. Surely you're not implying that he'd run it in Virtual PC!
That's really my only complaint about Doom 3. Outside of work I use Macs almost exclusively, and Doom 3 forced me to dust off my PC (and buy a new video card). It's worth it, 'cause the game totally rocks, but I do wish that more game manufacturers would follow the example of games like UT 2004.
On the other hand, there are certain groups of people for whom the lack of a pulse would hold a distinct advantage, such as biathalon competitors and snipers.:-)
Interestingly, this is exactly the sort of thing that I wonder about when I'm driving or in the shower. I've thought about this, and the only potential problems I could come up with were in relation to the lymphatic and renal systems.
Outpost was one of those games that 95% hated, and 5% lost a significant part of their life to.
It was described as "Sim City in space". You built a colony on another planet from the ground up, starting with the loadout of your spacecraft, selection of destination star system and planet, deployment of your selected satellites and probes, and choice a landing site.
Then the game actually got started, in much the same style as Sim City (though turn-based), but with a strong orientation toward hard science. Typically, it turned into a race to research and develop full nanotechnology before the available material resources dried up.
At that point the game became easy, as your resource limitations pretty much vanished. Then the objectives switched to terraforming, redeveloping a space program, and building 50 factories turning out woopie cushions and 8-track tapes.;-) Morale was a big factor throughout the game.
We may have descended from tree-dwellers, but we're hardly beholden to our arboreal heritage!
Personally, I'd be thrilled with a subterranean existence! I have no love for the Cursed Daystar, or even being outdoors at all for that matter, and feel that I would be perfectly suited to life underground (or in a spacecraft, or on Mars, or what have you). I've been fortunate enough to be able to avoid any contact with the outdoor environment for days at a time, and have nothing but good things to say about the experience!
Submarine crews do it all the time, presumably with little adverse effects. In fact, a cow-orker of mine used to be a submariner, and it was his experience that the only real problem was separation from family and friends. I've just done a quick survey of my immediate loved ones, and the unanimous decision was that, provided we had internet access, this would be an ideal environment for us to live in!
Of course, your mileage may vary, and I've met people who become depressed if they're away from the sun during the day for even a short while. My whole point is that there are people out there (probably many on/.) for whom this "bunker" would be a dream house.
My job often involves work that is more easily done late at night when the users aren't logged into their machines or asking me questions about how to fix their home PC. As a result, it's not uncommon for me to be the only person in the building for hours at a time doing tedious work.
In instances like that my iPod is a lifesaver. It keeps me marginally entertained and gives my brain something to do, allowing me to get a lot more work done before hitting my boredom limit. It's unobtrusive and helps pass the time. I'm willing to trade off the possibility of meaningless social interaction with the cleaning crew or the security guards for that!
It's also my primary music source in my car, since there's been little worth listening to on the radio since our local pirate station got busted a few years ago.:-)
As a kid, I was a TV addict. My parents were concerned that I'd waste my life being a couch potato. Now I'm 34, and recently talked with my wife about shutting off the cable TV, as we couldn't recall watching cable at all in about 2 months.
The last program I made a point of watching was the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on Sci-Fi. The last series I watched regularly was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ended some time ago. There are a lot of programs which look like they'd be fun, but my life is too busy for a regular committment of time to something non-interactive.
We have an extensive DVD collection that we like to watch, and we go to the movies pretty regularly, but both of these are usually done with groups of friends as social events. If I'm alone I'll opt for a computer game over passive TV/DVD viewing every time.
TV just bugs me. Most programs are mindless and boring, the news infuriates me with how shallow the coverage of real news is (Michael Jackson coming home from the courthouse was carried live in its entirety, while the President's address on the future of NASA was reduced to a 10 second sound byte? C'mon, guys!), and even good programs are generally ruined by the oversaturation of advertising (ironic, since I majored in advertising).
The net is, across the board, superior. I can research topics to far greater depth than most TV programs would dream of (the odd TLC or Discovery program notwithstanding), news can be obtained from all sides, and having a chat client running in the background lets me interact with friends, family, etc at the same time.
Oh, and the pR0n on the net blows away anything you can get on pay channels!:-)
-Cybrex
Mac user != not tech savvy!!!
on
Upgrade Your eMac
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Your argument is based on the assumption that Macs are an inherently inferior platform because they're not as hardware hackable. This simply isn't true. I'll certainly grant that the open architecture of PCs makes them more conducive to hardware hacking, but since my "O/S of choice" is Mac OS X it doesn't really matter.
I very much enjoy doing upgrades and case mods, and I've been doing hardware hacking since before it was called modding (1993). At home I run a mixed networked environment that (at the moment) consists of 4 PCs, a 12" PowerBook (connected via WAP) and the iMac I'm typing this on right now. All but one of the PCs are homebuilt from the ground up (the fourth was a freebie), and I've done some minor upgrades to the iMac (replaced the hard drive with a beefier one- a snap in a PC but a much more significant endeavour on an iMac!). I've also homebuilt PCs for friends who wanted something better than a stock Gateway machine but lacked the ability to do it themselves.
That said, when I want to play Call of Duty I use a PC. For everything else, however, Macs provide a much more enjoyable and productive environment. I can get into the OS nitty-gritty much moreso than I can with Windows, and there's simply no comparison in the user interface.
The timing on this is perfect, as I just read an article yesterday (in InfoWeek, I believe) about the effect of IBM's plan to discontinue OS/2 support on ATM manufacturers. The article was a couple of months old, but focused on them suggesting that financial institutions migrate their ATMs to Linux instead of Windows. It seems that the big ATM manufacturers (including Diebold, which featured heavily in the article) are leaning heavily toward Windows despite IBM's recommendation that they go with Linux. Their attitude is that they're running Windows on the back end, so they want it in the ATMs as well.
Well, now they're getting what they wanted, and I doubt that they'll learn from this. Large banks seem to have a monolithic mindset that's averse to anything new. They're also decidedly pro-Microsoft.
IBM offers some very effective solutions for integrating Linux-based ATMs with both UNIX and Windows-based back end systems. That companies like Diebold insist on going with insecure, unstable (I've seen an ATM stuck with a BSOD!) software for such sensitive systems is asinine.
Actually, yes. I realize that you're trying to make a joke (and you succeed hands down, BTW), but the colorful G3 iMacs are fully supported under Panther.
I just upgraded the hard drive in my wife's "Grape" iMac, partially in preparation for Panther (and partially so she can continue ripping her CD collection w/o running out of space).
Funny you should mention that, since that does seem to be the case on the flip side. My wife's girlfriend (my ex-girlfriend) moved out a month ago- just before my wife started using a Mac as her primary machine. Now suddenly half of our female friends are hitting on her- even ones that didn't previously identify as bisexual.
I guess that grape iMac really IS a chick magnet.:-)
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Gorram right! Doh ma?
I agree with you, but in the case of Firefly I think a word of caution is in order in regard to the way it's introduced to people.
The biggest factor that killed Firefly, IMHO, is that the episodes were shown out of order. It's not a serial per se, but given the heavy emphasis on character exposition and the relatively large cast of central characters a person coming into the middle of the series will likely find themself lost.
I saw the show exactly once while it was on Fox. It looked like it was probably a nice show, but I had difficulty following what was happening (it was the episode where Serenity got boarded, and River and Simon ended up hiding on the exterior of the ship while everyone else is being interrogated) and why the situation was supposed to be tense. I didn't watch it again.
Mind you, I'm the target audience for this. I watch very little TV, but adored the Buffy and Angel series, and all of my friends raved about it. Despite being a fan of Joss Whedon, I thought "eh, space western", shrugged, and went on with my life.
Until the DVDs came out. My wife received the box set as a Christmas gift from one of the aforementioned pushy friends, so the family all sat down to check out the first episode. 6 hours later we were completely and utterly hooked. Any time we got an hour free we were watching Firefly, and even took it with us on a camping trip. (Side note: watching Firefly on a high-tech laptop while snuggled around a campfire on a cold night is a wonderful thing, and fits the show perfectly!)
There's a reason why Firefly fans are so rabid, but to get the full effect it's important to watch the episodes in order.
You're not locked in. Just keep a Wintel box around for gaming! There's nothing that says that you can only use one platform- use whatever works best for the task at hand.
After being a PC user for a decade, building my own machines from scratch, running dual boot with first Windows & OS/2 and later Windows & Linux, I switched to a 12" PowerBook as my primary machine just over 2 years ago. It changed my whole idea of what using computers is supposed to be like.
Today I'm a raging Mac fanatic. I'm completely unashamed about it. My PowerBook goes with me everywhere. My wife has her own Mac now, and Macs outnumber people in our house. And yet the last computer I purchased was a Shuttle PC, into which I've dumped a pile of upgrades. I don't see any hypocracy in this at all. I play a lot of games, and only about half of the ones I like are available for the Mac. The shuttle is strictly for gaming, because frankly that's the only reason I have to touch a PC outside of work. I take it to LAN parties and play Matrix Online with it pretty regularly. The PowerBook is for everything else.
If games are what are keeping you using PCs, I highly recommend going this route. It's the best of both worlds.
True, he did leave out 2 very straightforward drop-down list selections and the actual typing of the IP and subnet in the Mac instructions. The intent of his statement stands.
Oh, and if one misses the Apple logo by a little bit it still works- the button is actually mapped to a rectangular field around the apple, with plenty of room for error. Fortunately, the menu bar is layed out so that the options aren't crowded together.
Grab me a box of Yappie's Dog Biscuits, `cuz Stanley Spadowski's Clubhouse is on!!! :-)
And afterwards, we're gonna teach poodles how to fly!
Krull!!! :-)
Wow. Two wonderful obscure movie references in a single day. What is Slashdot coming to???
It's funny you should mention that, because I saw Gene Siskel just the other day and, for the very same reasons you mentioned, I asked him what he thought of Episode III.
His review was succinct, but to the point: "BRAINS!!!!"
So there you have it! The other reviews who claim that the Star Wars films are mindless have been rebuffed by *both* Siskel and Ebert! With an endorsement like that, I can't wait for this movie!
(Okay, go ahead and mod me "-5, tasteless" now.)
Very cool. If you happen to still have them, you can use your original Atari controllers with the Stelladaptor (http://www.pixelspast.com/products/). I have one, and it works wonderfully! It's great being able to play classic games as they were meant to be played.
-Cybrex
I have to differ with you here. SubLogic's Flight Simulator II was the best-selling flight sim for the Commodore 64 (which was itself the best-selling home computer throughout the early and mid-80's), and for many people (myself included) it was their first exposure to realistic (in physics if not graphics) flight.
:-)
I'd always wanted to visit Meigs field, as I had the location, layout, and even the radio frequencies memorized. I was saddened when I learned that it had closed, though I didn't get the full story until this thread.
The mayor wrecked the runways with bulldozers? Heh. *I* ruined that airport countless times with my virtual Piper Cherokee Archer!
I played Archon on my Mac just yesterday, using the Power64 C-64 emulator and my old Epyx 500 XJ joystick (via Stelladaptor).
:-)
The golden age of classic gaming is today, my friends! Sure, I could dig out my old 64 and the original Archon disk, but why bother when emulation lets me cram all of my best C-64, Atari 2600, and arcade games into a 12" laptop and play during my lunch hour? Hell, I've got a ZX81 emulator as well, though admittedly I don't have much use for it.
-Cybrex
FWIW, I've been quite pleased with the durability of my 1st generation 12" PowerBook. It's always on, always with me, and has suffered nearly constant abuse, and I have to say that it's worked for me much better than I've worked for it.
The virus/spyware issue is where I think that the Mac gains a significant edge over Wintel machines in TCO. In my work environment it's nearly impossible to keep a Windows box spyware free for longer than a week, dispite a robust corporate firewall and significant web site blocking.
However, that's not why I'm replying to your message! Completely off-topic, I'm doing a little side project for which I'm considering cannibalizing the LCD from a Compaq Contura. I've been having difficulty finding some reliable specs, however, so maybe you can help. Specifically, is it color or monochrome, and do you happen to know the display's maximum resolution? Thanks!
-Cybrex
My family was eaten by a grue! It was the worst moment of my childhood- almost as bad as all of the random strangers that kept breaking into our house through the kitchen window and eating my lunch!
-Cybrex
[and please don't buy an iMac for the purpose of playing Doom 3 acceptably - the 'Ultra' tacked onto the end doesn't change much].
Huh? Doom 3 isn't available for the Mac. Surely you're not implying that he'd run it in Virtual PC!
That's really my only complaint about Doom 3. Outside of work I use Macs almost exclusively, and Doom 3 forced me to dust off my PC (and buy a new video card). It's worth it, 'cause the game totally rocks, but I do wish that more game manufacturers would follow the example of games like UT 2004.
-Cybrex
On the other hand, there are certain groups of people for whom the lack of a pulse would hold a distinct advantage, such as biathalon competitors and snipers. :-)
Interestingly, this is exactly the sort of thing that I wonder about when I'm driving or in the shower. I've thought about this, and the only potential problems I could come up with were in relation to the lymphatic and renal systems.
-Cybrex
I want a copy of Kryptos, the sculpture in the courtyard at the CIA's headquarters, in my front yard!
http://elonka.com/kryptos/
-Cybrex
I'd like to be the first to welcome Dennis Leary to Slashdot!
;-)
Your standup rocks, man! I didn't know you could code too!
-Cybrex
Outpost was one of those games that 95% hated, and 5% lost a significant part of their life to.
;-) Morale was a big factor throughout the game.
It was described as "Sim City in space". You built a colony on another planet from the ground up, starting with the loadout of your spacecraft, selection of destination star system and planet, deployment of your selected satellites and probes, and choice a landing site.
Then the game actually got started, in much the same style as Sim City (though turn-based), but with a strong orientation toward hard science. Typically, it turned into a race to research and develop full nanotechnology before the available material resources dried up.
At that point the game became easy, as your resource limitations pretty much vanished. Then the objectives switched to terraforming, redeveloping a space program, and building 50 factories turning out woopie cushions and 8-track tapes.
Great game for its time.
-Cybrex
We may have descended from tree-dwellers, but we're hardly beholden to our arboreal heritage!
/.) for whom this "bunker" would be a dream house.
Personally, I'd be thrilled with a subterranean existence! I have no love for the Cursed Daystar, or even being outdoors at all for that matter, and feel that I would be perfectly suited to life underground (or in a spacecraft, or on Mars, or what have you). I've been fortunate enough to be able to avoid any contact with the outdoor environment for days at a time, and have nothing but good things to say about the experience!
Submarine crews do it all the time, presumably with little adverse effects. In fact, a cow-orker of mine used to be a submariner, and it was his experience that the only real problem was separation from family and friends. I've just done a quick survey of my immediate loved ones, and the unanimous decision was that, provided we had internet access, this would be an ideal environment for us to live in!
Of course, your mileage may vary, and I've met people who become depressed if they're away from the sun during the day for even a short while. My whole point is that there are people out there (probably many on
Cheers!
-Cybrex
My job often involves work that is more easily done late at night when the users aren't logged into their machines or asking me questions about how to fix their home PC. As a result, it's not uncommon for me to be the only person in the building for hours at a time doing tedious work.
:-)
In instances like that my iPod is a lifesaver. It keeps me marginally entertained and gives my brain something to do, allowing me to get a lot more work done before hitting my boredom limit. It's unobtrusive and helps pass the time. I'm willing to trade off the possibility of meaningless social interaction with the cleaning crew or the security guards for that!
It's also my primary music source in my car, since there's been little worth listening to on the radio since our local pirate station got busted a few years ago.
-Cybrex
I so agree with you!
:-)
As a kid, I was a TV addict. My parents were concerned that I'd waste my life being a couch potato. Now I'm 34, and recently talked with my wife about shutting off the cable TV, as we couldn't recall watching cable at all in about 2 months.
The last program I made a point of watching was the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on Sci-Fi. The last series I watched regularly was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ended some time ago. There are a lot of programs which look like they'd be fun, but my life is too busy for a regular committment of time to something non-interactive.
We have an extensive DVD collection that we like to watch, and we go to the movies pretty regularly, but both of these are usually done with groups of friends as social events. If I'm alone I'll opt for a computer game over passive TV/DVD viewing every time.
TV just bugs me. Most programs are mindless and boring, the news infuriates me with how shallow the coverage of real news is (Michael Jackson coming home from the courthouse was carried live in its entirety, while the President's address on the future of NASA was reduced to a 10 second sound byte? C'mon, guys!), and even good programs are generally ruined by the oversaturation of advertising (ironic, since I majored in advertising).
The net is, across the board, superior. I can research topics to far greater depth than most TV programs would dream of (the odd TLC or Discovery program notwithstanding), news can be obtained from all sides, and having a chat client running in the background lets me interact with friends, family, etc at the same time.
Oh, and the pR0n on the net blows away anything you can get on pay channels!
-Cybrex
Your argument is based on the assumption that Macs are an inherently inferior platform because they're not as hardware hackable. This simply isn't true. I'll certainly grant that the open architecture of PCs makes them more conducive to hardware hacking, but since my "O/S of choice" is Mac OS X it doesn't really matter.
I very much enjoy doing upgrades and case mods, and I've been doing hardware hacking since before it was called modding (1993). At home I run a mixed networked environment that (at the moment) consists of 4 PCs, a 12" PowerBook (connected via WAP) and the iMac I'm typing this on right now. All but one of the PCs are homebuilt from the ground up (the fourth was a freebie), and I've done some minor upgrades to the iMac (replaced the hard drive with a beefier one- a snap in a PC but a much more significant endeavour on an iMac!). I've also homebuilt PCs for friends who wanted something better than a stock Gateway machine but lacked the ability to do it themselves.
That said, when I want to play Call of Duty I use a PC. For everything else, however, Macs provide a much more enjoyable and productive environment. I can get into the OS nitty-gritty much moreso than I can with Windows, and there's simply no comparison in the user interface.
Cheers,
-Cybrex
The timing on this is perfect, as I just read an article yesterday (in InfoWeek, I believe) about the effect of IBM's plan to discontinue OS/2 support on ATM manufacturers. The article was a couple of months old, but focused on them suggesting that financial institutions migrate their ATMs to Linux instead of Windows. It seems that the big ATM manufacturers (including Diebold, which featured heavily in the article) are leaning heavily toward Windows despite IBM's recommendation that they go with Linux. Their attitude is that they're running Windows on the back end, so they want it in the ATMs as well.
Well, now they're getting what they wanted, and I doubt that they'll learn from this. Large banks seem to have a monolithic mindset that's averse to anything new. They're also decidedly pro-Microsoft.
IBM offers some very effective solutions for integrating Linux-based ATMs with both UNIX and Windows-based back end systems. That companies like Diebold insist on going with insecure, unstable (I've seen an ATM stuck with a BSOD!) software for such sensitive systems is asinine.
-Cybrex
Actually, yes. I realize that you're trying to make a joke (and you succeed hands down, BTW), but the colorful G3 iMacs are fully supported under Panther.
I just upgraded the hard drive in my wife's "Grape" iMac, partially in preparation for Panther (and partially so she can continue ripping her CD collection w/o running out of space).
-Cybrex
God knows I've posted lamer things to /., so why not this?
Hmmm... I guess I should at least try to say something profound for the sake of posterity. Uh, er...
"All your base are belong to us!"
No, that's old.
"Natalie Portman and hot grits!"
That's even older.
"In Soviet Russia, Logo hacks YOU!"
Dear God, why do I even bother?
OK, obviously I'm drawing a blank here, so let me just apologize to everyone reading this message for the collosal waste of time.
BTW, I've always thought that Slashdot's broken Windows logo would be fitting.
-Cybrex
Funny you should mention that, since that does seem to be the case on the flip side. My wife's girlfriend (my ex-girlfriend) moved out a month ago- just before my wife started using a Mac as her primary machine. Now suddenly half of our female friends are hitting on her- even ones that didn't previously identify as bisexual.
:-)
I guess that grape iMac really IS a chick magnet.
-Cybrex