I know that intelligence cannot change, but my point is that inteligence allows you to recognize patterns. If you sit in front of a monitor and click on the word 'file' you'll notice that a menu comes down, you click 'edit' you'll notice that another one comes down, so it's pretty safe to assume that all the words on that bar are menus with different functions. You seem to think that everyone has to be taught through a method they're already familiar with to learn how to use their OS.
You still have to be intelligent to be able to make associations between your knowledge. Open up your favorite word processor and type this:
Windows has a lot of viruses and is easy to exploit
Linux is much harder to exploit but is more difficult to learn
Mac OS X has few viruses, is about as hard to exploit as Linux, but is easy to use a the same time. However it requires different hardware.
Save that file and see if your computer can recomend an OS for you based on that data. Can it? No because it doesn't have any form of intelligence to make use of that data. Sure you could program some kind of alogrithm that would give you a recomendation, but then again that's a human writing that code.
My point is, that you have to have some inteligence to even use the knowledge anyway. Some people have all the information they need to make a logical choice right in front of them, but it ultimately boils down to "Windows has the most programs and according to tech guys who want my money, is the most compatable. Oh and my friend Fred said that macs are stupid even though the last mac he used was a Macintosh Plus. So I think I'll get Windows, I heard of Linux but most people say Windows and so I'm going to get it."
Some of that is knowledge and some of that is illogical reasoning. Someone more intelligent would factor in what they want to do with their new computer and look at the hard, updated evidence. If you still don't get what I'm saying then I'm just going to give up trying.
The point was not that I learned how to use a mac (I was only stating it was my first platform) but that after starting with a platform that was fairly simple to use I was still able be put in front of a Windows machine and told to do something and even if I had never seen anybody use the start menu before I would figure out how to launch a program within minutes.
The choice of OS has to be at least influenced by inteligence otherwise people would chose Windows ME to run a life support unit in a hospital, even if it's only knowledge influenced, how do you gain that knowledge. A computer needs specific instructions along with input data to make a decision, humans should be able to make a decision without direct instruction.
For your last response, no. You can easily have a linux box for basic computer usage that anybody can operate. Most common windows users could care less about how easy it is to start a webserver or how to get a new device to work with linux that isn't officially supported by your kernal yet, they just browse the web, check email, and use their word processor, all of which can be launched and operated by a monkey on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux (with X running of course).
I must disagree however that Windows is not a good choice for people who just want things to work because may times things don't work, a system that can easily break itself isn't what I consider very functional even if it has the majority of users and software for it.
Oh and you can't forget those hotmail users who pass you their "Send this around or hotmail will close your account" fowards to your email address when your email address does NOT end in @hotmail.com or @msn.com. It's bad enough that they can't tell that it's a hoax
I learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system. I was simply given a mac in 4th grade and now i'm soon going to college and I don't know of a single student in my highschool who can outsmart me at Windows or Mac OS, and I only know one who knows a bit more about Linux than I do (to be expected since Linux isn't my main desktop OS).
Intelligence has a lot to do with how well someone can get use to an interface as well as how much common sense they have about how to manage their OS. You don't have to know everything about an OS to not get hit by malicious code/hackers, all you need is a little incentive to protect yourself and basic knowledge of the web.
I've known people who refuse to use google to learn some kind of language because they're just so fricken lazy or they lack the common sense to look up the information they need properly. For example, he wants 'help' for some program he wants to develop. So instead of searching for coding examples that he can combine to make his program, he searches the web for that program in perl already (so he doesn't have to do any work and he can just plagerize). I ask him how he expects to learn the language if he doesn't write a line of his own code, and of course he can't come up with any good answer and says, "I GIVE UP!" And he decides to give up perl.
Then there are people who can't use search engines at all. They want to find something and they type in something like, "I want to program a perl bot" and get angry because google gives them no results. They just don't get the way most search engines are based off of keyword matching and not a person sitting at a computer reading people's inquiries to refer them to 100 or so sites.
I fail to see how your 'backyard mechanics are more intelligent than Linux geeks because they fix their own cars' fits in with this. I was basically saying that some people just seem to lack any common sense and you see it everwhere. Computers, driving, credit cards, home improvement, pets/children (hot car anybody?), etc. Anybody who has the ability to learn and any bit of incentive to should be able to eventually figure out how to open and close ports in an OSes built in firewall. I tried helping some of my friends in other countries protect themselves from the blaster worm and they couldn't even turn on their own XP firewalls to delay the attack while they patch, and then they have the nerve to get angry at me for trying to explain something to them as best as I can, especially when I have to use web resources to help explain to them (I never owned and don't ever plan to own a WinXP machine). And forget about just fowarding the link to them, pictures seem to confuse them more!
I think your underestimating the inteligence of some Mac users, sure there are some dimwits out there (they exist on many OSes), but they were at least smart enough to not use Windows for something they can do easily on another OS. From what I've seen, there is a lot less common sense in the Windows community than there is for other less widely distributed OSes. Many will download and run anything in their email no matter how many times they hear "Don't download strange attachments and run them".
You wouldn't get that much of a performance boost by getting rid of the 'glossification' since most of the calculations (since Quartz Extreme) are done by your graphics chipset (unless your using an old card). Panther is supposidly a lot faster (from what people who have developer's membership say) and there is little change in the visual complexity of the GUI.
I think the only speed bost you'd notice is that things like menus nolonger take a a tenth of a second to appear after you click on them.
Windows refers to the hard drive as "C:" unless you've renamed it, part of the reason why some windows users might not know what a hard drive is. At least the default name of a mac's hard drive has the words "hard drive" in it so a newbie user is more likely to know what you're talking about when you say, "Save it to the hard drive"
What annoys me though is when you have to explain file format saving and how to switch to another drive in the save-as dialog, that's something no GUI has been able to make it anymore obvious. Now if all GUI's had a dumbed down setting where your only save-as choices are 'floppy, my documents, (and any other drives that support this feature)' (this has partially been done by MS) and was done in a wizard format, then I think we've managed to allow even the stupidest person to use a computer.
The best solution though is to include instruction books with hardware and software and whenever someone asks how to do something that's in there, tell them to read the book. The fact is people are just to fricken lazy to properly learn how to use a computer, anybody can do it if they're willing to look at the included information. Of course I found it amusing when OS X didn't come with instructions, I never heard any complaints either which shows you that either everyone buying it has enough experience already and/or nobody ever looks at that information anyway. Then of course there's the "It's so easy to use we don't need instruction books" but after some of the questions I've been asked for several different platforms, that's hard to believe.
Better yet, actually buy them both and see which one performs better out of the box, you can even install Linux on it and still find the cheepest PC lags behind because there's no included way to write DVDs (maybe not even CDs). I doubt the cheepest PC even comes with a monitor.
Don't compare by the cheepest price, compare by what you get with it. You'll find that even the iBook ends up being one of the cheepest laptops for it's class.
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I know that intelligence cannot change, but my point is that inteligence allows you to recognize patterns. If you sit in front of a monitor and click on the word 'file' you'll notice that a menu comes down, you click 'edit' you'll notice that another one comes down, so it's pretty safe to assume that all the words on that bar are menus with different functions. You seem to think that everyone has to be taught through a method they're already familiar with to learn how to use their OS. You still have to be intelligent to be able to make associations between your knowledge. Open up your favorite word processor and type this: Windows has a lot of viruses and is easy to exploit Linux is much harder to exploit but is more difficult to learn Mac OS X has few viruses, is about as hard to exploit as Linux, but is easy to use a the same time. However it requires different hardware. Save that file and see if your computer can recomend an OS for you based on that data. Can it? No because it doesn't have any form of intelligence to make use of that data. Sure you could program some kind of alogrithm that would give you a recomendation, but then again that's a human writing that code. My point is, that you have to have some inteligence to even use the knowledge anyway. Some people have all the information they need to make a logical choice right in front of them, but it ultimately boils down to "Windows has the most programs and according to tech guys who want my money, is the most compatable. Oh and my friend Fred said that macs are stupid even though the last mac he used was a Macintosh Plus. So I think I'll get Windows, I heard of Linux but most people say Windows and so I'm going to get it." Some of that is knowledge and some of that is illogical reasoning. Someone more intelligent would factor in what they want to do with their new computer and look at the hard, updated evidence. If you still don't get what I'm saying then I'm just going to give up trying.
The point was not that I learned how to use a mac (I was only stating it was my first platform) but that after starting with a platform that was fairly simple to use I was still able be put in front of a Windows machine and told to do something and even if I had never seen anybody use the start menu before I would figure out how to launch a program within minutes. The choice of OS has to be at least influenced by inteligence otherwise people would chose Windows ME to run a life support unit in a hospital, even if it's only knowledge influenced, how do you gain that knowledge. A computer needs specific instructions along with input data to make a decision, humans should be able to make a decision without direct instruction.
For your last response, no. You can easily have a linux box for basic computer usage that anybody can operate. Most common windows users could care less about how easy it is to start a webserver or how to get a new device to work with linux that isn't officially supported by your kernal yet, they just browse the web, check email, and use their word processor, all of which can be launched and operated by a monkey on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux (with X running of course). I must disagree however that Windows is not a good choice for people who just want things to work because may times things don't work, a system that can easily break itself isn't what I consider very functional even if it has the majority of users and software for it.
Oh and you can't forget those hotmail users who pass you their "Send this around or hotmail will close your account" fowards to your email address when your email address does NOT end in @hotmail.com or @msn.com. It's bad enough that they can't tell that it's a hoax
I learned how to use a computer without anybody spoon feeding me instructions, intelligence can make all the difference for learning a specific computer system. I was simply given a mac in 4th grade and now i'm soon going to college and I don't know of a single student in my highschool who can outsmart me at Windows or Mac OS, and I only know one who knows a bit more about Linux than I do (to be expected since Linux isn't my main desktop OS). Intelligence has a lot to do with how well someone can get use to an interface as well as how much common sense they have about how to manage their OS. You don't have to know everything about an OS to not get hit by malicious code/hackers, all you need is a little incentive to protect yourself and basic knowledge of the web. I've known people who refuse to use google to learn some kind of language because they're just so fricken lazy or they lack the common sense to look up the information they need properly. For example, he wants 'help' for some program he wants to develop. So instead of searching for coding examples that he can combine to make his program, he searches the web for that program in perl already (so he doesn't have to do any work and he can just plagerize). I ask him how he expects to learn the language if he doesn't write a line of his own code, and of course he can't come up with any good answer and says, "I GIVE UP!" And he decides to give up perl. Then there are people who can't use search engines at all. They want to find something and they type in something like, "I want to program a perl bot" and get angry because google gives them no results. They just don't get the way most search engines are based off of keyword matching and not a person sitting at a computer reading people's inquiries to refer them to 100 or so sites. I fail to see how your 'backyard mechanics are more intelligent than Linux geeks because they fix their own cars' fits in with this. I was basically saying that some people just seem to lack any common sense and you see it everwhere. Computers, driving, credit cards, home improvement, pets/children (hot car anybody?), etc. Anybody who has the ability to learn and any bit of incentive to should be able to eventually figure out how to open and close ports in an OSes built in firewall. I tried helping some of my friends in other countries protect themselves from the blaster worm and they couldn't even turn on their own XP firewalls to delay the attack while they patch, and then they have the nerve to get angry at me for trying to explain something to them as best as I can, especially when I have to use web resources to help explain to them (I never owned and don't ever plan to own a WinXP machine). And forget about just fowarding the link to them, pictures seem to confuse them more!
I think your underestimating the inteligence of some Mac users, sure there are some dimwits out there (they exist on many OSes), but they were at least smart enough to not use Windows for something they can do easily on another OS. From what I've seen, there is a lot less common sense in the Windows community than there is for other less widely distributed OSes. Many will download and run anything in their email no matter how many times they hear "Don't download strange attachments and run them".
You wouldn't get that much of a performance boost by getting rid of the 'glossification' since most of the calculations (since Quartz Extreme) are done by your graphics chipset (unless your using an old card). Panther is supposidly a lot faster (from what people who have developer's membership say) and there is little change in the visual complexity of the GUI. I think the only speed bost you'd notice is that things like menus nolonger take a a tenth of a second to appear after you click on them. Windows refers to the hard drive as "C:" unless you've renamed it, part of the reason why some windows users might not know what a hard drive is. At least the default name of a mac's hard drive has the words "hard drive" in it so a newbie user is more likely to know what you're talking about when you say, "Save it to the hard drive" What annoys me though is when you have to explain file format saving and how to switch to another drive in the save-as dialog, that's something no GUI has been able to make it anymore obvious. Now if all GUI's had a dumbed down setting where your only save-as choices are 'floppy, my documents, (and any other drives that support this feature)' (this has partially been done by MS) and was done in a wizard format, then I think we've managed to allow even the stupidest person to use a computer. The best solution though is to include instruction books with hardware and software and whenever someone asks how to do something that's in there, tell them to read the book. The fact is people are just to fricken lazy to properly learn how to use a computer, anybody can do it if they're willing to look at the included information. Of course I found it amusing when OS X didn't come with instructions, I never heard any complaints either which shows you that either everyone buying it has enough experience already and/or nobody ever looks at that information anyway. Then of course there's the "It's so easy to use we don't need instruction books" but after some of the questions I've been asked for several different platforms, that's hard to believe.
Except that he's right and had someone said something similar relating to an x86 baseed machine running Linux you wouldn't have responded that way.
Better yet, actually buy them both and see which one performs better out of the box, you can even install Linux on it and still find the cheepest PC lags behind because there's no included way to write DVDs (maybe not even CDs). I doubt the cheepest PC even comes with a monitor. Don't compare by the cheepest price, compare by what you get with it. You'll find that even the iBook ends up being one of the cheepest laptops for it's class.