Are Mac Users Smarter than PC Users? 987
arminw writes "Maybe not smarter, but according to MacNewsWorld they are better at expressing themselves than the average Slashdotter and certainly are better at handling the king's English than the average PC operator." Also, michael is better than CowboyNeal. Mathematical expressions of written style don't lie!
Article text in case of slashdotting! (Score:2, Informative)
www.LinuxInsider.com,
Part of the ECT News Network
07/15/04 7:45 AM PT
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language.
My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.
Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average Mac user really is smarter than the rest of us isn't so easy. Part of the problem is that even if you matched the admissions test results for a graduate school with individual PC or Mac preferences to discover a strong positive correlation, people would argue that the Mac users are exceptional for other reasons, that the tests don't measure anything relevant, and that it's unethical to do this in the first place.
In fact, it's pretty clear that this topic is sufficiently emotionally loaded that you'd get shouted down by one side or another no matter how you did the research; and that's too bad because a clear answer one way or the other would be interesting.
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language. This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly.
Measuring Written English
In other words, if we knew that Mac users, as a group, were significantly better users of written English than PC users, then we'd have a presumptive basis for ranking the probable "smartness" of two people about whom we only know that one uses a Mac and the other a PC.
So how can we do that? As it happens, Unix has been useful for text processing and analysis virtually from the beginning. In fact, the very first Unics application offered text processing support for the patent application process at Bell Labs -- in 1971 on a PDP-11 with 8 KB of RAM and a 500-KB disk.
By coincidence, Interleaf, the first GUI-based Document-processing package, was the first major commercial package available on Sun -- in 1983, well before Microsoft "invented" Windows and well ahead of the first significant third-party applications for the Apple Lisa.
During the 12 years between those two applications, text processing and related research became one of the hallmarks of academic Unix use. By the early eighties therefore most Unix releases, whether BSD- or AT&T-derived, came with the AT&T writers workbench -- a collection of useful text processing utilities.
One of those was a thing called style. Style is somewhat out of style these days but is on many Linux "bonus" CDs and downloadable from gnu.org as part of the diction package.
Style produces readability metrics on text. Forget for the moment what the ratings mean and look at the numbers. For comparison, here's what style says about the first 1,000 words in what is arguably the finest novel ever published in English: The Golden Bowl readability grades:
Kincaid: 18.2
ARI: 22.2
Coleman-Liau: 9.8
Flesch Index: 46.7
Fog Index: 21.7
Lix: 64.4 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 13.5
Of course, that's Henry James at the top of his form.
Slashdot and Other Style
For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:
Kincaid: 7.7
ARI: 8.0
Coleman-Liau: 9.7
Pudge... (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, we all know that the really smart users run Gentoo, highly optimized for whatever hardware they're using!
Re:Troll food: I'm hungry! (Score:1, Informative)
I hope you meant to say the S/N has DECREASED - there is far more noise, far less signal.
Re:I say no (Score:3, Informative)
LOL! would that be ifconfig???
oops
Re:Article text in case of slashdotting! (Score:2, Informative)
So what's the ratio of English to non-English natives on the sites sampled?
Temporal Distortion (Score:4, Informative)
That would be the Queen's english. Perhaps it's merely a matter of temporal distortion.
Correlation and causation lesson (Score:5, Informative)
One group may be smarter than the other, but it has NOTHING to do with actually using the type of computer!
It has everything to do with the life choices that we make and how we go about making decisions. It also has to do with how one has to come about making the choice of Mac or Linux over PC.
First of all, the easiest answer to the question "which operating system should I use?" is going to be a windows PC for at least one or two more decades. Since this is the easiest answer, its the answer most often taken. Lazy people, uninformed people, and people just can't possibly understand how a computer works will take the easy answer.
However, with Macs and Linux, the users arrived at that information differently. They've worked on many machines, perform various functions, and do more than email and surf the web. They are deeper into their computer experience because getting into that experience is important and they learn more. These same people tend to be mroe logical and research their decisions more because that's the nature of everything they do.
Second, the two above statements are not absolutes, they are tendencies. Apple and linux users tend to look more into their computer experience because they want more out of it, but that's not to say there are no PC users who do the same thing. However, due to the tendency that more PC users are simply looking for that "simple answer" this then skews the overall social makeup of the PC user base towards the less analytical and creative of the general american populace.
Third, its all about perception. The easy answer is perceived as easy. You can argue its not so easy, what with bugs and viruses and spyware, and that you will pay for it later. However, that's not what the general populace thinks. In my opinion they are misinformed, but they are definitely underinformed about their choices. Linux and Macs require a larger investment than most people are willing to put in, but if you make that investment it tends to be returned pretty quickly in one form or another. It's just like the way investment bankers work. They know you have to invest to get something back. Most people look at their PC as a TV or Microwave oven. To them it's just an appliance that needs regular updates. A similar investment can be made in a PC, you just go about it differently.
The phrase "Mac/Linux users are smarter/more creative/better than PC users" serves no purpose other than to get people riled up. There are tons of better ways to explain it but they take several paragraphs, like this post does.
Re:I doubt it. (Score:1, Informative)
And for you I suspect inbreeding. It's "nepotism" idiot, not "nepolitanism"! Learn how to use a dictionary. It may be tough for you at first because you need to know how alphabetic order works in order to use one properly...
Penny Arcade (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stupid things i've heard mac users say. (Score:5, Informative)
"Mac is best for desktop publishing"
I've heard more PC users say this than Mac users. It's indicative of the lack of general education about computers, and how little Apple spends to combat FUD. Apple has changed a lot in the last 10 years, but it seems that the general 'mindshare' is stuck back in '93. Still, I'd rather do DP on a mac than a PC anyday. Considering that's what I do for a living....
"Mac is best for video editing"
The TV show Scrubs is made with FCP - hardly 'prosumer'. There is the 'Sky Captain' movie that was done mostly with Macs. Renderfarms may be PC, sure. But the cutting and editing are done on a Mac in most cases.
Most PC users I know use a PC because they don't buy into all that Mac FUD.
heh. Most PC users I know have a PC because they have the appearance of being cheaper. At first. They also don't bother to educate themselves. Add up all the time/$$$ spent battling viruses alone, and you got yourself a Mac.
I know that what takes several hours on a PC (reinstall WinXP, apps, and drivers) takes less than an hour on my mac. I'll sit out on my deck having a beer or get some work done while you guys dick with Windows.
Re:Mac vs PC- intelligence of the user (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pudge... (Score:3, Informative)
I run Gentoo, OSX and Windows 2000 for my server, laptop and workstation, respectively. On the server, I want flexibility, stability and security. On the workstation, I want the ability to run industry standard software packages and perform intensive operations without ever having to muck about with the system's configuration. And on the laptop -- which I use most often -- I want power efficiency, intuitive file management, and a pleasant user experience.
Any time you adapt a tool for a use that's already best met by another tool, you're ignoring the REASON for multiple tools. "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness...it's slow death."
Re:refuted by an unimpeachable source (Score:2, Informative)
A response to the article [mtu.edu]
This research article just seems to be flamebait and highly uncontrolled. Hell, I could give you papers from the Mac users at our school and compare them to the PC users and the Mac users would win by far. A computer does not influence a person's style of writing. If you were to get a good, large group of students, you would see that the results are flawed, and that Mac users would tend to outperform PC users.
Postmodernism essay generator (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac vs PC- intelligence of the user (Score:3, Informative)
I think one of the points of the story was that she was a better qualified person to run the bank. She certainly ran the Banks household better than a banker did, and showed more sense than Mr. Banks had pence.
you've left some important details out (Score:2, Informative)
Also, the person who spends $2,000+ on a PC is either a geek who's putting together an amazingly fast machine themself, or an average person who has the money to buy a top of the line pre-built PC. Neither fall into the category of someone looking for a budget computer.
Missing details: PC: Monitor sold separately, the emac has a built in 17" sony flat screen- takes much less space this way
Mac: also has built-in ethernet
Mac: if used as an 'appliance' will be much more useful since it's a single piece that can be moved from room to room more easily
PC: memory card reader- for mac just plug the camera, mp3 player or other device directly into the emac and it automatically mounts and opens the neccessary software- no drivers needed
I'm not going to argue clock speed, but if you've used a mac you'll know why I don't need to.
I have a client that was looking to pay $500 for a new home office pc without the monitor and they wanted an lcd monitor, which would have ran them another $500. I was able, without much effort, to convince them that the emac would fit their needs for less and when the company has more money in the next year or two it would be the perfect computer to hand down to their kids. They're buying it this weekend!
Re:Article text in case of slashdotting! (Score:3, Informative)
Here's what I got after stripping anything non-paragraph-based from the article:
readability grades:
Kincaid: 12.0
ARI: 13.3
Coleman-Liau: 11.4
Flesch Index: 55.6
Fog Index: 14.7
Lix: 48.9 = school year 9
SMOG-Grading: 12.1
Seems results may vary.
I've noticed.. (Score:2, Informative)