The Wrath of the Apple Tribe 870
Narrative Fallacy writes "If you've ever written about Apple products with even a hint of negativity, you'll appreciate Salon's excerpt from Farhad Manjoo's True Enough, about why the Apple tribe is so rabid. 'There are many tribes in the tech world: TiVo lovers, Blackberry addicts, Palm Treo fanatics, and people who exhibit unhealthy affection for their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners,' writes Manjoo. 'But there is no bigger tribe, and none more zealous, than fans of Apple, who are infamous for their sensitivity to slams, real or imagined, against the beloved company.' Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg has even coined a name for the phenomenon — the 'Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation.' 'If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it's partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy,' says psychologist Lee Ross at Stanford University. 'You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.'"
It's a religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, it's the biggest reason I no longer buy products from Apple. The astonishing thing is how many years this keeps going on. I had a friend who started hiding his Newton for fear of the cultists that would swarm him and go on about how great it was while he was just trying to look up an address or whatever.
The only sane Apple-nut I ever met was Douglas Adams, but then he was at least reasonable enough to acknowledge other OSes, although you wouldn't believe it from the Apple fans who quote him endlessly.
Why are so many of their consumers complete nutcases?
You can't even say anything bad about Jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
I was amazed at the number of fanboi's that modded it off-topic, only to have it modded it back up, then back down again. Some apparently thought I had committed blasphemy.
Re:ratio (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I remember the days before the Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, it was IBM who invented the PC, and Xerox who invented the GUI. But don't let facts get in the way, carry on worshiping Apple.
Re:I dunno.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ratio (Score:5, Interesting)
Many Apple users are unable to see real problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I must not be a fan then (Score:5, Interesting)
So I don't know why the mac-hating crowd has to paint all of us Mac users with one big fanatic brush. But I can tell you flat out that OS X is what pulled me to the mac, it's UNIX with an awesome GUI, and no more fiddling to get stuff to work that I had to with Linux. If claiming that makes me a rabid fanboy, then so be it.
Re:I dunno.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a difference in philosophy. Linux is about freedom and choice. If you say "Linux lacks X", most of the time if you get a negative reply it'll be something like "well, go fix it, the source's there". You generally won't be flamed to a crisp for daring to suggest that say, the state of audio in Linux isn't ideal. Constructive criticism could get a positive reply. Take the guy who did Linux boot benchmarking -- it quickly resulted in optimizations of the process.
Now try to do the same with Apple. Apple is about the "experience". Either you get it, or you can go look somewhere else. If you try to suggest the iPod, iPhone or something else isn't ideal you'll often get a reply from somebody who thinks nothing Apple makes might be a bit imperfect, and that if you don't like it, something is wrong with you. Mac OS was perfect before OS X came out. I've never seen a fan reply to the complaint of the iPod's lack of ability to play Ogg Vorbis as "You know, they should really include that". If it was a Linux device somebody would have added that within a month of the iPod's release.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeaaah, maaaaaaaan. Ditch Apple and their desire to make money and their marketing campaigns. Stick with non-commercial entities like HP, Dell, and Sony that pay no attention to marketing, style, profit, or consumer appeal.
PS: Most of the Mac users I know are developers. It's a nice platform for developers because you have all the *nix-y tools, as well as the ability to easily run Windows via Boot Camp or a virtualization solution. The marketing campaign doesn't have a whole lot to do with it in my personal experience. You CAN achieve the same end result on a Linux or Windows system, but judging by the market share of Apple hardware at developers' conferences, Apple is a popular choice amongst even "real" geeks.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, there are plenty of reasons to flame Mac fans. My experience may not be typical, and I'm certainly not directing it at you specifically, but here goes...
I have met or interacted with roughly 40 mac users in my last two years of work. I provide contracted IT services to companies. Each and every single one of those 40 mac users were pretentious twats. Every single one of them acted like the whole problem was my fault--even when they were coming to me because their mac was having issues.
My personal favorite example was a doctor working as a contractor for a company I was contracted to. She had apparently been having no end of issues getting her mac hooked up to the projector.
So after exchanging a bunch of phone calls and finally agreeing that there was no other possible time she could do it save for 7:30 at night on one reoccurring day each month, I finally gave in and said I would help her.
She whipped out her macbook and folded her arms...waiting. So I asked her to show me what she did exactly so I could witness the problem. She indignantly sighed as if I was asking too much and booted the thing up. Once it was fired up, she opened up whatever the hell the mac equivalent of powerpoint was and folded her arms again, and once again glared at me. I waited. She finally sighed again and pulled out the DVI to VGA adapter from her laptop bag and plugged it in. The mac immediately froze. The projector hadn't been plugged in, only the adapter. She threw her hands up in the air and whined "Seeee!!!" at me. "Uh, it crashed. Reboot it."
"It's not supposed to do that!!!". "Nope, probably not. You'll have to call Apple about it--but for now, reboot it and we'll try again."
This time it came up and didn't crash. So we plugged in the projector and everything worked like a charm...
Right up until the point where she was completely baffled by her desktop being EXPANDED onto the projector rather than duplicated onto the projector.
She kept dragging things off the laptop screen onto the projector. This had her totally fucking confused for 5 minutes. Several times I tried to explain what was going on, but she would cut me off and say "See--it's disappearing. Why is it on the projector and not on my laptop. It's broken."
Idiot. So after 10 minutes she finally listened to what I was explaining and figured out that her desktop was extended. (All of this while huffing about how my projector was messed up and not working correctly--because is sure as shit couldn't be her macbook. It was developed by a deity after all, and they make no mistakes.)
Next thing I know, she's firing up iTunes...and for the finale I thought "I'll bet she's *the* air america listener".
Sure enough. Hundreds of air america broadcasts/podcasts/whatever.
Oh yeah, and when I said "It looks like you're all set", there was no "Thanks" or "Awesome" or really any positive acknowledgment other than "It's about time".
And yes, all 39 other mac users displayed the same total lack of technical knowledge and the same "I'm better than you attitude" when really they were just so fucking stupid I'm surprised they didn't die half way through the troubleshooting process because they didn't remember to breathe.
I suppose I should amend this slightly. I actually do know 2 mac users that are intelligent. My friends parents. They bought it because o
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't compare Apple fanboyism to the Israeli/Palastenian conflict, but I can certainly understand why somebody would. I mean, how extreme is that? I don't even know how you get that many people with mod points to come in for the attack. Very extreme. The worst part? I wasn't trolling. I might have been more respectful of it if I had said something snide or shitty, but I didn't. I sat down and explained where I was coming from on it. (Hence the positive mods.) But
Oh well. That's the internet for you.
It's very very simple (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mac Pride (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry for the harshness in my comment, but give me the fact that Slashdot is a worldwide forum.
Cheers.
Puh-lease. Apple zealots are tame.. (Score:5, Interesting)
So *bah* I say.. Give these Apple people a break. The alternatives were quite a bit worse!
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Interesting)
"All of my recent posts had been negatively modded so many times that I was actually banned from Slashdot for WEEKS. Weeks. The last I had bothered to count, I had been modded down over thirty times."
You can't mod down one comment 30 times. Nor can one comment be modded down so many times you get banned. If you have a better explanation behind it, I'm all ears, but at least read what I said before passing judgement.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a physicist in grad school, so maybe my cross section of mac users is entirely from a different demographic. In the past few years I've seen several physicists go from Linux to Mac, just to "get stuff done" easier without having to waste time fiddling with the system (both professors and students, and myself included). A computational/simulational group in my department went from IBM-supplied UNIX boxes (not sure if AIX or Linux) to Mac. I know a few theorists that have gone from Linux to Mac too.
More interestingly, a huge astro research entity nearby (with ties to NASA) with several hundred employees is in the process of switching almost exclusively to OS X. They used to use predominantly Solaris boxes, which are relatively old by now and need upgrading. So OS X fits their needs nearly exactly, especially with regards to visualization toolkits and software. It's pretty cool for me because sometimes they call in Apple engineers to give technical talks about various features/software of interest for scientists.
In all these cases, though, I guess the mac users are fairly intelligent and computer savvy. Seems to be opposite to the Mac users you interface with.
The only potential explanation I can give you, and I hope I'm not accused of being a fanboy, is related to my experience where I've had significantly less problems on my Mac than on Windows (which I had to use in my lab). I'm not saying Macs are problem free, they're not, but IMHO they give much less hassle and I'm more efficient at them.
So anyway, it could be that when the shit hits the fan and you get a support call from a Mac user, they're far more irate than a Windows user that is relatively used to dealing with problems. Just a hand-wavy guess, but given the exposure you have to mac users versus mine in science, it's a possibility.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:0, Interesting)
I have similar experiences to the grandparent (Score:5, Interesting)
However, we get users that insist on buying Macs. Ok, fine, they can support them by themselves. We don't mandate using department support and many research labs have systems that are all their own. Well that would all be fine, except the Mac users come crying to us when things won't work, and then get mad when we can't fix them.
That's why I get tired of. The attitude of "Macs never break so I'll use one, oh wait my Mac has a problem you have to fix it!" This is not the first job I've encountered it at. If a place wants to use Macs and support them, that's great. If a place wants to train me to do Mac support, that's also great. However when the policy is "Macs are unsupported," I get tired of Mac users justifying buying them by saying they won't need support, then bitching about it.
Also, in many cases recently, it has even been almost completely useless. One of our professors bought a number of Macs for his lab. Since there's a good deal of software we use that isn't for Mac OS, Windows is on there too. His students are always booted in to the Windows side since everything they want to do can be done there. So it wasn't as though he bought the Macs out of a well researched need, he bought them because he's a Mac fan, without consideration as to if that's the right tool for the job.
Hence, I get a little annoyed.
Re:I dunno.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth always lies away from the extremes and frankly its a little sad that such people exist. Every OS has its good points and its bad points, and there is no point blindly and slavishly defending a platform against its flaws. If anything the true fans should be leveling valid criticism at their platform of choice in order to make it better.
Is it OK if I just like my Mac? (Score:2, Interesting)
That is all.
Unfortunately, most of my colleagues are aware that my home PC is an iMac. This means that I have now lost count of the number of people who have walked up to my desk and said "the iPhone is a bit shit" or "the Macbook Air is far too expensive - you'd be better off with a Dell". I don't own either product. I'm not in the market for a laptop and or a new phone.
Where does this reverse-evangelism come from?
Another Reason For The Apple Rabidity (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also pretty safe to assume that migrating from Windows to Linux is a technical challenge for newbie users which therefore leads to the conclusion that most people who use Linux do indeed have greater technical knowledge than the "Joe Average" PC user.
People who migrate to Macs and OS X do not, we are frequently told here, need any additional technical knowledge to do so. So whilst I accept there are some very knowledgeable OS X people out there, most of them will still be pretty average users.
Consequently, when it gets to "my computer is better than your computer" discussions on here, most of the Linux people can put forward fairly reasoned technical arguments and there are enough Windows people globally that even if the tiniest percentage of them are technical people, that's still a lot of them.
However, most of the Mac users are not technical people so they are unable, most of the time, to argue at a similar technical level as the Linux people and the Windows people. Consequently, their only alternative is to get very defensive about the products they've paid a lot of money for & therefore try to use emotion, rather than fact, to get their points across.
Superiority complex (Score:4, Interesting)
Using Macs on and off for a number of years, I think I understand at least some of why the fan boys get so bloody defensive all the time:
In the end, I think the fan boys end up with a superiority complex. You know, a bit little like "driving by a car accident, knowing you're the only one who can really help [youtube.com]" ;)
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:4, Interesting)
While most PC users were completely ok, my experience with the Mac crowd was very similar to yours.
There were exceptions to the rule of course, but majority of them started off on their high-horses and big chunk of them never got off them.
Also, what was funny was that most of them were very vocal about the Apple/Mac superiority, but they were booting their Macbooks to Windows or using Windows in Virtual PC for their work.
So yeah, the mac-hardware is quite sweet, but mac-users are mostly pretentious idiots (I'm generalizing based on my own biased opinions of course) and I won't put myself in situation where I have to support a bunch of them again. (and then there's the whole issue of Apple screwing with their devs, changing API's, providing closed platforms etc, but that's another discussion)
False Premise (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I don't make a good sample size (though I have discussed this with my friends and they have experienced the same) but I've been around a bit now and this kind of false premise is getting old.
Re:I have similar experiences to the grandparent (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. Just like a company where I worked as a Windows/Symbian programmer. There were two Mac fans at the same firm, very talented Symbian/Palm coders but they just wanted to have Macs as their development platform. Well they got Macs but guess what? They were useful only in reading mail and surfing the web. They couldn't do any work with them! And because of their size they didn't make good paper weights either :)
I also remembered a case where I stumbled to really ... weird Mac user. Company X wanted us to write Windows .NET application for them which depended heavily on DirectX. I wrote it from bottom up and it worked and all... Now they wanted to change some icons and stuff and they send their "user interface expert" to us. I was thrilled that I finally get to meet one since I can't really desing good UIs. And one day he came to visit us.
First I was stunned that he was carrying Mac! Well okay, you can desing icons and UIs on Mac of course. Then I was stunned when he hadn't actually designed anything. Only thing that he did in the meeting was to appraise his Macbook which was like a second coming of Jesus to him! Finally, and most unbeliavably, he asked why our software won't run on Mac! Well, maybe because it depends on DirectX... Dunno :)
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Interesting)
In this context, I define a "fanatic" as someone who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing that always annoys me the most about Linux fanboys is their unwavering belief that Linux is just the most unique thing in the history of the universe as a technical platform. Linus apparently invented UNIX, there's no such thing as FreeBSD, and any criticism of any aspect of Linux is meant with a ferocious counter-attack criticizing Windows, as if those are the only two options.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole moderation system is crazy. It's tempting to read just +4 and +5 (filtering the repetetive 'funny'ies), but you're just feeding this monster if you do that. A +5 and +3 are often comparable in information, and so it's silly to have that many levels.
We should keep spam and other really bad posts off (racist posts, graphically sexual, etc), but nothing reasonable should be moderated out of view. If this happens it should be easy to assess and remove moderation powers. Forward a link to the downmodded post to someone at a higher level and have them remove moderation powers. This may result in a deluge of e-mails at first, but it will die down once people see the consequences of bad moderation. It's much more damaging to have a**hole mods than a few bad posts.
If the abuse comes from the very top then it's time to find a new site.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I can second that. (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you honestly think that people haven't worked out that you're the same person?
Some historical perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early days of Slashdot, Apple got no respect. Mention Macs in Slashdot and you were dismissed out of hand as being hopelessly wedded to the past or a particularly clueless, nontechnical moron. This was well before the iPod and the iPhone and the "I'm a Mac" ads. The popular perception in Linux and Windows circles was that the Macintosh was essentially dead.
The Mac started gaining cred with the tech elites when Mac OS X shipped. Over a period of several years, with each software and hardware success, Apple gained more respect with geeks and more visibility with non-geeks. Now it is commonplace to hear people talk about Mac users and their vile, insufferably smug attitudes. But before Apple gained this respect, to be a Mac user meant that you were constantly assaulted with comments belittling your intellectual capability and your choice in computers.
In my experience most Mac users who weathered the 1990s aren't very smug about Macs. They are just happy that they're no longer being constantly questioned for using a particular computer platform. Even so, there are plenty of myths about Macs that persist. After you've heard them over and over and over and over, it gets a bit redundant and annoying.
I use Windows and Linux, and as both of those OSes have changed, so has my perception of them. Back in the day, WindowsNT rocked. I was able to do many things with NT that I simply couldn't do with pre-OS X versions of the MacOS. Windows ME sucked, but generally I've been pleased with Windows 2000. By the same token, when I first started using Linux I wondered how it would ever compete with Solaris. I certainly never thought it would be a usable desktop OS. Obviously Linux has matured, and so has my evaluation of the OS.
But there are still people who should know better who proclaim that the Mac is a great machine if you're just concerned with eye candy. They also frequently state that Macs aren't good business machines, which is ironic given that the growth of Windows has been helped in large part by the games industry. I'm not going to say that serious gamers should buy Macs - that would be absurd. But when I hear that Macs are spec-for-spec always more expensive, and that Macs are "more proprietary" than Windows machines, it grates on me. The Mac has changed over the years, just as Windows and Linux have changed.
It is also somewhat amusing that nobody ever got raked over the coals for being consistently anti-Mac. If you enjoy something and feel an affinity for it, you are punished. If you hold a consistently negative opinion of something, or refuse to consider trying something new, you are protected by your majority status and are considered perfectly normal.
Since the tone of responses to the parent post seems to be, "It's about time someone hit back at those annoying Mac users," I have donned by asbestos suit. ;-)