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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.'"
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The Wrath of the Apple Tribe

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  • It's a religion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rog7 ( 182880 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @12:49AM (#22834040)
    I do have an unhealthy obsession with my Roomba, but it doesn't come close to the religious outrage that descends on my blog whenever / if-ever I say anything that doesn't approach worship of Apple.

    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?
  • by ptbarnett ( 159784 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:18AM (#22834188)
    Earlier in the week, I posted this comment [slashdot.org] to this thread [slashdot.org], about something in the first three paragraphs in the referenced article [wired.com].

    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)

    by frdmfghtr ( 603968 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:19AM (#22834192)

    Don't forget the whining fanboi apple adulations. "Mac OS X is perfect, but I'm going to switch to Windows because of the translucent menu bar!!"
    You exaggerate, but not by much. I've also heard nitpicks about the top menu bar having (gasp!) square corners on top instead of rounded corners. Oh for the love of all that is good in this world, are you going to let THAT bother you?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:24AM (#22834222)
    Ater all, Apple invented the personal computer, GUI filesystem.

    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)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:27AM (#22834236)
    I think the apple fanboys easily win for the moment. I'm a long time linux user, and often found the zelotry a bit embarrassing. But looking at the comments on digg when apple comes up actually make me feel a bit uneasy in general. It actually can be borderline scary seeing the amount of nerd rage apple stories can unleash there.
  • Re:ratio (Score:5, Interesting)

    by astrosmash ( 3561 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:28AM (#22834242) Journal
    I'm reminded of this episode [burbia.com] in which some poor schmuck visited an Apple Store for the first time and wrote about it in his blog.
  • by truthisabsolute ( 624291 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:28AM (#22834244)
    I have experience administering 12 xserves and 35 OSX clients located in US, UK and india. We ended up using xserves, imacs, powerbooks, and G5 towers because the CTO was an apple fanatic, not based on what was the best product after fair evaluation. From my experince I would never use OSX as a server platform because it has been less reliable than windoz and I am not a fan of windoz. Real unix is not tied to the GUI the way OSX is - a GUI problem can easily lock or crash an OSX server while "real" unix or linux does not have this weakness. Perhaps OSX without a GUI would be more reliable???? While I like Linux it also has it's flaws but using it or a "real" unix flavor for servers will lead to much more reliability. From my experience OSX is great as a client for those who are comfortable with the interface but it is not more stable than windoz which is a serious insult but true in my experience. I can say that OSX is more secure than windoz for a dumb user but a careful windoz user can be as or almost as secure if the right safeguards are in place. Personally I use Linux as primary OS and run windoz in virtual machines when needed. Some day Mac users may evolve to the point where they can use more than one mouse button and/or be able to resize windows from any edge or corner. When simple stuff like that happens I may use OSX more for a desktop, but I do not ever expect to use it for important services. Since the CTO has left we have moved most critical services to Linux and things are much more stable now. It seems like a cult of personality, with apple/OSX being the personality, will continue to prevent the apple fanatics from seeing clearly. I will be serverly trashed for these comments but the ones that are serious about apple know there are many real and serious issues with this proprietary OS/Hardware combo especially for critical services. If you want to solve serious apple issues afp548.com is a great resource for serious information and it seems they do not religiously sugar coat issue as most apple users do.
  • by wass ( 72082 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @01:51AM (#22834374)
    I'm a fan of OS X, and I used to DESPISE macs of OS 9 and earlier. I just didn't like how the old macs felt. I used Linux exclusively from 1998, until my fiancee got a mac mini around 2005, then I got an imac last year, which I've been using exclusively now.

    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)

    by DaleGlass ( 1068434 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @02:02AM (#22834412) Homepage
    IMO, the Linux zealots are less scary.

    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.
  • by John_Booty ( 149925 ) <johnbooty@bootyproje c t . o rg> on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:02AM (#22834636) Homepage

    Seriously, market a product as "stylish", "hip" and "different", and you'll raise a troupe of people to whom presenting themselves as different is pretty much their only end.


    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.
  • by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:10AM (#22834662)
    I don't know why the Mac hating crowd needs to resort to 6+ year old marketing slogans, if there's really that many valid reasons to flame us Mac fans :-)

    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.

    ...which of course the playing of caused the laptop to crash. Another reboot, and an explanation that it's not the projector's fault--especially seeing as it was simply a VGA projector without audio, and she was ready to present.

    ...and all of this without me having to touch the macbook, do anything technical, or provide any advice beyond 'reboot'.

    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
  • by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:22AM (#22834704)

    I dunno. The levels of insanity reached in both Apple fanboyism and the Israeli/Palastenian conflict seems equivalent sometimes. Hey, you hear that? That's the sound of my karma level going through the floor!
    Funny? Sure. But it has gotten extreme at times. I've been the victim of some of that bs. A couple of years ago there was a story about Apple recieving some critcism over its iTunes market ownership. Lots of people were poo-poo'ing the criticism. I didn't agree with them, I said my bit. It initially earned a couple of insightful mods. Then I was hit with a shitstorm of comments that largely had nothing really to do with my opinion on the matter. Several had gone on to invent theories about why I was so 'bitter'. Whatever. Anyway, that's to be expected, right? Go against popular opinion, popular opinion goes against you. Nothing new here. At least until the mod bombing happened. 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. I registerred a new account, and kept on moving. A few months later, I logged in with the original account, posted something completely unrelated to Apple. It was modded down, too. Yep, they were still watching me to 'teach me a lesson'.

    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 no.. Apple can do no wrong. The sad thing? That sort of BS is what gets people outspoken about the downsides of Apple's products.

    Oh well. That's the internet for you.
  • by arodland ( 127775 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:24AM (#22834716)
    It's a well-known fact that the more costly a bad decision, the greater the lengths people will go to to justify it. If you spend $10 on a piece of gear and it turns out to be crap you say "oh well, that was a waste of $10" and toss it. If you spend $2,000 on a piece of gear and it doesn't meet expectations, you don't throw it out, because that would be admitting that you wasted two thousand bucks (making you look very silly). Instead, you "find something to love" about it, spend even more money on compatible accessories (or whatever), and tell the world that it's the greatest thing ever. Apple customers are that much more defensive than anyone else, not because Apple products are better than everything else, not because Apple products are worse than everything else, but because Apple products cost that much more than everything else. ;)
  • Re:Mac Pride (Score:3, Interesting)

    by menkhaura ( 103150 ) <espinafre@gmail.com> on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:32AM (#22834746) Homepage Journal
    Well, there goes my karma going offtopic... But you are entitled to a clarification on why I so vehemently presented my opinion. In the third-world countries, we strive to immitate those who are successful; so far, the most successful country is the United States. There's envy, there is the feeling that we're being explored, yes, true, but then, there is the "apeing", as a verb, what our more successful countries do, in order to try to, perhaps, be more successful ourselves. Political Correctness is one of those traits we, or at least our elites, try to pick up from you, with disastrous results. Please don't take me personally, it's a very different reality, we're in very different worlds, yet our leaders try to apply the exact same solutions as you to marginally, or non-existent, problems over here.

    I'm sorry for the harshness in my comment, but give me the fact that Slashdot is a worldwide forum.

    Cheers.
  • by sudog ( 101964 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:38AM (#22834758) Homepage
    Apple zealots may be trying, may be annoying, may be pushy, but people.. Apple zealots got *nothing* on old-school Amiga fans. Apple zealots are tame school children stamping their feet in impotent fury compared to the raging, near-psychotic madness that defined the true Amigoid. During its heyday, the Amiga inspired people to dizzying heights of advocacy that I have *never* seen matched. And the weird part was that they were mostly right, so when they frothed at the mouth, they knew what they were talking about. These Apple fanboys these days.. the ones people seem to be complaining about are just parrots. But when you had a worldwide population of millions, all aligned up in the same direction, and augmented with people like Matthew Dillon (of DragonFlyBSD) and Dave Haynie leading them, you have a near-religious movement that I have never again seen since Commodore bankrupted itself.

    So *bah* I say.. Give these Apple people a break. The alternatives were quite a bit worse!
  • by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:46AM (#22834794)

    One poorly modded comment does not make a conspiracy against you!
    Sure. But that's not what I said.

    "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.
  • by wass ( 72082 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:46AM (#22834800)
    Yikes, I don't know what bad karmic deities you pissed off to get that kind of treatment. :-) My exposure to Mac users is rather opposite.

    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.
  • by El Lobo ( 994537 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @05:15AM (#22835084)
    Now seriously, I can't remember how many times I have been flamed just because I state that I don't like OSX. I really detest the whole philosofy behind the shiny surface of OSX. And JUST because that, I have been called everything. It's like some people think that it's IMPOSIBLE that one person could dislike OSX. So I don't like a single menu bar for ever application? HOW can THAT be posible? That's the Abble experiece, and they SURE know better than the insignificant shit I am.... Oh well....
  • by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @06:11AM (#22835204)
    The big problem I find is that Macs are not nearly as problem free as many of their users think they are, then they get mad if you can't fix it. For example at work we don't support Macs. We support Windows, Solaris, and very specific versions of Linux. That's just how it is going to be when there's like 4 people for 500 computers. None of us have any Mac experience, and the department isn't willing to hire a Mac person. They also aren't willing to pay to train one of us on Macs. Hence, no Mac support.

    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)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @06:17AM (#22835228)
    Every group has zealots. Trying to explain to some Linux users why usability might be a Good Thing, and RTFM a Bad Thing will provoke the same huffy indignance as when you suggest to some Mac user that their UI or hardware has flaws or things which (the horror!) work better the Windows way. Such people don't get it, or take criticism as a personal affront. I've seen responses to some of my remarks which would hardly differ if I said I was going to take a shit on their grandmother's grave.

    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.

  • by IrrepressibleMonkey ( 1045046 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @06:22AM (#22835244)
    I like my Mac.
    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?
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @06:42AM (#22835284)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Superiority complex (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Knutsi ( 959723 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @07:05AM (#22835330)

    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:

    1. Macs are fun. They are enjoyable to use, and easy to spend more time on comparing to PCs. They easily become a large part of your life.
    2. Explaining to others about some part of your life you truly enjoy, only to see it observed with skepticism because it is different, is very frustrating.
    3. This breeds a feeling of being misunderstood, secluded, and "tribal tendencies" to seek out your peers, and close mindedness.
    4. Feeling secluded for your views often feeds back into itself as you loose your patients, ability to explain the advantages, and your greater perspectives.

    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]" ;)

  • by tero ( 39203 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @07:57AM (#22835490)
    Ah yes, spent my last 1.5 years supporting business with both Mac and Pc users.

    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)

    by Hercules Peanut ( 540188 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @08:13AM (#22835540)

    '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.'
    I disagree. I've worked in/with IT departments for years and they are every bit a zealous about MS and often Dell. Anything else isn't a real computer. They tend to be a little calmer about the debate but they are every bit as vicious if you try to look into opposing technology. Many of these people have never even touched a Mac (or Sun, linux box or anything else). This is what qualifies them as the biggest zealot. At least most of the mac zealots have some experience when making their decision.

    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.
  • by weicco ( 645927 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @08:36AM (#22835622)

    Also, in many cases recently, it has even been almost completely useless ... 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.

    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 :)

  • by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @09:22AM (#22835872)
    I'd say it's more akin to certain elements in the Muslim world attacking comic strips in foreign countries, if you want to compare (ahem!) Apples to oranges. Apple fans have often (and for good reason) been compared to ... fanatics.

    In this context, I define a "fanatic" as someone who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not.
  • by nomadic ( 141991 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <dlrowcidamon>> on Sunday March 23, 2008 @10:18AM (#22836238) Homepage
    Linux fanboys seem like they turn a blind eye to any "non technical" problem.

    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.
  • by dookiesan ( 600840 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @02:37PM (#22837694)
    There is a record of who made these mods. They should have their moderation powers permanently removed.

    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.
  • by xPsi ( 851544 ) * on Sunday March 23, 2008 @02:50PM (#22837792)
    Why a recent spate? Mods are now given 10 points to allocate rather than 5. Mods who, before, were inclined to save their precious points to only mod up can now go get revenge on foes and still have some points left over in the end. Notice your growing Freaks list. You have about 2000 comments spanning many years and any /. user that gets people to actively tag them as a foe is going to get the treatment you described from time to time (I'm not saying it is the people on your freaks list, just that for every person willing to tag you as a foe, there are 10 others thinking the same thing). I'm sympathetic to your statements because your posts on average are of good quality and it is a shame you were targeted. There is probably some movement afoot to squelch you. However, to be honest, I'm not convinced it is Apple related because you have said enough things about enough topics (albeit non trollish critique or funny jabs) over the years it could be anyone (Harry Potter fans, Star Trek fans, etc. etc.).
  • by Macthorpe ( 960048 ) on Sunday March 23, 2008 @03:17PM (#22837976) Journal

    That makes you my friend.
    My god, I haven't laughed so much in days.

    Do you honestly think that people haven't worked out that you're the same person?
  • by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Sunday March 23, 2008 @09:12PM (#22840822) Homepage Journal

    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. ;-)

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