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.'"
Sorry, still trying (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sorry, still trying (Score:5, Funny)
BOOYAH!
Re:Sorry, still trying (Score:5, Funny)
Apple don't have nothing on them rabid amiga hippies. I still get hate mail from them crazy mother fuckers.
I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Insightful)
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. I personally find it one of the most disgusting facets of consumerist capitalism.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Funny)
Ooo, someone forgot to take their "Think Different" pills this morning, didn't they?
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Funny)
'Cuz I'm too drunk to remember their current slogan, whatever the hell it is. I know there's something folksy about the Macbook Air music, and U2 sings Vertigo for old iPods, and there's a funny "Hi, I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" commercial campaign, but no actual slogans that have sloshed their way to my addled forebrain.
If they had a good slogan now, I'm sure I would have made my joke about it instead. But I came up empty, like a manila envelope with nothing inside.
Oh, and I remember Ellen Feiss. She was kind of hot, in that grunge way. But nobody takes Ellen Feiss pills any more, they smoke Ellen Feiss blunts instead. :-)
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Funny)
The macbook air ad tells you exactly what to do with it: pull it out from somewhere like a rabit from a magician's hat, then show it off to your neighbors (then put it away because it can't do shit).
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: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.
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 blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a mac-user, and I'm also a mac-user-hater. Your experience is unfortunately all too common.
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)
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Donating your time, or the $300 bucks you were about to spend on your next ultra-meaningful tattoo to a local charity would be pretty different. Stopping to pick up litter on the street is pretty different, and so on.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know many people who just wear whatever the fuck they want. It's sad.
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I blame it on Apple... (Score:5, Insightful)
The people I know who fit that rabid fanboy stereotype are the ones for whom Mac ownership is the hippest thing about them, dorks who think their choice of tech moves them one step closer to the cool-kids table.
Re: (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 *n
But But But (Score:4, Funny)
How to pretend to be a tech journalist (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 2: Write an article about all the hate mail you get
Step 3: Ad revenue
Goto Step 1
Dvorak has done this so many times he should be selling his technique on an infomercial at this point.
Re:How to pretend to be a tech journalist (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:It's a religion (Score:5, Informative)
I personally have purchased only one Apple product -- I recently bought my wife an iPod touch. While I absolutely love the cool user interface experience, the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.) Overall I can only rate the thing "half-way above shit." I'll never buy anything else from them and I'm not going to recommend them to other people unless that changes drastically.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's a religion (Score:5, Informative)
Was she clicking on the music icon under library? because obviously they're not in the library they're on the ipod. I'm not sure why you, your wife or your "Apple buddy" couldn't get this simple, obvious thing to work for her.
Piss and moan all you want about not being able to copy them off the ipod, that's entirely true and annoying, but figuring out that you have to double click on a song under the ipod and not in the library really doesn't take geek smarts.
And just so we can keep track of the fan scores, I own 1 iPod, 1 ancient g4 emac, 1 amd xp/linux box and 1 dell vostro core 2 duo running xp, so could someone explain to me whether i'm palestinian or israeli?
Re:It's a religion (Score:4, Informative)
Seems pretty locked down to me.
inappropriate even handedness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:inappropriate even handedness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By the anti-evolution lobby making such a big deal about evolution and the need to include alternate theories, they've somehow made themselves a presence that otherwise would never have existed in the educational system. Everybody around the country now knows of the concept of Intelligent Design, but 10 years ago, nobody really thought about it at all.
They've made such a big deal out of it, including high-profile activism, that s
At Least I'll be Vaccinated (Score:5, Funny)
You mean it's not rabies? Oh...I guess I didn't need those shots after the last time I called the MacBook "useless" and one of them bit me...
Re:At Least I'll be Vaccinated (Score:5, Funny)
Can we mod this story... (Score:5, Insightful)
You just don't get it... (Score:3, Funny)
Next thread please.
Re:You just don't get it... (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I dunno.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 dunno.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm saying is that the fanboys' perception is that whatever is current is the absolute perfection. Take OS 9 for instance, where you had to set manually the amount of memory an application could use. If you brought up that setting memory is an oddly unfriendly characteristic for an OS that aims to be user friendly, you'd get a reply [google.com] along the lines of "Lets see, I select the app, "get info"-->Memory and then set the amount. What's hard about that?"
Of course now that OS X is here, it's OS X what became the definition of perfection. I get the impression that many people refuse to acknowledge the existence of any faults until they're fixed, then the subject is quietly forgotten. For instance:
Everybody swore that a mouse with more than one button isn't needed, until Apple suddenly released a computer with one.
The memory limit was an "advantage", because Windows would die a swap death, and "Whgat New user is going to jump in and go manilulate large excel files?", anyway?
etc.
This attitude turns many people off, because: It creates a feeling that there's some sort of apple collective that many people aren't interested to join, because for them computers are a tool and not an object of religious worship. It creates the feeling of that it's hard to get a honest opinion about anything because many people are dedicated to sweeping faults under the rug. And it creates an impression of inflexibility: Either you accept the package in full, or you'd better not get it at all, because there's nothing in the middle.
I must not be a fan then (Score:5, Insightful)
But I will point out the negatives in their products where I see them. There is no point in pretending that they don't exist as all that does is give them time to fester. I am a realist. I'll also point out issues with the company when they deserve it. Yeah, praise is better but only if they are going to work for it.
I am more judgmental because I've been in the IT field for years and have used, and I mean really used, many different OSes out there. I also wouldn't have considered calling myself a Mac user before OS X. Sorry fans, but OS 9 was pretty terrible.
I suppose Apple needs the rabid fanbase as they are advertisers that pay the company for the privilege. Maybe Apple should even thank them every now and then for keeping the company afloat for so many years. They also need the realists that speak their mind and truthfully say what is good, what is bad, and what is downright idiotic. Yes, this means that these groups will clash but it is needed.
How else are they going to move forward?
Re:I must not be a fan then (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though I'm not a big fan of Apple, I will admit they have some advantages here and there.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm a PowerPC fanboy. Still am. (NOT PowerMac. PowerPC.)
When the comparison last made sense, it was between the G5 and the Pentium 4 "Prescott". The G5's pipelines are 10 stages long, the Pentium 4's are 31 stages long. Since then, Intel has changed their focus away from insanely deep pipelines, with the Core series being the first to really shine (especially
when do you think XP was released? 1992? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows didn't have an ounces worth of usability and security until Windows 2k was released in February of 2000. When was Mac OS 10.0 released? September of 2000.
Same thing with the switch to Intel. They kept saying how superior their Power PC chip was, then with the switch to Intel they're saying its now working so much better. WTF?
Because the G4's and G5's were superior chips to the Pentium's, especially the P4. The problem is that IBM is a shitty fabber. They weren't able to deliver on what they promised (3 ghz G5's within a year of the release of the first Mac G5) much less continue PowerPC development. If IBM had kept up development and you could get a 3ghz dual core G6 in a laptop Apple never would have switched to Intel.
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.
Mac Pride (Score:4, Insightful)
The real reason Mac fans tend to be overly defensive is that they've felt marginalized by software and hardware vendors for years due to Microsoft's dominance in the desktop computing arena. I'm not blaming the vendors, sometimes fiscal reality precludes making a version of their product for a relatively small market, but it can be frustrating to Mac users who are convinced that their platform is superior to what Microsoft has to offer but still have to wait months or years, if ever, to get their hands on a desirable product.
It's not unlike other minorities--African-Americans, gays etc., (not that Mac marginalization has anywhere near the same significance as the often violent discrimination that gays and blacks have experienced in their lifetimes)--who react to discrimination by the majority by developing a sense community "pride."
Granted, though, many of Apple's fans go way overboard in it's defense. This, BTW, is from a long-time Mac user and recovering "rabid" fanboy who converted from Microsoft way back in DOS days who now uses OS X, Kubuntu and Windows XP interchangeably as necessary.
Re:Mac Pride (Score:5, Informative)
The second mistake I see is that the Free and/or Open Source (internal feuds do exist; let them sort themselves out) Software fanboys are even more plentiful than Apple ones. Being one of those myself, I think the reason is that we believe in an ideal, fulfilled by the hard work of those seeking recognition among their peers, or money, or plain and simple sense of self-fulfillment. Yes, there are very vocal FOSS fanboys out there, but they are either novices to the belief or prophets of the cult; most of us fall in-between, prowd of our sense of judgement, knowing what is good and what isn't for our families and for our our stranded relative's PHD about-to-be-lost-to-a-virus thesis.
* That PC crap hits my nerves; I'm black, but I was born in Brazil; I'm not a fucking African-American, I'm BLACK, thank you very much! And I wasn't born in a "developing country", I was born and live in an UNDERDEVELOPED country; the notion that we are in a "developing country" has deluded our leaders to think we are "getting there". No country "gets there" when 32 million of its population STARVES.
Re:Mac Pride (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare that to Microsoft who goes out of their way (even today) to entice developers, and has a massive 3rd party sales channel (oem's) - the likes of which Apple doesn't even attempt to compete with.
The only other group I could compare them to is the Commodore Amiga fans - of which I was one. We felt marginalized, but it was probably for lack of a clone market and Commodore's lack of marketing and management skill. They actually had a rather good developer support program - even in the early days of the product.
Mind you Apple is doing great things in some areas to improve things - for instance they have a much better developer support program. You still can't install Apple software on 3rd party products - which is where Microsoft is making a killing - and I think frankly Apple is losing out on.
Many Apple users are unable to see real problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Many Apple users are unable to see real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously the platform you were used to was more stable.
The whole dig at the single mouse button is so 1980's, since all serious Mac users have been using three button (or more) mice for decades.
Re:Many Apple users are unable to see real problem (Score:4, Informative)
Too bad my powerbook only has one mouse button built-in... When I boot to Linux, ctrl+click doesn't really work.
The article in short (Score:5, Insightful)
That's basically all the article says. And we knew that, of course. But why are Apple fans so extremely sensitive to criticism? I've said many 'bad' things about Apple on this forum, and it inevitably got me modded down. Apple zealots are even worse than the Linux zealots of ten years back.
You and Farhad need to stop pimping each other (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW Farhad is the biggest Apple Fanboy in the world. Before this week 80% of his columns were about iPhones, iPods, Macs and Apple.
from reasonable commentary to moral relativism... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some Apple fans do really annoy. E.g., the tendency for claiming that Mac invented everything. They accused Lian-Li of copying the G5's holed case-design; yet, servers used ventilation holes for a long time, and my year-2000 Gateway had them on the front. They also acted like the wire-less hard-drive replacement on the new G5's is some new invention of Apple's: it's juts hot-swap, which has been around forever (and Apple's implementation isn't that great, as you have to open the case to do it).
In any event, those kinds of comments are perfectly fine. They're regarding largely matters of personal opinion. And the issue isn't so much that Apple fans disagree, but the way it's done; provide evidence, don't accuse writers of "ball-licking".
But then the article digresses into the pits of moral relativism with talk about the Israel-Palistine conflict, or the abortion issue. These are issues of right and wrong. There isn't a real middle ground. Either something is right, or it isn't. There is no "plusses and minuses". How about we talk about the pro's and cons of rape, too?
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!
MIxing your brand loyalties improves the quality (Score:4, Funny)
Nor are they amongs the "Early Retaliators", that group of society who are able to optimise their probability calculating skills and go for an early, but strategic smack down. They are usually checking that they did indeed transfer the Bjork/featuring Skunk Anansi remix of Army of Me and it is on their playlist.
Unfortunately they are not amongst the "Early Avoiders" either, that group of society who demonstrate advanced cognitive process and geo-spatial awareness by hiding in the corner (or the toilet) and easily avoid flying fists, Doc martens, chairs, bottles or even the MacBook Air. This is because the Macced-Out tend to congregate around the pub juke box in order to complain about the appalling lack of interoperability and/or Portishead's third album. Sadly the Juke Box shares its high fight-loci rating with the one-armed-bandit (although the Macced-Out sensibly never go near that)
This strategic imbalance in pubs is further aggravated by the absence of "target acquisition" and "engage RPG" items on the iPhone Menu. However all of this will change when Apple once again catch Microsoft unprepared with the release of their iChair.
Heav clanking sound of lid closing tightly on my iBunker...
Media bias 'n' stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't speak for other Mac users but my experience has been such as to induce a certain vehemence in supporting the platform. I have used Macs, PCs and many other micro-computers since they each became available. Despite its shortcomings it was clear that Apple had had a fundamentally good idea from the moment the Lisa and Mac appeared. CP/M and DOS immediately seemed dated. If you were a Mac user though, the DOS crowd spent years telling you it was a worthless idea... right up until Windows appeared. Overnight the story changed to; it's no big deal, Windows is just the same as a Mac now. But it was not just the same. In fact most of the people saying this had only a very superficial knowledge of the differences. "They both have windows..."
These days I have (almost) given up discussing the matter. Life is too short. It is the nature of people that they do not like to think that they have made an incorrect or ill-judged decision. They will "invest" their own sense of worth in the decisions they have made. It is human nature but it is not science. As it has been most tellingly put: It is difficult to reason people out of something they were not reasoned into. Most PC users today were taught on PCs at school. They use them at work. They never even got to make that "decision" to use a PC. They know many of the idiosyncrasies of the machine. They are comfortable. They do not wish to hear that they have wasted serious quantities of time doing things that could have been avoided had they used a different system. Better to let them discover it in their own time... possibly by watching over your shoulder. Then their disappointment at realizing they have wasted much time may be mitigated by their pleasure at realizing that they have improved their position by their own efforts. In a cynical age, enthusiasm disturbs people. They are suspicious of it. To display it can have quite the opposite effect to that intended.
Enough. More than enough.
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]" ;)
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.
Macs are Over-rated (Score:5, Informative)
Two and half years into owning a G4 Powerbook [community-media.com] I've concluded that Macs are no more or less irritating*, crash prone**, or prone to dumb design ideas*** than are PCs. They just incorporate different irritations, ways of crashing, and dumb design choices.
I've given the Mac a good run, and arguably am more knowledgeable than most users. I have taken the time to understand the ways that things work on the Mac. I doubt that I would buy another.
* No Delete key, but a key marked "delete" which actually backspaces. Yes, I know there is some multiple key combination that will delete stuff, but I still believe that pressing a key marked "delete" should cause things to be deleted.
** "Kernel Panic" is exactly the same as the "Blue Screen of Death". In my experience the Mac crashes more often than my XP machine. And then there have been programs that just stop working for no apparent reason.
*** The Dock irritates me no end on this small 12" screen. I'll take the Windows task bar any day. Simpler is better. It also drives me crazy that the Mac defaults to leaving all apps running forever instead of shutting them down when you click the "close" button.
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. ;-)
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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!!"
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I don't want to inject too much seriousness, but... It's amazing how the little things can bother people. Perhaps we're all spoiled or just have no control over the big things, so the little things seem important.
Though I'd like to think I was/am not this bad, I learned a lesson two years ago when my wife died of a brain tumor. Twenty years together ended in just seven weeks (diagnosis to death). We did almost everything together over the years and I spent almost every moment with her over her final weeks both in the hospital and at home. I took care of her and gave her the meds 4 and 6 times a day (even the IV meds). I was there 24/7 the last week when she was in a coma, even sleeping next to her in the 8 inches between her and the railing.
Even now, I remember everything.
The little things don't bother me anymore.
[Remember Sue...]
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Re:ratio (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure you've read the summary correctly AND you know what board you're posting on? You seem to be confusing Microsoft and Apple. One is bad, the other is God.
Hope this helps. Oh, and you might want to cut back on the schnapps.
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Re:I can second that. (Score:4, Funny)
People will think that you are:
a) Slightly retarded
b) Slightly gay
c) The same person
Either way, you fail it.
By the way, I have to chuckle at the fact that the only way you can get your sockpuppets to be modded up is to dispense the usual "M$ Windoze LOLOL" tripe. I can almost see you hyperventilating when you have to spell them correctly.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Funny)
It's all starting to make sense now. It's Apple users. Perhaps its the inferiority of their computer of choice that compels them to live so negatively. Perhaps its the knowledge, buried deep in their subconscious, that they support a platform that nobody in the IT world takes seriously that causes them to act out in such counter-productive ways.
"Ha ha!" The Mac user says. "I have mod points. I will protect the Slashdot community by searching out 'first post' comments and modding them as trolls! The world is safe for another day!".
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:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Informative)
Your profile page - I only see one thing modded down and that was: this one. Yep, douchebaggery.
Even if I were the biggest douchebag in the world (yet somehow still posting at +2...) and I made the douchiest comment in the universe, could you really deny that that sort of Apple fanboism is (or at least was) extreme?
That said, I will be up front about one thing: You won't catch me at my best behaviour if you find that. After my posts started getting modded down I got annoyed and rather defensive. You might look at that and think I was being a douche. That's one thing about looking at this stuff from the past, you can't see what order the events (like moderations) took place in. That's why I don't expect you guys to be kind to me. That's fine, I'll deal with it. Have a good night.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Insightful)
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And looking at that profile page, he's certainly been modded into submission -- ten posts in a row of the last 24 modded down as trolls, when they were in fact nothing of the sort. I'd say he's got a fair point that the
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Informative)
One [slashdot.org]
Two [slashdot.org]
My response to the whole Apple thing? I tend to react extremely favorable when there're negative comments about Apple; it doesn't balance the amount of negative modding, but its the little I can do.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I posted on one of them, and that was the end of my excellent karma. Since then, I stopped posting on Slashdot for a while, and decided that I can only read some "funny" comments and that's it.
The "mod" points are falling into wrong hands at some points, and some people only reads comments feeling they are offensive. (It appears that I'm sarcastic, and that makes things worse).
I can't agree with you more, and now that I have mod points, I try to use them wisely (Always trying to put funny ones). Good luck with your karma, cause it took too much to me to be an excellent, and took only 1 second for a person to take it down.
Re:I've criticized Linux and lived to tell the tal (Score:4, Informative)
Yeesh. Well, if you decide not to draw conclusions from a data set of one, I'd encourage you to look at one of the replies to my original post. I talked about what happened in more detail. If you still think it's BS, that's cool, don't care. It's not like I require you to believe it to prove that it happened.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow, I was marked Troll! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple fans can make death threats (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
It's a bit like the word "feminazi", which draws a completely unfair analogy, as it is deeply insulting to any proud member of the National Socialist party.
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:5, Insightful)
I've heard of some crazy stretches for comparison, but come on, a journalist actually comparing a group of people that have an affinity for a company's products to a deeply-complicated bloody 60+ year old conflict? Talk about going off the deep end.
Not really - he referred to an academic study on perceived media bias to illustrate his argument; that study happened to use the P - I conflict as its basis. He was interested in the conclusions and how they relate to readers reactions to stories; which is different than the comparison you purport him to make.
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I don't really want to know where you pulled that one from, but I've never experienced any failure on my boxes, let alone endless fail.
And personally, I disagree with the Troll moderation. That is Flamebait.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, I guess you haven't been paying attention, but comparably spec'd Macs are generally +/- $100 of the competition. Just because Mercedez-Benz doesn't make a $12,000 economy car doesn't mean their cars are expensive. All the entry-level luxury sedan cars cost roughly the same and the same goes for Apple's products compared to the competition.
The last thing I'd like to point out is I find it interesting how PC users constantly talk about the need for Mac users to justify their expensive purchases, when most Mac users don't really put cost at the top of things to consider when buying a machine. Apple doesn't really pander to cheap people because that market is already flooded.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Been there, done that. Points drops almost as fast as when you suggest Linux may not represent perfection.
Re:Experience it first hand (Score:4, Insightful)
By my highly unscientific and unsubstantiated count, the number of highly vocal (postal?) pro-apple and anti-apple slashdotters are about equal.
If I have ato make a choice I'd rather read someone unreasonably gush about something they love rather than someone vent spleen and name call. That is the important divide, not which computer or OS you like.
Luckily there are still a few people posting thoughtful arguments and comments. Those are a pleasure to read. Please save your mod points for them.
Re:I remember the days before the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
While the employees and shareholders of Apple have every right to boast of its success, I fail to see why fanboys can make any kind of claims as a result. "Hah, I'm superior to you because these people that I am unaffiliated with are better than some other people!" isn't a sane position.
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