Review of 'MacHeads' Documentary 277
An anonymous reader writes "Just prior to its premiere at MacWorld later this week, CNet has a review of MacHeads, the new documentary film covering the obsessive world of Apple fanboyism. MacHeads features commentary from original Apple employees, the self-confessed Apple-obsessed and girls who claim they'll never sleep with Windows users. Summed up by CNet: 'MacHeads is a superb film that will give Apple haters a few cheap laughs, and Apple fans a few cheap thrills. But it'll entertain both equally, while educating everybody else.'"
"Trekkies" with a different context (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, "MacHeads is another cheap 'find a subculture and mock it' film that will pander to Apple haters, and bore or irritate Apple fans. It will broaden the minds of neither, and pass unnoticed by everyone else."
Educating? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmm ... at one time "educating" meant a bit more than sitting in front of the TV. That's what used to be called entertainment. "Education" was studying people like Plato and Shakespeare and Kant, gaining some culture and learning how to think.
As for "Apple haters" ... are there many? Some people do go overboard for the company, and that can be mildly irritating. But does anyone really "hate" them or the company? Personally, I like Apple's products but I don't give a damn for Apple as Apple. And, frankly, Apple computers pre the Steve Jobs return and the acquisition of the excellent Unix/NeXT technology weren't worth using. Terrible trash.
Really, what person with any sense cares about any brand as a brand?
Now a really amusing subject for a documentary might be "Windows haters". Everyone hates Windows. Even Windows users hate Windows. Mac users might love their machines too much, and the same goes for some Linux-heads. However no-one - but no one - loves a Windows box. People just tolerate them through gritted teeth.
Re:"Trekkies" with a different context (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. What I find are more anti-whatevers, than pro-whatevers. People obsessing over what other people use. Some of the causes might be legitimate (marketshare concerns or they end up doing tech support for friends/relatives) and some are petty (obsessing how other people spend their money).
For the classic in OS satire, there is "The Unix Hater's Handbook":
http://www.icce.rug.nl/edu/ugh.pdf [icce.rug.nl]
It was pretty much the poke in the eye to unix users but the anti-foreword was written by Dennis Ritchie - but was just as scathing right back:) (This was when some users came from other systems, like Lisp Machines.) It's probably still relevant today, seeing as how OS with unix foundations are the only OS with marketshare outside Windows these days.
Good God, they're still around? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get this obsession. Back in the day I was a rabid (psychotic) Amiga fan/user. As I matured I realized something, IT'S JUST A COMPUTER GUYS. JUST ANOTHER TOOL. If people were this committed to, say hammers or forstner bits -- you'd think they were completely insane.
I'm also looking at you, the "yeah, but can it run LINUX" crowd. For fucks sake, people many of you are amongst the most intelligent human beings in the world, you need to be out there breeding instead of developing a goddamn zippo lighter simulator for your iPhone.
Just take screenshots of Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Just screenshot all the Apple articles on Slashdot, and you'll see fanboyism and corporate pimping at its finest.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm also looking at you, the "yeah, but can it run LINUX" crowd. For fucks sake, people many of you are amongst the most intelligent human beings in the world
Since when is the linux crowd the most intelligent human beings? I'm not against linux people or anything but I fail to see how smarter they are compared to any other kind of people. In my opinion they're just more knowledgeable in this one field.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just another tool, eh?
Considering the fact that we wouldn't be able to do much of what we are doing now without any tools says something about how important they are. And really how much of a human are we with a stick at most?
These tools let us be human like and thus they become part of us.
Should we be obsessed? Of course not, by the virtue of the word 'obsessed', which has negative meaning.
Should we consider a computer *just* another tool? Perhaps, but we won't.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:1, Insightful)
For fucks sake, people many of you are amongst the most intelligent human beings in the world, you need to be out there breeding
Unfortunately, the more intelligent people are the ones who realize that breeding is a stupid thing to do. It's the idiots who don't know any better.
What the intelligent should be doing is force sterilizing idiots. Then intelligent people can breed without contributing to the overpopulation of the earth.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what you're not considering is the fact that you yourself have aged, and therefore your opinions and perceptions have changed as well. Most people mellow out of the "raging 20s" where everything seems like a social injustice, even if it's some guy in a coffee shop using an OS that they think "sucks".
It seems to me that it's a problem of relativity. The people you seem to be referencing are very likely right around the same age you were (and I was) when we were ferocious about such things. I was an Amiga person too, and then a rabid Mac owner, then an elite NeXT user, then a smartass Linux user, but eventually I decided, just like you, that it really is just a computer and that there are far more important things to worry about and spend time dealing with.
And that's why I use OS X.
Re:I prefer to stick to more healthy obsessions (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought DS9 was the most consistent of the new Trek series, especially past season 1.
IMO, TNG had a much bigger "amazing episode followed by an unwatchable POS that doesn't even seem like the same show" problem. I think that DS9 generated fewer 5-out-of-5 excellent individual episodes, but also fewer 1-out-of-5ers. Still a few 5s, though, and loads of 4s.
The multi-episode and season-long story arcs are why it's my favorite.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:2, Insightful)
I was with you all through your comment... just until the last line:
It seems to me you have not yet left the state you described in the previous paragraphs... Maybe in age, but certainly not in attitude... If you had that last line just would not be there. Who cares what OS you use? If it works for you, fine. If it doesn't use something else.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, either that or we're paying for it and just don't feel like bragging about booty we paid for.
Seriously, if you're THAT desperate to get laid and can't get it the normal way for whatever reason, then hookers work fine. Drop a few $$$ and if you go with escorts rather than a street walker you're probably going to be with a girl 10x better looking than you could have just randomly hooked up with anyways.
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:3, Insightful)
As I matured I realized something, IT'S JUST A COMPUTER GUYS. JUST ANOTHER TOOL.
Expect to turn 30 and realise that NOT ALL TOOLS ARE ALIKE. You'll laugh more at yourself than others for once thinking that some of them even belonged in the same conversation.
And if you had the foresight to develop some skills along the way and nurtured your intellectual curiousity, you'll insist on making your own tools by the time you're fourty, an advocating the same to people on Slashdot who are oblivious to the difference.
When you turn 50, you'll insist that all tools you use are either of your own making, or resemble those you used at a formative stage in your life. Incidentally, that's about the same time you prefer hardware stores to other forms of social interaction where you spend considerable time evaluating the relative merits of different manufacturers of hammers and forstner bits. It's all the same time you end up pissing off the wife by buying a sports car and spend even more time in the garage with your tools.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm...let's do some quick back-of-the envelope calculation. Six billion people in the world, three billion women. Maybe 10% are "hot" (as opposed to cute, pretty, whatever, which would be a lower standard). That's 600M hot women. Say 5% are truly lesbian (as opposed to bi, bi-curious, etc), so 6M hot lesbians in the whole world. Let's say 50% use computers (I'm not sure about this number), and 1% of those use Linux.
There should be about 30,000 hot Linux-using lesbians in the world.
Your data is likely skewed in several areas. For one, of those 3 billion women, a significant portion of them are going to be either minors, or the elderly. For the "sex era" you're probably looking at the 18-45 age bracket. You can probably reduce your 3 billion by at least 40% there.
Your 5% number for pure lesbians is also likely a tad high. A wiki article on homosexuality cites a poll taken of registered votes where 4% identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. So 1% less off the bat, but you also have to account for some % of that 4% being bisexual too.
50% using computers is REALLY high. Maybe in the US, Japan, etc, and other developed nations, but a lot of the world's population is still living in huts and figuring out how to survive each day. The number of people using computers to any significant extent is going to be far lower than 50%.
Finally, Linux users are less than 1% of computer users, and I'd posit a STRONG guess that Linux users are disproportionately skewed towards males rather than females (not so much out of any "ew, girls are bad at computers" issue as it is societal pressure pushing many girls out of the fields/areas that would lead to a progressed interest in the technical aspects of computers, which often goes along with running Linux. That's changing some now, but is still an issue).
So, while I'd posit that there certainly is some non-zero number of lesbian Linux zealots out there, I doubt there's anywhere near 30,000 of them ;).
Re:Good God, they're still around? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux users are normally people who have gone beyond what they were presented with and explored other possibilities (else they would be using Windows). That attitude is an indicator of intelligence. Linux also requires having self-educated oneself on how to manage the system for most of us. That attitude is also an indicator of intelligence. So it's reasonable to guess that statistically, Linux users may be from the intelligent segments of society. But it's only a small part of the larger set of intelligent people. Using Linux might be a clue that someone is smart, but using Windows is not a sign that someone is not.
Please shut up (Score:2, Insightful)
"PC users mock Mac users for their "fanboy" stuff"
No, stop lying to yourself. They get mocked because of stupid hyperbolic assertions that never hold up in reality, and a total unwillingness to admit problems are actually problems.
"but it is because PC users don't understand what it is like to have a computer that is actually nice to use. "
NO, they understand that it's A FUCKING COMPUTER. My roommate has 2 macs. They're nice. They're by no means "nicer" than my set-up, which I've spent a ton of time customizing. Your assumption that people are downing are Mac users for "not using a nice PC" is ridiculous and kind of stupid.
YOU are the EXACT person I'm talking about, blindly dismissing issues as "PC users frame of reference" because you're totally incapable of registering a real problem because you're so deluded.
Re:Please shut up (Score:3, Insightful)
You kinda proved my point there. Most people don't like spending a bunch of time customizing just to get it behave in a sane fashion. Power users frequently do. Personally my family is more important than spending "a ton of time customizing" just to get the damned thing to behave in a sane fashion. If it is "just a fucking computer" why did you bother to spend "a ton of time" customizing it? Clearly it is more than "just a fucking computer" to you if you are willing to spend "a ton of time" customizing it. You mentioned something about stupid hyperbolic assertions?
What problem by the way? I didn't say there weren't problems in OS X. In fact I called Apple about a problem that happened after the 10.5.5 update. I spoke with someone whose native language was English. They forwarded me on to the engineering guys who gathered some data. Then a few days later they actually called me back with an update on what was going wrong. Imagine that... I have had to deal with other vendor's support for AGES and have NEVER in my life been treated that well as a generic caller.
Now if it doesn't have the software you need then it isn't the right tool. But everyone I have met that bitches and moans about Mac users have never actually spent a significant amount of time actually using one. They might have fiddled with one, and it didn't behave exactly the same as what they were used to, called it stupid and left it at that (which is exactly what I did for many years before actually devoting some time to trying to learn it).
Re:Please shut up (Score:3, Insightful)
"You kinda proved my point there."
No I didn't, your "point" was that "PC users don't understand what it is like to have a computer that is actually nice to use."
I HAVE a computer that is nice to use. How it got there is irrelevant to your point, you're just wrong.
" Clearly it is more than "just a fucking computer" to you if you are willing to spend "a ton of time" customizing it."
No. These two points have nothing to do with each other, it can be both "just a fucking computer" and be customizable to my tastes. Your point makes no sense.
"You mentioned something about stupid hyperbolic assertions? "
Yes I did, and you've proven me 100% accurate so far with yours, which I have demonstrated.
SO far, all you've done is prove me totally correct.
Re:I prefer to stick to more healthy obsessions (Score:3, Insightful)
As for solving problems by prayer and faith, praying to a god who not only exists for a fact but who also has a track record of helping his followers actually makes quite a lot of sense from a rational pov.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with religion in the real world. I'm an atheist, too.
Oh my... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well there's three reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of OSS zealots who sometimes spend 5 days to make something simple work at Linux (sometimes that happens, even if its the person's fault) are also that way. In fact, most of them use "smart people" distributions like Slackware because "they never break" and "allow me to be in full control of my machine". Yet, when something breaks they realise (but don't admit) that they do not have full control over it, that their precious "superior choice" also has issues.
It's the same thing: they're lying, and with a touch of elitism into it. Their "thing" is not about making a good choice about computing or executing tasks faster of cheaper. It's about belonging to groups (and, on an advanced point, being part of the group's institutional machine) and feeling good. It's just radical enviro-activism.
After all, they allowed themselves to define their own personality based on those choices. That's how weak they are right now. They're not in control anymore: denying the tool/group/choice would mean denying their own personality.
Re:Please shut up (Score:1, Insightful)
You DID prove his point! You defined hyperbole in the process and you just don't under stand what it is like to just use a computer instead of obsessing over it's problems and foibles by spending a ton of time customizing it.
Apple fans and Mac users are a gestalt that you either get or you don't. There are people that just use computers and there are fanboys that argue over them.