Working in IT I get more than my fair share of heckling for being a Mac user. The common refrence I hear is Macintrash. Whatever. The best story, I actually convinced the Manager of network services to get an iBook. He tells me that he has no regrets and plans on getting another mac for his kids so they will stop playing with his computer.
Where I come from, there are a lot of very serious CS dorks. Our CS dept is very strong. (But they're still just minor league EE's).
Anyway, Here's a near verbatim quote from the department. "The Macintosh with OS X is by far the best platform for CS students since it provides the standardized UNIX tools combined with an excellent GUI." So many CS profs carry TiBooks, and there's an effort to get rid of all of the Solaris machines here, replacing them with macs.
If you're a geek at Princeton and you use Windows, you're the butt of jokes. Mac is respectable. Windows is not.
Macs now get a lot more respect among the PC users I know than I can remember.
The OS is turning heads. The hardware is turning heads. The all-PC-notebook coffeehouses around here are starting to sport iBooks (this really isn't a Mac town). A sound engineer friend who left Macs in the early '90s is seriously eyeing a PowerMac, because he's looking to upgrade from his trusty 700MHz P3 and he's disenchanted with Windows 2000's performance on new hardware.
My PC using roommate is more or less convinced that my Cube was beamed down by a UFO. He's been looking at Macs since I got it.
This town will be slow going, though, because PCs really have become pervasive, and there are a lot of business-school types here. But the revolution is under way.
Hey, it's true! Except perhaps in the demographic pertaining to Matsus.
Back in ye olde days of my schooling, all the sys admins used PowerBooks to monitor and tweak the UNIX networks.
And over the years, I've known many people who have relied on Windows on the desktop at the office and at home, but have gone with a Macintosh portable.
The idea that products/companies should get respect. All this platformism, it's almost religious, people even talk about being platform 'agnostic'. And yes, for a long long time, Apple made the only decent notebooks out there.
I guess it is a bit stupid. I've known a lot of people who won't wear running shoes unless they're Nike. Or won't buy home cinema gear that's not Sony.
And I know that, over the years, I've bought Apple hardware when I could probably have been better served by a Windows-based alternative.
The idea that products/companies should get respect.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's odd about that? If a company makes a good product, why shouldn't it be respected?
That's different from the very religious evangelism of the late '90s, which made me cringe.
After all, the end goals are: for people to get what best suits them, and for companies to offer the best possible products. In Apple's case, it's not just like a shoe brand, because Apple is a platform, and its viability as such depends to some degree on its level of acceptance.
If it matters, I have recommended PCs to people because I felt they would be better served by them. I buy Macs because I prefer them, and because I have an investment in the platform.
Apple has gone a bit beyond being a platform, it really is a bit of a cult -- of which I'm taking part, so my laughter is at least a little self-reflexive. And while I'll rail like mad in these forums, in 'real life' I find it rather funny that people would feel the need to engage in childish forum-type behavior. I don't think Apple has moved too far away from the religious type evangelism, a little, but not much.
"Switch" for instance is still more about a cult of cool, than it is about what you get and what it can do. Yes yes, it appears to be that way, but the characters, the look and feel, the Appleness of it, it's all designed to comunicate something deeper than "macs are good because... (practical reasons)"
It's more sophisticated, but it makes no real appeal to practical considerations. The best adverts hardly ever do. They're good ads, for their particular mission, effortlessly walking the line between argumentative modes. Subtle, their true intentions -- to tell you macs are smarter, cooler, that their owners have better sex and make more money, live longer and are immune to AIDS or cancer -- while never really concealed are suppressed enough for us to graciously suspend disbelief, for some, even to implicitly believe it. That is what we really want from products, even when we say we just want them to work right out of the box.
Relative to any other company Apple is only more guilty insofar as it is more proficient in the art...
<strong>I guess it is a bit stupid. I've known a lot of people who won't wear running shoes unless they're Nike. Or won't buy home cinema gear that's not Sony.
And I know that, over the years, I've bought Apple hardware when I could probably have been better served by a Windows-based alternative.</strong><hr></blockquote>Yeah, but I think one difference is that you make an investment of money in software and time in learning the software and the OS. Brand loyalty plays some role, but I know for me it would just be a real pain to switch everything at this point. I own too much software and I know too much about a Mac and too little about Windows to make a switch cost effective.
And that's probably also a big part of why it's hard to get PC users to switch. Ironically the reasons that PC users won't switch are the same reasons that Apple keeps their Mac loyalists to milk when those profits are down.
i have two friends who like pcs (for some strange and unknown reason.) One of them is hardcore, but we've stopped flaming the other system. perhaps it's because he knows macs will always be better. Has anyone read Macintosh? The Naked Truth by Scott Kelby? It is kind of expensive (at $20) but it is hilarious, and scenarios, and tells you how to deal with them. It has good facts too. There is a sample chapter at <a href="http://www.newriders.com"; target="_blank">www.newriders.com</a> .
My friends don't give them much respect, no. Although they do think that the new iMacs are cool, they can't play games at school, (must not be able to play games on Macs, stupidity says to them) are forced to use Mac OS 9, (they always crash, stupidity says to them) and are also forced to use Netscape 4.7, with no Flash or whatever installed by default (Mac's can't load my favorite site, stupidity says to them.)
I hate my school, I really do. The sh!t-for-brains tech wont put anything of actual value on them (like Explorer or 10.1, which *came* with them free of charge) and, even though he is a devout Mac fan, is not so good at getting other people on the boat.
Were I running the show there, things would be much different...*sigh* I've offered to help, to no avail.
(And no, he isn't keeping Mac OS 9 on them because the school can't afford to upgrade to applications compatable with Mac OS X. Those things are loaded with new Adobe apps and whatnot. My theory is that he is afraid of not knowing all the inner workings of OS X.)
Comments
But generally my PC using friends and relatives are getting more open to non-windows platform and its users...........which is good
But Mac's price/performance still stinks
Anyway, Here's a near verbatim quote from the department. "The Macintosh with OS X is by far the best platform for CS students since it provides the standardized UNIX tools combined with an excellent GUI." So many CS profs carry TiBooks, and there's an effort to get rid of all of the Solaris machines here, replacing them with macs.
If you're a geek at Princeton and you use Windows, you're the butt of jokes. Mac is respectable. Windows is not.
The OS is turning heads. The hardware is turning heads. The all-PC-notebook coffeehouses around here are starting to sport iBooks (this really isn't a Mac town). A sound engineer friend who left Macs in the early '90s is seriously eyeing a PowerMac, because he's looking to upgrade from his trusty 700MHz P3 and he's disenchanted with Windows 2000's performance on new hardware.
My PC using roommate is more or less convinced that my Cube was beamed down by a UFO. He's been looking at Macs since I got it.
This town will be slow going, though, because PCs really have become pervasive, and there are a lot of business-school types here. But the revolution is under way.
Back in ye olde days of my schooling, all the sys admins used PowerBooks to monitor and tweak the UNIX networks.
And over the years, I've known many people who have relied on Windows on the desktop at the office and at home, but have gone with a Macintosh portable.
I wasn't laughing at that...
The idea that products/companies should get respect. All this platformism, it's almost religious, people even talk about being platform 'agnostic'. And yes, for a long long time, Apple made the only decent notebooks out there.
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
And I know that, over the years, I've bought Apple hardware when I could probably have been better served by a Windows-based alternative.
<strong> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
I wasn't laughing at that...
The idea that products/companies should get respect.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's odd about that? If a company makes a good product, why shouldn't it be respected?
That's different from the very religious evangelism of the late '90s, which made me cringe.
After all, the end goals are: for people to get what best suits them, and for companies to offer the best possible products. In Apple's case, it's not just like a shoe brand, because Apple is a platform, and its viability as such depends to some degree on its level of acceptance.
If it matters, I have recommended PCs to people because I felt they would be better served by them. I buy Macs because I prefer them, and because I have an investment in the platform.
"Switch" for instance is still more about a cult of cool, than it is about what you get and what it can do. Yes yes, it appears to be that way, but the characters, the look and feel, the Appleness of it, it's all designed to comunicate something deeper than "macs are good because... (practical reasons)"
It's more sophisticated, but it makes no real appeal to practical considerations. The best adverts hardly ever do. They're good ads, for their particular mission, effortlessly walking the line between argumentative modes. Subtle, their true intentions -- to tell you macs are smarter, cooler, that their owners have better sex and make more money, live longer and are immune to AIDS or cancer -- while never really concealed are suppressed enough for us to graciously suspend disbelief, for some, even to implicitly believe it. That is what we really want from products, even when we say we just want them to work right out of the box.
Relative to any other company Apple is only more guilty insofar as it is more proficient in the art...
<strong>I guess it is a bit stupid. I've known a lot of people who won't wear running shoes unless they're Nike. Or won't buy home cinema gear that's not Sony.
And I know that, over the years, I've bought Apple hardware when I could probably have been better served by a Windows-based alternative.</strong><hr></blockquote>Yeah, but I think one difference is that you make an investment of money in software and time in learning the software and the OS. Brand loyalty plays some role, but I know for me it would just be a real pain to switch everything at this point. I own too much software and I know too much about a Mac and too little about Windows to make a switch cost effective.
And that's probably also a big part of why it's hard to get PC users to switch. Ironically the reasons that PC users won't switch are the same reasons that Apple keeps their Mac loyalists to milk when those profits are down.
I hate my school, I really do. The sh!t-for-brains tech wont put anything of actual value on them (like Explorer or 10.1, which *came* with them free of charge) and, even though he is a devout Mac fan, is not so good at getting other people on the boat.
Were I running the show there, things would be much different...*sigh* I've offered to help, to no avail.
(And no, he isn't keeping Mac OS 9 on them because the school can't afford to upgrade to applications compatable with Mac OS X. Those things are loaded with new Adobe apps and whatnot. My theory is that he is afraid of not knowing all the inner workings of OS X.)