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The worst thing about Macs
Renegade:
Wow - got a lot going on here since I've had time to post...
The zealotry thing will never go away. There are zealots everywhere, but I think that we can mostly agree that it is the zealotry that pisses us off, and not the object of the zealotry. We all know that the Mac/OSX (object) has more zealots than the PC (object).
The same goes for Firefox in a reduced manner. My Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera rant is here. Just like the Mac zealots, the Firefox zealots drive me nuts.
I certainly don't mind hard facts that can be clearly illustrated. Blind statements with little support are annoying.
Ok - Let me jump off at this point and become a zealot for anti-zealotry. ;)
*** CAUTION - ZEALOTRY TO FOLLOW!!! ***
Whether it's an OS, a browser, or a particular piece of software, or a religion, or a political party or whatever... The object (tool) serves a purpose/function. An OS lets you run software. A browser lets you surf the web. A religion lets you communicate with g/God. A political party lets you decide how you get butt-pirated... Etc.
Inside of any of those functions there are specific things that need to be done. Different tools will perform different tasks with varying degrees of effectiveness or efficiency or style. How efficiency, effectiveness, style or *insert property/function here* ranks inside of a priority list varies by individual.
If you want to encode audio/video, Joe Blow encoder may suffice, but if you're doing it for DVD production, you're going to use something from a company like Sonic or Avid, otherwise you're an idiot - plain and simple. The priority for DVD production isn't encoder price or ease - it's quality all the way, and there are only so many products that will satisfy that requirement. Conversely, if you're making a home made DVD that you're giving as a present to your friend for their birthday and buy a $100,000 system to do it, you're also an idiot. Nobody goes rabbit hunting with nuclear missiles.
Choosing a tool for a job will depend on those priorities. Choosing the wrong tool given a set of priorities is simply a mistake. e.g. You don't use MS Excel to create documents. You don't use MS Word for spreadsheets. You don't use Photoshop for an image viewer.
It is ONLY when a task and tool are VERY simple that you can definitively say, "X is superior to Y." I have a swiss army knife, a kitchen knife, and a sword. Simple tools. I need to cut some carrots. Simple task. For that task, the kitchen knife is clearly the superior tool. Period. No debate.
Web surfing... So many things to do there... So many complex tasks... So many different aspects to it... Not a simple thing. IE vs. FF. vs. Opera vs. Netscape vs. Safari vs. *insert browser here*... There is no clear winner. There is ONLY what I prioritize as important. (As in the link to my rant above.)
I value mouse gestures for navigation very highly as I use them all the time. I value speed. I use Opera primarily. It's not a "right" or "wrong" decision - it is what it is. I'm close to switching back to IE for some reasons that I outline briefly here. If mouse gestures aren't important to you, then that just doesn't make sense for you.
Imposing one's priorities on another is most often insane. A graphic designer needs Photoshop. But when the graphic designer forces *computer illiterate friend* to use Photoshop to resize photos to print out and put on the fridge, that's just stupid.
A similar thing goes on with the Mac zealots. They berate others for having different priorities or making a different choice.
I'm hungry. I think I'll have a pear. Does it make me an idiot because I didn't choose *insert favorite food here*?
The zealots are begging for the rest of us to make fun of their insanity. I don't think anyone needs to apologize for berating zealots for that. They're asking for it.
On the other side, it is hypocritical to berate the object of the zealotry because of the zealots. That doesn't make sense. However, we still do this. I think its more often in jest or as "bait" for the zealots - just to piss them off and lure them into being the funny extremists that we love to make fun of. It's really kind of cruel. It's not very rational. But then again, the rational thing to do when you're dealing with someone that isn't rational is to become irrational yourself. (Yes - ironically strange but true, that is the best argumentation tactic.)
The problem I see is when you actuall mean something or believe something when you become irrational with the zealots. I'm all for making fun of Macs or whatever else - heck - it's all just a fun game. The zealots aren't going to sway me, but I can get some twisted fun out of the whole thing. It is in some ways rather perverse as there is nothing to be gained.
The defining characteristic is irrationality - it's just hard to pass up stomping on it. :D
Oh heck... I'm just rambling on and on... Time to shut up.
nontroppo:
We all know that the Mac/OSX (object) has more zealots than the PC (object).
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Huh? Have you done a statistical analysis comparing population size with fanaticism? Or is it just because as a PC user, Mac fanatics stick out more. Going to browsers, I've seen:
"Opera is OK, but it has so many more fanatics than Firefox"
"Opera is great, and there are less fanatics than Firefox"
"I hate Firefox fanatics, thats why I use IE"
"IE zealots are the most numerous of all"
Amazingly, it is the "other" sides fanatics that tend to stick out to them.
n the UK the cheapest Macbook was three times the price of some of the Vista systems I looked at (£700 for a 13" screen compared to some Vista systems I found for £240 with 15" screens
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You are comparing apples with oranges and coming to the conclusion that oranges are more zesty. *I* bought a cheap laptop before my Macbook, an Acer Aspire 1520, and it was plenty fast (same spec as Thinkpad twice its price). But boy, can you tell a difference in build between it and my older IBM Thinkpad or the Macbook (flaky not only in physical build, but hardware reliability). If you need a laptop at a bargain bin price, go for the £300 pound one. But don't claim they are "identical".
jgpaiva:
Huh? Have you done a statistical analysis comparing population size with fanaticism? Or is it just because as a PC user, Mac fanatics stick out more.
-nontroppo (October 20, 2007, 05:49 AM)
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I don't think so, nontroppo.
Following the example of the people in my classes (about 200, all studying computer science on a pretty good university), i can give you a good example:
When someone says something bad or a joke about the wintel plataform, either there are no comments, there is agreement or there is laughter.
EVERY SINGLE TIME someone says something like that about the mac platform, there are at least 2 guys either saying the person saying that is wrong OR that a similar thing happens in the wintel platform.
This is a statistic from 4 years of dealing with this kind of stuff every day.
Carol Haynes:
Nobody goes rabbit hunting with nuclear missiles.
--- End quote ---
Love it - that should be quote of the day somewhere!
You are comparing apples with oranges and coming to the conclusion that oranges are more zesty. *I* bought a cheap laptop before my Macbook, an Acer Aspire 1520, and it was plenty fast (same spec as Thinkpad twice its price). But boy, can you tell a difference in build between it and my older IBM Thinkpad or the Macbook (flaky not only in physical build, but hardware reliability). If you need a laptop at a bargain bin price, go for the £300 pound one. But don't claim they are "identical".
--- End quote ---
I take your point - but for the purposes required the cheap machine will be just as good and functional - and if they want to do more in the future they will have more choices. In fact I would say that the PC version would be better for the target audience - and man in his 70s with eyesight on the wane as a 15" monitor is going to give a larger and clearer image.
Having said that if I spend the same amount of money on a MacBook and a Windows based laptop where will I get 'better bang for buck'. The UK Apple Store uses this phrase and it is simply not true in any sense.
nontroppo:
and man in his 70s with eyesight on the wane as a 15" monitor is going to give a larger and clearer image.
--- End quote ---
The accessibility features of OS X are clearly more unified than in XP at least (no idea about Vista). The whole system works with Voiceover (voice assistance) for all widgets of all applications, there are pre-bound key commands for screen zoom and contrast inversion (also accessible for the mouse driver natively). For auditory loss, system alerts can provide visual clues, and mouse and keyboard assistance is provided. On windows, this is scattered about (some in control panel (in different places), some in Utilities in start menu) and you normally need to augment with a set of specialised software to deal with voice assistance as well as Tiger does.
The UK Apple Store uses this phrase and it is simply not true in any sense.
--- End quote ---
If you do photography work it is, because the Tiger kernel handles memory better than windows (and has done for the last few years), enabling those with large memory configurations to do things windows chokes on. My work desktop machine is a 4GB Dual processor Xeon Dell workstation (£3800 when new). Even with the 3GB switch in boot.ini Photoshop fails to handle large files opened in Tiger with ease! CS3 works slower on XP and Vista than Tiger. I get more bang for the buck here. Amazingly, I prefer to work on my Macbook which has 1/2 the memory than my Dell Workstation.
If you are a writer, the OS provides a native system wide service of dictionary and thesaurus elegantly available to all native apps. No need to have each app with a different dictionary, or download plethora of add-ons (which I did in Windows, some of them good). It is a little thing, but it is there and it works. *And* if you are a writer, the software on Mac is really amazing (Scrivener being my :-* favourite). I've sampled everything on PC desperately, but I've yet to find anything of the same quality. Windows abounds with apps with buttons everywhere, 10 different toolbars, scattered feature sets. As a writer, I get more bang for the buck, my writing has even improved, because the tools I have are better for the job.
Having spotlight as a system-wide service means my file manager, my launcher, my writing software, my note-taker, my disk monitor can all simply hook into *one* service. Yes I can download google desktop (or app of choice) on PC, then some other app, but it just doesn't all seamlessly gel together. My windows file-manager can't use it. Neither can my writing software. etc.
If you value typography, Tiger has native support for OpenType, allowing ligatures, alternative figure sets, and better contextual kerning in ****all*** apps, not just the $4000 DTP software that has to emulate this stuff in Windows. I am amazed that OS X's notepad can handle proper ligatures when 99% of software on windows cannot. This is core architecture that windows simply fails to provide (even though they co-developed OpenType years ago!). If you value a beautifully laid out book, imagine having the core mechanics of typographical elegance (read Robert Bringhurt's "The Elements of Typographical style and weep) available in the foundations of your OS.
All native apps expose a consistent scripting interface as a core part of the OS, allowing any scripting bridge (ruby, python, PHP, applescript etc.) to easily interact with them. I can use system-wide dictionaries of manipulations to automate most apps and tie them together with less hassle than the (excellent home-grown) automation hacks available for windows. You may get to the same destination, but one is elegantly (I'm currently using Ruby to automate music tagging, and system maintenance), and the other is with blue-tack and string.
Did anyone mention Quicksilver? There is a love of this app amongst its users which is very well founded. It is a great example how the more unified underlying architecture of the OS frameworks (exposed scripting interfaces, OS services) allows an app to greatly leap ahead of anything available on any other platform. It is revolutionary in interface terms in ways that other platforms are still moving forwards to emulate. Mouser is an amazing developer, really brilliant, and FARR is the best goddamn launcher on windows. It is why I first came to DC, and I use FARR when using Windows. My belief is that the OS frameworks which unify OS X, allowing the noun+verb+action paradigm to work effortlessly is just a pure struggle under the Win32 API. No matter how brilliant mouser is, doing ambitious stuff bringing together services between lots of apps is a fight in Windows. Not even the commercial Quicksilver clones (Enso and company), with fancy screen-casts come close to it. I would argue that this is a clear example where a user gets more bang-for-the-buck because the underlying architecture is just more cohesive.
I also have to put up with crap music players (ah, how I miss foobar2000), and Matlab on OS X is flaky (GUI work == hell). Wireshark is X11 based and more buggy than Windows or Linux. But the free-ware and shareware community is vibrant and there are lots of great stuff to play with (we are all geeks after all). I love dabbling with *nix, while still having Adobe Lightroom ( :-* ), Illustrator and other pro apps available (and working better than they do in Windows). Thanks to *nix, I *love* that the OS is cleanly separated from apps, cleanly separated from user data. No more registry cleaning, system32 folder examination, services cleaning. OS X doesn't get sluggish after time like Windows has always done, causing the yearly reformat of C:\ [EDIT: system updates don't require annoying restarts like Windows does]
I've helped edit whole short films in FCP running on a standard Macbook, something I was unable to do on my previous Acer.
Apple sucks. Their locking down of music platforms while publicly deriding DRM is hypocrisy of the highest order (though they haven't added DRM crap into the kernel as Microsoft have done). There is a stinking high pile of marketing crap (though I see that as endemic to Western Capitalism, how can a Vacuum cleaner make your life so much fulfilled!?). All the Jobs keynote stuff is just back-patting masturbation by executives tring to peddle their stock value. I would never buy an iPod or iPhone (until they are unlocked) as they give me no value.
And yet I cannot blithely dismiss my current platform as being no better ***IMO*** than what I've used for the previous 12 years. I have less lock-ups, slowdowns, un-reproducible shutdown freezes, less registry tweaking, less spyware battling. I have software which I couldn't find in Windows (and I can run XP in a VM when I need it, intermingling apps as if they were the same OS), while still benefiting from core unique OS X services which I value. More bang for the buck? For me, it clearly is.
And mac, PC, & Peruvian tree-shrew zealots suck! :-P
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