Latest Apple Mac vs PC Commercial: PCs suck because of all the software choices

[Darwin]

Thanks for the link, Zaine. While I sympathise with the general annoyance of having to strip out the OEM/trial stuff that comes with a new computer, I recognise this as being my own "thing" - one cannot argue that a newbie couldn't pick up a brand new, out of the box, Vaio notebook and not just use it. What a steaming pile... As for the line about having to grapple with a plethora of new security apps right out of the box, hasn't this guy woken up to the 21st century reality, which is that Apple release numerous patches to shore up security risks in their OS? Why do they do this? Because viruses are increasingly becoming a part of the "Mac experience". I love the way people assume that Microsoft hire inept, bumbling programmers and the really good ones code for Apple... Reminds me of the horsepucky about Chrysler in the 60's having the monopoly on engineering smarts. Hello! The big three were all building monstrous cars powered by monstrous, iron, 90 degree OHV single cam V-8's! And don't bring up the Hemi... Hemispherical combustion chambers were NOT invented in Detroit circa 1953 - they were around in Europe for decades prior to that and in common application... OK auto rant over. Hope the analogy was clear - why on earth would anyone assume that Microsoft are less capable than Apple? In addition, even if Apple has better coders working for them, does this guarantee that their product won't be susceptible to virus and other malicious attacks? I think not...

[app103]

My daughter found this one today. 

Is it just me or does this ad campaign smell just like the 'Where's the Beef?' ads?

[Lashiec]

My daughter found this one today. 

-app103 (April 27, 2007, 09:23 AM)

HUH?

[tomos]

Reminds me of the horsepucky about Chrysler in the 60's having the monopoly on engineering smarts. Hello! The big three were all building monstrous cars powered by monstrous, iron, 90 degree OHV single cam V-8's! And don't bring up the Hemi... Hemispherical combustion chambers were NOT invented in Detroit circa 1953 - they were around in Europe for decades prior to that and in common application... OK auto rant over. Hope the analogy was clear -

-Darwin (April 27, 2007, 08:35 AM)

well no ...

but
I wouldnt bother explaining it any further for my benefit at any rate 
mind you if I look at it from the Mac/PC side I can imagine what people were saying about Chrysler learn all sorts of things here!

[cthorpe]

To use a PC well and to do things right, you need to know a lot about computers and be sort of a geek.  If you don't, your pc will inevitibatly be overrun by spam and spyware, virus, etc. 

-superboyac (April 19, 2007, 06:59 PM)

My mother is a school administrator.  She uses Windows XP machine at home.  She does extensive reseach on the web, sends and receives hundreds of emails a day, and does all of her administrative paperwork on the computer.  She is far from a geek, and regularly has to ask for help with seeminly minor tasks.  She has never been infected by a virus, or any significant spyware infection.  As for spam, she gets an average amount.

It doesn't take being a geek to avoid those things.  It just takes common sense.

Carl Thorpe

[Darwin]

OK auto rant over. Hope the analogy was clear -
well no ...

but
I wouldnt bother explaining it any further for my benefit at any rate   

 

[tomos]

OK auto rant over. Hope the analogy was clear -
well no ...

but
I wouldnt bother explaining it any further for my benefit at any rate   

-Darwin (May 02, 2007, 09:14 AM)

Hey Mike,
I just meant I havent a notion when it comes to cars ...

[Darwin]

I know, Tom... but it was a very North American-centric thing to be posting about in the first place.

** More car talk here:

I spent my idle youth spinning wrenches on my own 6.6 litre Pontiac GTO and a friend's 7.2 litre Plymouth GTX (while yearning for a Jag or an Aston-Martin) and could not believe the nonsense he and a lot of other people around me spewed about the relative merits of various incarnations of "Detroit/Windsor Iron" AND how superior 1960's American technology was over then current (late '80's early '90's) Japanese and European technology. The (1993) 2.2 litre turbo-charged Subaru  (still miss that car) that I replaced the (1967) Pontiac with ran circles around it and it was a station wagon (Estate) to boot!

**Car talk largely ends here...

Tom, I expect your eyes crossed again if you read the above... Don't know how to explain the analogy except to say that cars are cars and are designed to get you from point A to point B safely and computers are computers that are *supposed* to make you more productive (ha, ha -there's a laugh!). Typing this latest diatribe on a Mac, Windows PC or something else running some flavour of Linux is kind of irrelevant to the task itself... In the end, regardless of the platform and the hardware that I write it on, this BS is the result    That's part of what I was trying to say - the other part would be that from my perspective the V-8 engines in 1960's American cars were pretty standard in design, regardless of the company that manufactured them. So, the argument that one or the other of the "Big 3" (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler) produced better engineered cars always struck me as dim. The output was pretty homogenous across all three of the ranges both from an engineering perspective (engines, brakes, suspension) and from a styling perspective. My point WRT the Mac/PC debate was that both Apple and Microsoft hire the best software engineers that they can get their mitts on and ask them to do a very similar job: design an OS to take advantage of the hardware that it runs on. The hardware is pretty much the same and the capabilities of both OS X and XP/Vista are largely the same. Given how competitive these jobs are, the suggestion that Apple somehow hires better, more capable engineers strikes me as silly... So's this analogy. I'll shut up now because this line of *reasoning* could go on and on and on... and I'm already anticipating counter-arguments!

[Carol Haynes]

Don't get me wrong, i do appreciate the value of having a stable system with a core line of polished "official" programs, or appreciate that there is a lot of crap out there, or appreciate that osx with its *nix base gives you access to a ton of software.  It's more that i notice how much mac's seem  to be marketed to people who don't want to get involved in installing software, configuring, etc.  to each his own i guess.

-mouser (April 19, 2007, 02:23 AM)

Strange though isn't it that Jobs and Co. can't write a versionn of iTunes for the PC that isn't a total bloatfest in all directions - or is that deliberate to make Macs look better?

[Hirudin]

Sorry for all the quotes... I rarely stray from the General Software Discussion so am late to the game...

If you didn't see this the other time I posted it...

I know I know, this is PC and Linux, but I found this funny anyway.

http://www.thebestpa...et/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

-Hirudin (May 30, 2007, 01:36 AM)

In fact I am embarrassed to say that of all the time I spend on computers probably only 2/3 is spent actually producing something and the rest on fiddling with software.

I recognise, and smile ruefully to myself when I do, this exact same behviour in myself! I'm *supposed* to be more productive when I'm sitting in front of a computer but instead I wile away hours and days of my time "tweaking" it to address perceived deficiencies that have nothing to do with its ability to allow me to manipulate data in Excel or write down an idea in Word.
...

-Darwin (April 19, 2007, 06:21 PM)

Yup, every now and then I catch myself endlessly "tweaking" something that I rarely, if ever, use. I guess that's something that comes when you sit in front of a computer all day... Other than:

A. Those Apple commercials have always been lame.

B. However, I do hate all the bloat and crapware that comes with brand-name PCs. If I ever buy a brand-name PC/laptop, the first thing I'm going to do is format the drive and do a nice, clean install. And that's with my own discs. Not the ones that come with the bloat that's automatically installed.
...
C. Apple is all about proprietary software/hardware.
...

-Deozaan (April 19, 2007, 07:09 PM)

A. I've always hated them too... A lot of the Mac spewed PC "flaws" are just as prevalent in Macs as well.

B. I think that's what the commercial in the OP is talking about, and as much as I hate to admit it, they're exactly right. I used to work at Best Buy as a Geek, one of the services we would do, after charging an exorbitant fee of course, is uninstall a lot of the shit HP/Compaq, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba, etc. put on their computers. With a clean Windows install the customers would be better off, for the most part at least, but they'd be paying more.

But, we must recognize that this additional software would be on Macs as well, if Mac had just one thing: competition. AOL doesn't come on every computer because HP thinks everyone uses AOL, it's on every computer because AOL-Time-Warner (did they drop the AOL?) has a lot of money, and they're willing to give it to HP in exchange for exposure. It's merely to drive the price down, because unlike Macs, there's at least a semblance of choice in the PC world.

C. Yup. Also, aren't Macs horrible about backward compatibility too? Isn't that something they decry Vista about?

...
HELLO! Not everyone buys their PC off the shelf or from Dell/HP/Sony, who do install a buttload of crapware on them. I've either built or had the guy on the corner custom build my PCs since the early 90s.
...

-zridling (April 21, 2007, 06:03 AM)

That's the way to do it!

...
The primary slam was against Sony Vaio computers.

-zridling (April 27, 2007, 07:37 AM)

Yeah. As much as I'd like to be calling that guy a complete douche-bag, he's right. I'd say that it's about the same for the rest as well. Maybe not Alienware.

...
I love the way people assume that Microsoft hire inept, bumbling programmers and the really good ones code for Apple
...
why on earth would anyone assume that Microsoft are less capable than Apple?
...

-Darwin (April 27, 2007, 08:35 AM)

I understand the analogy perfectly. I think the difference here is people think computers just are. Surely the average computer user knows that people create computer software, but I get the impression they couldn't tell you much more. The average person doesn't seem to have any idea what they're actually getting when they buy a computer. I've had to explain that just because a computer has Microsoft Windows doesn't mean they'll also get Microsoft Office to glazed over eyes so many times I've lost count.

My daughter found this one today. 
...

-app103 (April 27, 2007, 09:23 AM)

HAHA!

[Hirudin]

(I almost made this into a new topic, but decided to keep it here.)

I think MS has done the PC computer world a great service by keeping all Vista discs the same! Well sorta at least there's still separate 32 and 64 bit discs.

I think Microsoft has applied it directly to the forehead* with this decision!

What this has done is flooded the market with perfectly clean, bloat-free discs! Anyone who buys more than one 32 bit or 64 bit copy of Vista has just bought themselves an additional license key with a free spare disc. I've had been using Win2K since about when ME came out, but I've yet to own a legitimate Win2K disc, I did see one once though.

During my time at Geek Squad, we NEVER had a legit WinXP CD, not one! A room full of computer nerds; NO Microsoft branded XP CDs. Not even an image of an MS branded CD of which we knew the source. We had an 8-in-1 that someone downloaded which we would use to re-install XP when the need arose. If Geek Squad can't come up with a real MS CD with which to perform clean installs, what is Joe Public to do?

NOW, when someone buys a computer from Dell, HP, what have you, they should more easily be able to come up with a Vista disc they can use to wipe the crap off the computer and start clean.

I actually have very grandiose opinions of what could arise simply from more people having clean installs of Windows, but I'll keep them to myself for now. At the very least it'll make people's computers work better, less bloat, less antiquated software, less crap. People will be happier with their (still cheap because of competition) Vista based computer. Happy people will help drive the market for better software (see, I'm sorta staying on topic).

*My suggestion as a replacement for the expression: "Hit the nail right on the head."

[Laughing Man]

The latest mac vs. pc commercial touches on something that i really think distinguishes the mac culture from windows/pc culture, and may touch a nerve with some of us real software lovers.

[ Invalid Attachment ]

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=1EbCyibkNB0

Basically the pc is "bloated from all the trial software he has installed", while the mac "comes with all the software you need".

Am i the only one who gets a real and satisfying enjoyment out of trying new software?  for some of us, it's this vast world of independent small software development and all the experimentation we can do trying new software that makes the pc/windows platform so fun.

-mouser (April 19, 2007, 01:04 AM)

I don't appreciate or enjoy half the software that comes pre-installed on a laptop when you buy it (oh and desktops though I build mine now). Most of them are just ones you eventually have to pay for and often have freeware or donationware that works even better then the pre-installed ones. So I spend the first 30 minutes uninstalling the junk. However, I do love finding and trying new software out that I find on the web and read about.

[zridling]

Anyone else noticed that Apple's ads don't mention the 111 security flaws they've patched in less than five months this year? Maybe the PC character should yell: "What about it, biatch?!"

[Darwin]

I don't appreciate or enjoy half the software that comes pre-installed on a laptop when you buy it (oh and desktops though I build mine now). Most of them are just ones you eventually have to pay for and often have freeware or donationware that works even better then the pre-installed ones. So I spend the first 30 minutes uninstalling the junk. However, I do love finding and trying new software out that I find on the web and read about.

PCDecrapifier is your friend!

[Mandork]

In fact I am embarrassed to say that of all the time I spend on computers probably only 2/3 is spent actually producing something and the rest on fiddling with software

I don't even consider myself a geek, and I have exactly the same problem.  DC doesn't help, of course!

I'm glad I haven't seen any of these commercials (who has time to watch TV?  I'm messing around with software!) because I think they would get irritating very quickly.  The only one I did see made me mad because of the stereotypes it used.

I've been a DOS/Windows user for as long as I've had a computer.  I didn't really like the old "grey box" Macs with the happy face in high school, nor did I get on with the more sophisticated ones in college, although I don't really know why.  It's all what you're used to, I guess.  That being said, all of the demos of Vista that I've seen really turn me off and I'm thinking about jumping ship to something else.  I was recently giving some guy's MacBook a jealous stare on a train, because it seemed so light and compact.  But I really enjoy fiddling, so I can't see myself buying something that is harder to fiddle with.  I also played around with the new Fedora core earlier today...they are all starting to seem more or less the same to me!

What to do?   

[wreckedcarzz]

I do have to agree with the first half of the statement...

Basically the pc is "bloated from all the trial software he has installed", while the mac "comes with all the software you need".

As I am getting a new PC tomorrow, and the thought of taking off Norton, AOL, and all the other crap that comes with it is just enough to shove me over the edge into reformatting...

Also, in response to mouser's statement...

Am i the only one who gets a real and satisfying enjoyment out of trying new software?

Dear lord no...I download stuff I know is useless to me just to see how it works, and just in case I might use it later. I LOVE massing with apps, useful or not, just to (as odd as it sounds) have fun every once in a while.

I go insane just downloading tons and tons of stuff, configuring it, trying it out and uninstalling most (if not all) within the next couple of days. I just enjoy it...strange enough

I only use Windows and Linux, I hate Apple/Mac (I only use iTunes, and its...well I am forced to use it- the only reason I do). Too limited and over-rated software.

Just my 2-cents
-Brandon

[Laughing Man]

I don't appreciate or enjoy half the software that comes pre-installed on a laptop when you buy it (oh and desktops though I build mine now). Most of them are just ones you eventually have to pay for and often have freeware or donationware that works even better then the pre-installed ones. So I spend the first 30 minutes uninstalling the junk. However, I do love finding and trying new software out that I find on the web and read about.

PCDecrapifier is your friend!

-Darwin (May 30, 2007, 03:14 PM)

Thanks, I'll remember that next time I deal with a PC with tons of trial software preloaded onto it. 

[laughinglizard]

The best summary of how I think about the Apple/PC issue was in one of Fred Langa's newsletters:

If you get the feeling I dislike Apple's marketing, you're right. The wonderful thing about personal computing is that it places enormous power in the hands of us all. Companies that pursue elitist policies--- and Apple is far and away the worst in that regard--- work against the democratization of high-technology; and also appeal to some of the basest of human instincts: "I'm better/cooler than you because I 'think different'," or some such. Apple's technology is fine, but their approach to marketing just rubs me the wrong way. It always has.

Bottom line: Apple's move to Intel is NOT for the end-user's benefit. It's solely for Apple's benefit. If your interests align with Apple's, then you'll do great with their hardware and software. But if things like "bang for the buck" or wide applicability and broad compatibility are important to you, Apple has *never* been a good choice. And I'll be very, very surprised if that changes any time soon.

I never met a computer I didn't like - though there have been several I wouldn't have minded tossing out the windows at times - and it would be a much drearier world without all the software that is written by individuals and small groups. That's creativity and problem solving on a level that Apple, Microsoft and Adobe don't, and can't, operate.
They all have great people working for them, but they aren't going to make a Ccleaner or Mouser's Screenshot Captor, things that make my life easier.

I like Linux since the interface is becoming more graphical. Mint is one I've been using lately.
Linux is growing and its great to watch.

By the way, there's a good boot loader called GAG (weird name, great software) if anyone is looking for a good one.
http://gag.sourceforge.net/

I don't know where its going, but its fascinating to watch, especially with all the computers being shipped to um, so called Third World countries where the kids take to them like water and they take them around on carts to the villages and run them on solar power.

[laughinglizard]

I only use Windows and Linux, I hate Apple/Mac (I only use iTunes, and its...well I am forced to use it- the only reason I do). Too limited and over-rated software.

This might be a good alternative:
http://www.snapfiles...com/get/yamipod.html

"YamiPod allows you to manage the content of your iPod without the need to have iTunes installed. You can copy mp3 and AAC files to/from your iPod, import and export playlists, search for songs, remove duplicates, create and edit notes and much more. The program runs completely standalone and can be copied directly to your iPod and run from there"

[Darwin]

Nice Langa quote, LaughingLizard. Like you, I find that he very succinctly expresses my feelings about Apple/Mac as well, in a way that I lack the eloquence to do myself!

[steeladept]

I like Linux since the interface is becoming more graphical. Mint is one I've been using lately.
Linux is growing and its great to watch.

-laughinglizard (June 19, 2007, 06:06 PM)

Yea, another Mint user.