# I HATE Macs with a blinding passion!!!!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [January 27, 2004, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232 "2004-01-27T00:22:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Ryle\_Dup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Ryle\_Dup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryle_Dup)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/61 "2004-01-29T06:43:04Z")

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> [@yosemitebabe](#):
>
> Ehhh…perhaps a bit smug, but still, quite true. Sorry, but it _is_ true. I haven’t updated for viruses on my Mac since . . . well, forever, it seems like.

I don’t even _have_ anti-virus software and I’ve never gotten a virus (that I know of, I scan sometimes when my computer is acting weird, but never find any, usually fixes itself.)

> [@AudreyK](#):
>
> Ryle Dup, you realize there’s a difference between “Macs can’t run this program that does X” and “Macs can’t do X”, right? And that just because a Mac user don’t use the same program you use to accomplish X, that doing X on a Mac doesn’t render an inferior result?

I realize it. But it’s just more convenient to do things on a PC, because its the standard in computers.

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**Author:** ![Torgo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@Torgo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torgo)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/62 "2004-01-29T06:49:20Z")

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Mac Davis’ ears are burning right now.

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**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/63 "2004-01-29T07:35:25Z")

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> [@Ryle Dup](#):
>
> But it’s just more convenient to do things on a PC, because its the standard in computers.

For some people, perhaps, but I also think that complacency and—dare I say—“propoganda” have some part in that. Enough people keep repeating that Macs are so much more “inconvenient” and everyone believes it. But not too many of these people have both systems at their fingertips so they don’t really know what they’re talking about first-hand.

For instance, I have both Mac and PC, side-by-side. (The PC is newer and has a higher processor speed, by the way.) They share a monitor and keyboard (KVM switch). Switching over to the PC is as easy and flipping a switch (well, figuratively). So why is it that I haven’t turned on my PC for at least a month now? It hasn’t been “inconvenient” at all to use my Mac, even though I have easy access to a PC, whenever my Mac proves to be “inconvenient.”

I am not saying that I’ve never need to use my PC, I’m just saying that for many Mac users, their lives are not filled with “inconvenience.”

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**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/64 "2004-01-29T14:27:59Z")

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> [@Ryle Dup](#):
>
> I don’t even _have_ anti-virus software and I’ve never gotten a virus (that I know of, I scan sometimes when my computer is acting weird, but never find any, usually fixes itself.)

I’ve had one MS-box or another for nearly fifteen years and only had one virus ever. That was about ten years ago.

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**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/65 "2004-01-29T15:40:09Z")

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[hj]  
Just a small thing that has been gnawing at me, **yosemitebabe**. You keep mentioning the Garageband app is priced at “the equivalent of $12.50” if you split the full package price between the four components. But can it actually be purchased stand-alone? Because I just get this feeling that if I _can’t avoid_ buying the whole package, then the price is that of the whole package. Of course, if I actually _use_ the whole package it’s different…  
[/hj]

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**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/66 "2004-01-30T00:53:17Z")

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> [@Ryle Dup](#):
>
> I realize it. But it’s just more convenient to do things on a PC, because its the standard in computers.

Except it’s not often that the standard matters. It would be easier to discuss this if we weren’t talking about abstract “things” and were instead naming specific tasks, but generally there isn’t a lot of things I do on my Mac that are an issue _because_ they’re done on a Mac.

I acknowledge that when Macs and PCs have to work together there are sometime problems achieving peaceful coexistence. Or, as this OP has shown, that when PC users have to use a Mac (and vice-versa) frustrations develop. But it’s unfair to take these difficulties as evidence that “it’s more convenient to use a PC”. It is greater evidence of one’s biases, expectations, preferences, and capacity to adapt.

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**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/67 "2004-01-30T01:31:34Z")

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I work every day with Sun workstations, Windows 2000 PCs, and Macs. By **Ryle Dup’s** logic, I must be doing something wrong, since I’m not always using the “standard” of Windows. :rolleyes: 😉

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2004, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-macs-with-a-blinding-passion/226232/68 "2004-01-30T16:57:26Z")

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[retry – first version of this post got eaten by the “Database Error gremlins”]

I appreciate **mambozzy’s** wording – I much prefer to see threads about someone hating Macs with a blinding passion (subjective, no assertion of intrinsic merit) rather than threads about how Macs suck (pretentions to objectivity).

Fortunately for you, you generally have a choice. With rare exceptions, you do not have to use a Mac if you prefer a PC.

Choice – and competition – is good. Apple would probably not be producing anything akin to the Macintosh of today if IBM had not decided to enter the personal computing field in the late 70s. And the PC would not be today’s PC if Apple had never gone beyond the Apple II and had died out, either.

So even if you nurture an intense dislike for the Macintosh, be thankful that it’s been around to generate some pointed comparisons, for otherwise you might be messing with DIP switches and reinstalling your (8-bit, character-based graphics) operating system every time you added or removed a peripheral device. The menus and commands in your different programs would follow no unifying conventions, and you probably wouldn’t even be able to cut and paste between different programs. And you’d have twelve fonts, counting **bold** and _italic_ as different fonts.

It’s inversely true for the Mac, too. I seriously doubt that anything Macintosh would be running at frequencies measured in gigahertz if Apple had been the only show in town, and lots of inferior architecture (NuBus, ADB, LocalTalk networking) would still probably be in use if competition hadn’t made the shortcomings apparent.

[it was better written the first time around, dang it]

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