I think part of it is just people being fanatical about a product they like. Windows lovers do it, too, but it’s not as noticeable.
A big part of it is misinterpretation. If you ask me the best way to carry 2,000 pounds of bricks in your car, I’m going to suggest you get a truck. If you ask me the best way to keep your computer from getting so many viruses, worms, and random crashes, I’m going to suggest you get a Macintosh. It’s just fitting the tool to the job, not evangelizing.
I’d never suggest that someone in an all-Windows environment at work switch to an iBook computer. That’s not practical. But someone making videos at home? Yep.
Nah, just don’t click on the damn “shoot the monkey and win!” Or open email with EXE attachments that isn’t addressed to you and comes from someone you don’t know.
Seriously. Mac’s run Unix now?
I programmed an Apple IIE to run a pneumatic gauging system in Grad school. Does that count?
Gah! That’s fuckin’ why! Everyone says, “Macs crash all the time, they have no applications, they don’t network, they don’t use mice, they only work in German, they have to be fed cat food every hour, they can’t run UNIX* ( :smack: ) yadda yadda yadda,” despite not having the slightest clue about what they’re talking about.
Quite often the Windows stipulation is not specified, and if a good answer for the question is on a Mac, I’m not gonna pretend it doesn’t exist. So what if it’s not mainstream? Should everybody only eat at McDonald’s?
This goes double for people who ask for personal help with their Windows boxes. Thankfully, XP is a lot better than previous incarnations of Windows, so it’s not as huge a problem, but if you expect me to do free tech support, you can also expect to bitch you out for having an OS you can’t use, and that I have to decipher.
I was a C= geek as a kid. It was always interesting the the 6510 was produced by MOS Technologies, the owner of which was Commodore. So every “crappy Apple II” really had a Commodore in its heart.
As it were, I still tend to believe that the C= was a much better machine (and I’m an Apple guy now). So who wants to get into a C=/Apple ][ flame war with me???
As long as you’re not an idiot, you won’t lose anything on a PC either. Floppy disks! Rewritable CDs! Flash memory drives! I hate when people blame the computer for losing something when they should have taken five seconds to drag their files onto a memory stick.
I’m from a different demographic than most people. I grew up with Macs–got a IIGS when I was seven, graduated to a Powerbook in 1994, got an iMac in 1999 or so. As soon as I got to pick out my own computer, I opted for a PC, mostly because my mom would only put $500 towards my computer and I didn’t want to spend a lot. I wound up getting an HP bundled with Windows and the highest specs the computer building menu (I bought it online) would allow. What changed about my computer experience? Almost nothing. I was able to do everything I did with a Mac, only I was able to do it faster (since the computer was faster). If I would have bought a Mac computer for the same amount (and actually, I don’t know that I could have; my computer was $1200 in 2002 and Macs start out at above that now for a full package including printer), it would have been considerably slower and had fewer features.
So some PC users do “know what they’re missing.” I agree that PCs are inferior to Macs on many levels, and that people using their computers for arty or specialized things, such as video editing, are probably better off with a Mac. However, for a casual user a Mac is overkill. I use my computer for two things: word processor and Internet portal. I probably don’t do half the things my computer is capable of. Why should I get a better machine when a lesser machine fits my specifications just fine? It’s like buying a really expensive car that can go up to 200 mph… maybe a minority of people need to go to 200 (racecar drivers?), but most people’s needs will be served just as well with a standard car, and they’ll pay a lot less.
Now, if you want to know why the iPod is decidedly inferior to other mp3 players, for reasons not having to do with price, I can help you out there…
I was neither a Commodore nor an Apple II person, but I saw an Amiga from time to time out of the corner of my eye.
The Amiga “steered” different. I never learned it and to be honest I didn’t find it intuitive, but that’s probably another way of saying that they weren’t just copycatting the Mac (or Windows) and instead had their own approach to things. Seems like it was a pretty sophisticated piece of OS for its time, too.
I thought their demise unfortunate. Both the Mac and the PC would benefit from a viable 3rd platform, and in my opinion the Amiga failed to be viable only through gross corporate mismanagement.
As to whether or not I would have ever considered dropping the Mac for an Amiga, I dunno about that. I’d have to learn my way around one before I could really answer that question, and meanwhile the Mac experience pleases me in so many ways and on so many levels.
If nothing else, it was nice to have some evangelical platform-partisans more vehement than us Mac folks around from time to time
For the same reasons many Christians are evangelical. Amiga users were the same way before that OS and hardware became so marginalized the lack of a viable parent.
They are just trying to educate and convert the great unwashed masses.
Same thing us penguin lovers are doing but it seems to me that we are having more success.
I will say, though, the the Mini is one enticing little box. Think I can get LinuxPPC to run on it?
Wanna come over here and help me beat a PowerBook into submission? I’m having an absolute bear of a time getting it to play nice with an XP box and WiFi. I have to remind it every time I turn it on that it’s supposed to be on the network, and it has had a bad case of amnesia about how to talk to a printer on the XP box. Requiring users to concoct config strings like “sudo ln -s /usr/bin/smbspool /usr/libexec/cups/backend/smb” and “smb://username:password@workgroup/server/sharename” just to print is not my idea of easy to set up. And I’m no stranger to a Unix command line. I just don’t think all aspects of Macs are as painless as people make them seem.
I think it’s that becoming an Apple customer acts as a filter. People who are willing to take that leap have to alter their mindset. The entire world of Apple is tightly controlled by the company, all the Mac accessories, software, etc. has that same ‘approved-by-Apple-sort-of-looks-the-same’ feel. Becoming a Mac user is a commitment, because mixed environments are not easy (and I’m not talking about technically) and people tend to go either one way or another.
Electric car people are the same way. In fact, buying a Mac is akin to buying an electric car. It’s better for some things, worse for others, but it’s definitely an elitist group. You’re no longer changing your oil and filling up gas every week, and you paid your premium to be able to do that.
Then there’s a certain group of people who have a very limited view of the world. People who think Hybrid cars are this great new technology that is going to save the evironment. People who think Segways or iPods are innovative and qualify as “inventions”. People who buy into homeopathic medicine or biofield adjusters. People who think QuarkXpress is actually worth more than $9 in value. People who think Photoshop is the only useable professional graphics program. People who expect the VCR to know which channel their TV is on.
I’m personally tired of hearing “Get a mac” even though 99.9% of things I do with a computer would be significantly more difficult on a Mac, not impossible, but difficult. I want a flexible mpeg4 encoder? I guess I have to go complile ‘transcode’ and use it from the commandline. My start menu on Windows is 95% full of ‘broken little utilities’ that are Windows only. My Linux works just like I expect it to, and I don’t have to go dig around Mac OS X to find where they hid this or that chunk of Unix. Suggesting that I buy a mac is silly. I want to hand pick my components from a selection, I mean I won’t buy an Dell or an HP why would I buy an Apple?
Nah, that’s just because the Mac community is less tolerant of crap than other communities. Shoddy shareware, slapdash peripherals, and lame products will not survive long, no matter how purdy they look. Apple’s harshest critics are Mac users.
Or, as I like to summarize it, “When you’re a Mac user, you expect things to be well-done, and get pissed when they aren’t.”
Too tired to read all the posts, but I think it’s because Macs are easier to use. Maybe it’s more equal now, but I think at the beginning of Macintosh this was definitely true just because I think they were more geared for personal use by new computer users while IBM was mosre aimed towards the business world and more computer savvy people. People tend to be highly loyal to things that make their life easier, especially if the competition tends to frustrate them to no end and makes them feel incapable. This is just going off my limited experience and exposure to these two systems.
History:
Macs used to have a better UI, pretty comparable now, but people adjust slowly so the general impression remains.
Current:
Macs still have a more secure, more stable less virus prone OS than Windows.
Rant:
Unix is a 1970’s operating system that is far less sophisticated than many that have followed it, why on Earth do people think it’s so good???
One interesting difference between PC users and Mac users is the attitude towards their platform.
PC user: “Yeah, I use Windows. It sucks, but what are you going to do? If I ever meet Bill Gates I’m going to ram dollar bills up his ass until they come out of his ears.”
Mac user: Yeah, I use MacOS! It rules! If I ever meet Steve Jobs I’m going to offer him free blowjobs until the end of time!"
Funnily, PC users don’t actually, in my experience, seem to actively like PCs at all.
Mac users are like Volvo owners…they know they have a good product, but know they will always be in the minority. Nothing wrong with that and they should all proudly wear their straw hats while driving, or computing.
For you youngin’s, there used to be BETA vs VHS tape recorders. BETA was far superior. It died.
Still, I was also one who went from Commodore to Apple IIc, to…Bill Gates.
Plus you can buy an used non-brand computer for $20 at Goodwill and run Windows. You ain’t gonna find a generic Mac there for the same price.
Hmm. The old Apple ][ vs. Commodore 64 argument. I still have one of each stashed away (and an Apple /// and an Amiga 500 and an Atari 800). One of these days I’ll have to pull all those dinosaurs out and see if any of them will still boot.
Regarding the current Macs vs. the current Windows boxes, I just recently made the switch to Mac OS X, and the biggest difference is that things just seem to work. Here are a few examples:
[ul]
[li]I have a bunch of miscellaneous Windows machines at home. My Windows 2000 machine won’t talk to my wife’s Windows 98 machine on the network, but the Mac talks happily to both.[/li][li]It took almost an hour of futzing around and loading drivers to get my Logitech 2-button optical mouse with scroll wheel to work on the Windows 2000 notebook computer. I plugged it into the Mac and it just worked. No “detecting new hardware” messages. No “go find a CD-ROM” messages. And this is a “Windows” mouse on a Macintosh. It just worked.[/li][li]I have an oddball poster printer with a parallel interface. I plugged it into the Mac through a parallel to USB converter. No dialogs, no confusion. It just worked. At 11x17. With no configuration at all.[/li][li]It took over an hour to get my wife’s digital camera working on her Windows machine. I plugged it into the Mac and iPhoto said, “Here are a bunch of pictures. You want them?”[/li][li]It was a serious pain in the butt getting Internet Explorer on WinXP to recognize that I wanted email links to fire up Poco Mail instead of Microsoft Exchange. The Mac seems happy with whatever default program I pick.[/li][/ul]
The big difference is that I can stop fussing with the damned machine all the time to force it into submission and spend my time working (or playing) on what I want to be doing.
