I am scarred for life and will never look at an iBook in the same way thanks to you, Earthling. All thanks to you.
If you visit Dubai I will let you have a play with mine (powerbook).
If you promise to treat it very gently and not bang its little keys.
What’s more moronic? Posting a moronic rant or responding to the moronic rant? I’d really like to know.
Marc
Sure.
But why are Mac fans entitled to a passion for their platform, while Windows users are not? I consider Windows XP and an Intel/AMD system to be far superior to an equivalently-priced Mac system, for my needs. So why am I not allowed to enjoy my computer? Why am I not allowed to be upset at silly “Make the switch” Mac commercials, or untrue claims about Mac capabilities?
Simple. Posting a moronic rant. Or maybe we can just say it’s responding to the response of a moronic post, and call it even? 
I don’t think anyone in this thread has even implied that Windows users aren’t allowed to have passion for their system, Spoofe. Heck, so far, no ones even slipped in with a ‘Oh yeah? Well, Windows sucks!’ attitude, thankfully. As I said in my first post in this thread, I think these arguments are stupid, and yes, I know Mac users can be just as guilty of these things as anyone else. But so far, in this thread, hasn’t happened yet.
The OP, based on the topic title, the tone and content of the post, and the fact that it was placed in the Pit, was clearly not a ‘I’m so happy with my system! Check out these specs!’ post. It clearly wasn’t about the commercials, either, despite the tagged on final sentence (and for the record, even though I’m a Mac user, I agree that the ‘Switch’ campaign is pretty lame; if the OP was truly about that, you probably wouldn’t see me posting here). The OP is clearly a ‘Macs suck, and you’re idiots for paying for them! Why don’t you morons try a REAL computer!?’ post. And yeah, I take the implication personally, and I’m gonna respond to it.
Bzzzt. Wrong.
In the OP, I was pointing out that Mac’s are not “king of the hill” anymore in what was one of its traditional strongholds.
If you get more out of it than that, you’re assuming too much.
Do I hate Mac’s? Nope. That 17" Powerbook looks suh-weet. Would I buy one? No bloody way. If you have money to burn though, knock yourself it. Whatever floats your boat.
Shitty rant: Absolutely. As far as rants go, it sucked. I didn’t intend it to be a work of art.
Thanks for letting me know that what I actually posted isn’t what I was really thinking, Anamorphic. You should consider going on tour with those mind-reading talents of yours.
Oh wait a second. Hold that thought. You’re wrong. It is what I was thinking. Those stupid Mac commercials really do/did annoy me that much.
You know what though? The funny thing is, the commercials I saw actually made the Mac owners look like the retards. I don’t know why I let it annoy me as much as it did.
<drooling idiot #1> Windoze is waaaay too complicated for meee. That is why I bought a Mac. Yay for meee![sub]or something along those lines…[/sub]
If you’re happy with your computer and it does everything you want it to, good for you. Don’t take a rant in the pit personally. It’s really not worth it.
[sub]FWIW: My PC (A meager 2 year old, 1.2Ghz TBird) would get its ass handed to it in most apps by the newest top end Macs. I don’t care, but then again it isn’t worth almost $4K either.[/sub]
And, yet, people are jumping all over the OP for doing just that. I find it curious.
I disagree. I read it to be “After all this time of Mac-users claiming their systems are better for such-and-such, now we have concrete evidence!” Let’s face it: Prior to the recent glut of tests that put PC’s over the top compared to equivalently-priced Macs, Apple kept spouting “Graphics, graphics, graphics” as part of its mantra (and it added “Video, video, video” a year or two ago).
Frankly, I’ve been utterly apathetic in the argument. Even before these recent comparisons came out - when all the evidence showed that Macs could pull a Gaussian blur faster than a PC, for instance - I still considered a PC to be the better tool for my needs. Heck, even in the days of Win98, I thought that.
You know what, bernse? You’re right. I shouldn’t have interpreted your post quite so much. I apologize for that. I’m going to blame the kidney stone painfully making its way though my body. 
I still say that the very fact that you choose to post this in the Pit, and the fact that your post didn’t mention the commercials at all until the final sentence, a sentence which, to my reading, really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the rest of the post, gave a very strong indication of contempt, a very strong indication that you were implying that we must be idiots for buying Macs. If you say that wasn’t what you meant at all, then I’ll accept that, and apologize.
And you’re also right that I probably took it too personally.
I used to think Macs were the cat’s ass, and I mean that in a good way. I argued with my friends at school that Macs were better at such and so, putting the OS in ROM was a stroke of genius, etc etc etc.
Then I got a Mac and changed my mind. Hoo boy. Someone must have had a laugh when they named that machine “Performa”. If it had gone one day without locking up at least five times, I would have danced in the street singing “Hallelujah!” But that only ever happened on days when I didn’t turn it on.
So go ahead and trumpet your love for all things Macintosh. You find the MacOS easier to use than Windows. You like the included apps. You like the available apps. You like the fact that OSX is based on a solid Unixoid core with a decent and stable interface, something the real Unixoid operating systems have yet to accomplish.
But–and I believe this is the point of the OP–you do not prefer Macs because they perform better. If you’re shopping for performance, you should be getting a PC; just like if you’re shopping for cargo space, you should be getting a van instead of a sports car. Of course, there are many factors in choosing a car besides cargo space, and if you think the others are more important, then go for it.
You know, we’ve covered the actual content of those “Switch” ads many times before. They aren’t just “dumb” people dribbling on about how they couldn’t get their PC to work. I linked to all of the ads in a previous thread (and don’t feel like doing it again, but you can find them on Apple.com). There were a variety of people in the ads—the Windows LAN administrator, some kid who studies C++ and used to hate Macs, Cello player Yo-Yo Ma, and some ultra geeky Unix guy who now thinks OS X is “the bomb”. There was also the guy who runs his whole business running Macs (he makes umbrellas—the only umbrella manufacturer in the US, I believe). There were lawyers, college professors—not drooling idiots, but people who had specific tasks they wanted to get done. They were happy to describe how the Mac (and often, specifically OS X) helped them get it done. So if we’re going to describe the ads, let’s be accurate about it, OK? Not all the ads were like the one with the stoned girl (who makes so many male hearts go pitter-pat) saying “beep beep beep beep”. There were more than a few reasonably intelligent people in those ads. Perhaps a few that were even as (or more) tech-savvy than some of you here.
As much as some of you might not want to admit this, I do think that Stoid touched upon an important detail—Mac users are in the vast minority. We are an insigificant speck compared to PC users. There is a different dynamic going on, and you all know it. We live in a sea of Windows-centric ads, Windows-centric things, (not to mention the Gateway ad bashing the iMac), and yet we manage to cope without spontaniously combusting about it. But yet it is apparently so unbearable to some of you to occasionally have to cast your eyes upon Yo-Yo Ma saying how he loves his Mac? Or to hear some computer geek say, “OS X is the bomb”? That’s so unbearable?
Do the Mac fans here rant and rave all the time because we are assaulted by PC/Windows-centric stuff at every turn? Do we? Or do we just cope and remain happy with our computer of choice? Isn’t there something unseemly about a member of the vast majority ranting and raving about something that the insiginficant speck does? About some silly ads that the insigificant speck puts out? Because that’s what this is, you know. We are nothing to you. The tiniest of minorities. But you still get your knickers in a twist. I don’t get it.
Understood. Dismissed as irrelevent (heck, we still have people who prefer their Commodore 64’s, for crying out loud), but understood.
About as unbearable as “If it doesn’t get all over the place…” commercials for Carl’s Jr. I don’t disagree with the actual ads, I don’t think the people in them are necessarily drooling idiots (though just because someone’s a lawyer, that doesn’t mean he or she isn’t a drooling idiot :D). I just think the actual campaign is silly… and, frankly, five years too late.
About as much as Windows fans do, though I doubt either group is unified in its behavior.
No.
Although there’s something unseemly about someone trying to play the victim card. Want me to fetch my violin?
Linux user chiming in. I’m addicted to notebooks, but Wintel notebooks just absolutely blow.The Powerbooks the sweet spots that no Wintel manfacturer has even come close to. They’re either cheap feeling underpowered little peices of shit or cheap feeling bricks with sorry-ass battery life. Granted, Apple is falling waaay behind in performance on the desktop, and needs to get a G5 out like now. But in my small segment of the market, Apple totally fucking stomps.
I covet a 12". If I had the cash to spare, I’d have one already. In fact, I may very well wangle my student loans to get one when I start grad school.
I’ll admit to a bias against Microsoft, but I resent having to pay for an OS that I’ll never use whenever I buy a new (notebook) computer.
Question for the Mac people that I’ve never seen directly addressed (I probably haven’t looked hard enough): When running OSX, is it possible to switch from Aqua to a more OS9-style theme? Cutesy just doesn’t do it for me.
12" Powerbook, smartass.
I’ve told you once.
“No you haven’t.”
Yes I have.
“No you haven’t!”
No, the OP is right. I’m a PC user. I used a mac once about 10 years ago. And I hate all mac users.
[sub]because I really want one of those sweet G4s with the wide monitors, and I can’t afford it, you bastards![/sub]
I don’t want to switch, I just want to expand.
I use both, for many many years.
As an OS-X skeptic, I thought this was quite funny:
http://www.fandango.net/switched.mov
I can remember back to the last time the PC platform had a significantly faster processor for a fairly protracted period of time. There were three main arguments people gave against getting a Mac: more expensive, slower, and less software available. Back then, Mac geeks would counterargue that we had better software (and didn’t envy PC users their crappy DOS or Windows 3.x software even if they did have a lot of it), and expense was countered with “you get what you pay for” to a major extent, but performance was a sore point.
With the advent of the PowerPC chip, the Mac was no longer slower, and periodically jumped into the lead. After several years of eating Intel dust, you’re damn right we bragged a bit, and with the coming of the G3 chip it was a pretty substantial lead for awhile.
But just as very few Mac users ditched their Quadras to buy 486 PCs in order to get the extra performance, there weren’t many PC users ditching their Pentium II boxes just for the extra processing speed of a G3 PowerMac.
Now, thanks in large part to the intense competition between Intel and AMD, the Athlon or P4 powered PC has us trailing behind once again. Even applications for which the Mac seems to get disproportionate performance such as Photoshop will now run faster on a top-end PC.
Again, though, there aren’t many Mac users switching as a result of the performance gap. The PC platform has come admirable miles since the days of Windows 3.1, let alone DOS, and there is less room to say that there are dozens of important programs that you can’t run on a PC, but it is still a different platform and a different world than the Macintosh world. Many of us would rather use a Mac at twice the cost and half the speed (and some would rather use a Mac at 10 times the cost and a tenth the speed) because we like the Mac’s behavior.
I don’t doubt that there are PC users with a similarly strong preference for the Windows environment. I’ll be honest – in the days of DOS, I definitely did consider the superiority of the Mac platform to be an objective truth and not a debatable assertion (let alone a matter of taste) – but I would not make that claim today.
What I would say is that the presence of the Mac has spurred the development of the PC and vice versa. Apple would be no improvement over Microsoft if there were no Microsoft (and therefore no Windows) to prevent Apple from being a monopoly; both companies have tendencies best kept in check by the fact that users have a choice.
Oh, bullshit. No “victim card”, just the unvarnished truth. You see “victim card” for reasons of your own.
Bottom line is, you 90+% are bugged by what the 3 - 8% is doing and saying. Good grief. And yes, it is unseemly in my opinion. Why do you care? We are a speck of insignificance in the computing world. We obviously are no threat to the Windows majority. But I’ve never gotten a reasonable explanation about why you care. Seriously.
And every single rant in the Pit, on any subject, has it’s audience located here. Does that mean one should only rant about what is here?
Damned near everywhere. In chat rooms. On messageboards. They make webpages; they contribute to webpages. They exist in real life. You meet them in the computer lab. You meet them in class. You see them at work. They send you FWD’s listing the top ten reasons why Macs are better than PCs. I don’t believe you’ve really never encountered many of them.
Because a large amount of that 8% has no qualms about spreading misinformation or flying off the handle in support of their platform of choice.