"Macs Are Better" Mentalities

[muddocktor]

Yeah this is from a few pages back...

I agree to a point. There is definitely an advantage to knowing what hardware to develop for instead of developing for everything.

The only problem I have with this argument though is that the Linux crowd does a good job with hardware support while retaining stability.... and I think if MS was to shed Windows and start with something brand new, they wouldn't have any problems. Good luck convincing them to do that though .

After owning a Mini for about a week or so, I will say that Jobs really needs to emphasize going to a software oriented company and have the hardware sales as secondary. My impressions on the MIni are this so far:

Leopard is really nice, but it is a bit different from Windows and takes a bit of relearning on how programs are added to the OS and where it hides the files and dependencies at. Like Tyranos said, some kind of global uninstaller would be nice for some programs that don't totally uninstall by dragging it to the trash from the applications folder.

On the hardware side, their design on the Mini is both clever and crappy. They did a good job of shoehorning everything into a small package. But this machine should have been refreshed with an updated chipset and processor series at least a year ago, along with the updates done to the notebooks they sell. Also, while cooling is adequate for the Mini, their fan profile leans more toward quiet running than keeping your processor cool while running processor intensive apps and as a result, the processor runs unnecessarily hot with their fan profile. Blackstar gave me a link to smc fan control which worked around that poor fan profile for me. They also made it way to hard for the normal everyday people to upgrade things such as the ram or install a bigger hard drive or upgrade the optical drive. That's just a predatory practice to make their customers pay through the nose for an upgrade by only being able to go to them for the upgrade or lose their warrantee. And from what I understand (I might be wrong on this though), for an optical drive upgrade you have to buy a drive with special Apple firmware written to it instead of using a standard drive. And that brings me to my final hate about their configuration options. If you want a base Mini with the 1.83 GHz processor, you can't get a DVD burner built in or even have it offered as an option. You have to pony up $200 more money and pay for a little faster processor in order to get a DVD burner in the machine. For what you get in hardware, you are paying at least $200 more than what it should be selling for. But all in all, I'm not dissatisfied with my Mini.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

I actually like Jobs, he gets on a stage to show off a new product, that takes balls.

.

who doesnt go on stage? they all do.... why most people dont like him is because he is an a**hole in real life, he has the "i am better then the world" attitude and shuns those who he thinks are any less then him, it all shows in the apple commercials (which yes at some point he has seen / approved/ suggested)

 

[Tyranos]

Be careful if you ever buy a Lacie mini drive, which the Mac Mini stacks on top of. The Lacie cooks the Mac Mini like eggs on a skillet. The intense heat from the Lacie plus bad cooling solution equals at least a dead Mac Mini hdd over time.

After owning a Mini for about a week or so, I will say that Jobs really needs to emphasize going to a software oriented company and have the hardware sales as secondary. My impressions on the MIni are this so far:

Leopard is really nice, but it is a bit different from Windows and takes a bit of relearning on how programs are added to the OS and where it hides the files and dependencies at. Like Tyranos said, some kind of global uninstaller would be nice for some programs that don't totally uninstall by dragging it to the trash from the applications folder.

On the hardware side, their design on the Mini is both clever and crappy. They did a good job of shoehorning everything into a small package. But this machine should have been refreshed with an updated chipset and processor series at least a year ago, along with the updates done to the notebooks they sell. Also, while cooling is adequate for the Mini, their fan profile leans more toward quiet running than keeping your processor cool while running processor intensive apps and as a result, the processor runs unnecessarily hot with their fan profile. Blackstar gave me a link to smc fan control which worked around that poor fan profile for me. They also made it way to hard for the normal everyday people to upgrade things such as the ram or install a bigger hard drive or upgrade the optical drive. That's just a predatory practice to make their customers pay through the nose for an upgrade by only being able to go to them for the upgrade or lose their warrantee. And from what I understand (I might be wrong on this though), for an optical drive upgrade you have to buy a drive with special Apple firmware written to it instead of using a standard drive. And that brings me to my final hate about their configuration options. If you want a base Mini with the 1.83 GHz processor, you can't get a DVD burner built in or even have it offered as an option. You have to pony up $200 more money and pay for a little faster processor in order to get a DVD burner in the machine. For what you get in hardware, you are paying at least $200 more than what it should be selling for. But all in all, I'm not dissatisfied with my Mini.

 

[dropadrop]

I've used Microsoft operating systems for as long as I can remember. I used to earn pocket money installing MS DOS over 20 years ago, used several different MS DOS versions on my home computer, every version of Windows apart from Vista. I worked in very Windows oriented helpdesks for over 5 years, and have maintained countless Windows servers.

About 2 1/2 years ago I switched to a new job where I got a G4 powerbook and a desktop pc. It took me a few weeks to really get to grips with the mac, but luckily I always had somebody around rather then banging my head on the wall. When the Macbook Pro's came out my notebook was switched in to one of them. Soon I noticed I had not used the pc for months. I finally sold my pimped out pc from home and got an iMac.

Now I do have a windows virtual running under VMware Fusion, but only use it when I have an application I can't use otherwise. I would not even dream of reinstalling Windows as my primary operating system. The desktop pc currently runs Linux.

So what caused the change? I don't agree with all of the mac way's of doing things, but most of the time when I was wondering how something was done on the mac it was like "oh yes of course". The only reason it was hard was that my old way of thinking was more complicated. I feel like everything takes less clicks and effort. It's not any more stable then a pc, maby even less (I don't remember when I last had a BSOD, but Leopard before the second update used to crash now and then. Luckily it came out pretty soon after the OS was released), but the usability is miles ahead.

I don't consider myself to be a fan boy, but the more I use OS X the more using Windows annoys me. And it's not because I don't know how to use Windows. I used Linux in servers for years, but never felt it was a nice desktop OS. These day's I feel even linux has matured so it (on minimum) matches Windows in usability. Hopefully Microsoft do something different for their next Windows release.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

People dont like change, why many windows people dont like OSX or linux, and vice versa, give something time and you will adapt, i had OSX for ... a year and just didnt like it, found it less productive so i stuck with windows.

 

[jhanby]

In the great words of the mac guys on Chuck

We are computer artists

This sums up the whole mac vs. PC arguement. I see Mac users as poeple who would rather look at there computer and its OS and marvel at its beauty. Wereas some PC users like looking at the beauty, most would prefer to use its functionality and as just about everybody uses windows, it makes it a lot easier.

 

[dropadrop]

In the great words of the mac guys on Chuck


This sums up the whole mac vs. PC arguement. I see Mac users as poeple who would rather look at there computer and its OS and marvel at its beauty. Wereas some PC users like looking at the beauty, most would prefer to use its functionality and as just about everybody uses windows, it makes it a lot easier.

Making generalizations like that does not put you any higher then mac fanboi's laughing at PC users.

 

[Captain Newbie]

who doesnt go on stage? they all do.... why most people dont like him is because he is an a**hole in real life, he has the "i am better then the world" attitude and shuns those who he thinks are any less then him, it all shows in the apple commercials (which yes at some point he has seen / approved/ suggested)

The (stage) difference between Gates and Jobs is that Jobs is a dynamic, engaging speaker, and Gates is not.

Calling Mac or Windows users artists—either one—is inaccurate. None of them are artists unless they develop for their platform. Period.

The big difference in software for the two "mainstream" platforms is that the developers for Mac OS are all talented and motivated to write for that platform, while the vast majority of Windows software (pay- or freeware, doesn't matter) is, for lack of a better description, crap.

The inadequacies of Windows are partially a function of retarded third-party developers who simply don't do their jobs to their full potential. (this is why Windows "has to have" backwards compatibility—incompetent third-party devs combined with Microsoft management that doesn't understand that if the underlying basis of a system is bad to begin with then it's useless to try to fix it incrementally.)

When you think about it, it's a miracle it (Win32) works at all. Until very recently it had the Win16 compatibility layer grafted on to it, and even without that there are odds, ends, thunks, and undocumented kludges and hacks used to make Microsoft's applications (themselves not always well-written) work.

Mac OS X benefits from a completely new API.

 

[TheCheat]

I eat apples for breakfast!


I <3 windoez and could care less about macs, their fan boys, their overpriced hardware, their retarded commercials, and those stupid apple stickers on cars.

Try something before you bash it.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^ dont assume something you dont know, maybe they have tried it, maybe they havent.

i tried it many times over many years, and i can say

I <3 windoez and could care less about macs, their fan boys, their overpriced hardware, their retarded commercials, and those stupid apple stickers on cars.

 

[Mathis]

I don't really support a company that is obnoxiously self-absorbed or the zombies that it recruits that just so happen to agree with the same mentality about multiple other things in life like their tripple crapilate at Star****s coffee.

I am a big coffee drinker, and I think that Starbucks tastes like burnt crap. People drink it because it is overpriced and yuppy/trendy and they care more about being seen with a Starbuck's cup in their hand on the way to work, then actually their own enjoyment. Then they sit in the shop with their macbook out so that everyone can see them.

We don't really need to argue with these types of people though, because they know that they are empty inside just as much as we do.

However, there are many people who actually enjoy these things without being prompted by the examples of others that they wish to emulate. Those are the people I think have a right to support these types of products/companies, and I wouldn't mind hearing their honest opinion.

But the next time I hear some mac user giving me the "ewwwww" noise and rolling their eyes when I tell them that I am really into PCs then I will throw their macbook against the wall as hard as I can. Then we can check together to see how amazing the damn thing is after that.

Many Mac users have a tendency to think that they are automatically in the "know" because they had the forsight just to purchase an Apple product. No matter my experience with hardware or programming, they automatically know better than I do. Then they can justify their claims because Apple makes such good products that you don't even actually have to know how to tinker with them. But that is what I like to do, and there we are divided, but Apple is by no means superior because of this.

It's almost like the argument between automatic and manual transmissions in sports cars. If I was a moron, I would buy a 50 grand sportscar with an automatic transmission, because it "just works". But if I was an informed enthusiast, then I would by the manual transmission, because my input into the equation is worthy, and I can make the hardware perform better through my own experience-backed actions.

 

[G3F0RC3<>R4D30N]

I don't really support a company that is obnoxiously self-absorbed or the zombies that it recruits that just so happen to agree with the same mentality about multiple other things in life like their tripple crapilate at Star****s coffee.

I am a big coffee drinker, and I think that Starbucks tastes like burnt crap. People drink it because it is overpriced and yuppy/trendy and they care more about being seen with a Starbuck's cup in their hand on the way to work, then actually their own enjoyment. Then they sit in the shop with their macbook out so that everyone can see them.

We don't really need to argue with these types of people though, because they know that they are empty inside just as much as we do.

However, there are many people who actually enjoy these things without being prompted by the examples of others that they wish to emulate. Those are the people I think have a right to support these types of products/companies, and I wouldn't mind hearing their honest opinion.

But the next time I hear some mac user giving me the "ewwwww" noise and rolling their eyes when I tell them that I am really into PCs then I will throw their macbook against the wall as hard as I can. Then we can check together to see how amazing the damn thing is after that.

Many Mac users have a tendency to think that they are automatically in the "know" because they had the forsight just to purchase an Apple product. No matter my experience with hardware or programming, they automatically know better than I do. Then they can justify their claims because Apple makes such good products that you don't even actually have to know how to tinker with them. But that is what I like to do, and there we are divided, but Apple is by no means superior because of this.

It's almost like the argument between automatic and manual transmissions in sports cars. If I was a moron, I would buy a 50 grand sportscar with an automatic transmission, because it "just works". But if I was an informed enthusiast, then I would by the manual transmission, because my input into the equation is worthy, and I can make the hardware perform better through my own experience-backed actions.

I am in that same boat... But Macs are pretty decent, just a slightly 'dumbed' interface.... I like Starbuck's Double Chocolate Chip Frappucinos, because they taste like Nesquik chocolate milk mix and remind me of my childhood but I don't drink anything other than that from there. I usually go to a different coffee shop that is locally owned and operated and use my Dell Inspiron 1520 and drink what's called "The Commonwealth" and it's Espresso, Vanilla ice cream, Hershey's cocoa, and a slight amount of milk. And how about a car with both auto and manual capability with paddle shifters?

Macs marketing scheme is a little stupid, after all they are not a bastion of security...

 

[technoViking]

I like the feel and look of macs but if it can't support gaming, i won't ever switch.
If it had the same support for games I would be a mac user.