This week, I had to make a trip to the Apple store. My iPhone began growing some “bubbles” under the screen, so they swapped one out. I had also brought back a flaky Airport Extreme, but since I only made an appt for my iPhone, they told me I’d have to make another appointment for my Airport with the “Mac” team. Frustrated, I spoke to the store manager and got in via “standby” appointment. They didn’t have an AE in house, so I had to order one and go back this weekend. The people at the Apple store were nice, but the entire thing was a cluster. The Apple Store is always so crowded and chaotic and it’s hard to find someone to help you. Luckily, it turned out ok, and I got a new iPhone and a new Airport. I wanted to post, but then I remembered what happened in the past when I posted about Apple.
I wrote a piece for OSNews some time ago called “A Month With a Mac.” If you read it, it’s not really very negative – in fact, it’s mostly positive – but I eventually decided to stick with PC, predicting, accurately, I’d add, that I’d be a Mac user by 2005, which I was.
But after a little Google’ing today, I found this thread at MacSlash. I read it today, and almost immediately, I hate Mac extremists.
In my house, in the last 2 years, we’ve owned an iBook, a Macbook Pro, a 20″ iMac, a Macbook, an iPhone, an Airport Extreme, and three iPods. We’ve purchased iLife 08, a Leopard family pack, and several Mac apps including my favorite, Transmit. We have no operational PC’s in-house. But I swear, reading this pathetic crap makes me want to burn my Mac.
What a bunch of pricks? They think I made facts up – like the error message I received. They think that the first thing you do with a review unit is break the seal. Although I mistakenly referred to 10.1 merely as “OS X,” they don’t beleive I got the discs. It’s really pretty amazing to see a decent review get such incredible responses. Genius comments like this one (where I’m apparently gay) and this one (where I’m paid by Microsoft) and this one (I don’t care what he says, he’s absolutely 100% wrong) ought to embarrass the Mac community. But instead, they stay on their own board masturbating each other and growing insanely angry about what, in essence, is a decent review. Truly, they make me hate my Mac right now and they make me hate the elitist community.
Why the Apple users are thinking to be above everything else?
One of the usual comments I hear is that “I’m so glad that my Macintosh isn’t PC”…
That’s just bull s***.
Mac is PC. It’s always been and will always be. I hate Apple for confusing people. PC stands for “Personal Computer”. It is a piece of machine which consists many different software and hardware pieces. IBM PS/2 Clone PCs are usually equiped with Windows or Linux.
I’d love to see when you buy software from store it would say something like: “Runs on Macs and Pavilions only” instead of saying “Runs on Macs and PCs”. Anyway it would be better to call games on stores Games for Windows instead of PC-DVD or PC-CD marking. I could start law suit because I bought PC game and it doesn’t work on my Apple PC.
(I would probably lose the case since usually there is this small printed text which says it needs spesific version of windows to run properly)
*Note: Pavilion is series of PCs made by HP. Just like the Mac is series of PCs made by Apple.
Yes, PC originally stood for “Personal Computer” but about 30 years ago, IBM made the first modern PC. Today, PC means compatible with the original IBM PC (distant clones).
…that your standards-compliant, multi-os-friendly, better-performing PC made you an official homosexual?
I often feel that Apple’s user base has a similar mindset to U.S. GOP-Republicans… defend the indefensible, mock grammatical mistakes, get flaky and shallow and vile, and if all that fails – outright LIE! Lie like your stock price depends on it (cause it does), and if you get caught lying then gloat about how “pretty” and “cute” your Mac is (which I think is ugly and plain). I’ve hated Macs ever since I was forced to admin an office of 20+ machines (mostly Macs). They’re just not for me, which is fine – some people really like them, I can understand that. But don’t even try to lie to me about performance (former Gov’t comp scientist, I know some shiz!) and when you start making excuses, I can smell it! Benchmarks are always biased to some degree (ex: _what_ are you benchmarking?) so numbers are irrelevant to me – what matters is performance (aka: responsiveness), stability, and compatability. ‘Eye-candy’ does not matter, designer colors do not matter, ‘uniqueness’ does not matter, glowing logos do not matter, and all the wasted time Apple takes to make their stuff ‘different’ has me wondering if they forgot the Mac is supposed to be a computer, not another stupid overpriced “multimedia center”.
But this is about the Mac community – the WORST community in the computing world. Linux zealots are usually resigned to the fact that you’re not going to switch to Linux or even give it a fair shot for that matter – so I’ve found them arrogant but accepting. Windows zealots are either mislead, Microsoft fanboys, or advocates of uubercompatability (seeing as I still run some old Dos utilities, I enjoy a bit of uubercompatability myself). But Mac users are ‘different’. They’re generally meaner (probably because they paid more for their machine), generally less experiences (especially with hardware), and worst-of-all believe themselves to be immune from viri and crashes. Sorry, but I’ve seen many-a-Macintosh show the ‘black international box of death’ or just lock-up. They ARE computers, you know… (actually made here on Earth, by mere Humans no less!)
I do have some right to complain though, I used to be a BeOS user – no platform has met my expectations since 1999. YOU ALL SUCK. (except Adam, who is apparently – to his surprise – a homosexual)
Even if PC meant “IBM PC compatible”, the Intel Macs would qualify as such…
We get it, but it now has a colloquial meaning. It’s time to move on.
PC now means a computer running Windows on BIOS.
I have the same problem with linux. Love to use it but because of the attitudes of some (particularly some ubuntu users), I’m refusing to use linux until things change. It wouldn’t take much if only the silent majority (I hope there is one) would step in and self moderate the community then all would be good, but for some reason no one seems to care.
Same with these Mac users. Its not a very good selling point if this is the sort of community you will have to deal with, your better off buying a pc then. I must say though, these are bit more nasty than what I have seen in the linux world. Guess the main problem here is a lack of rules/moderation period.
I’m not sure why its wrong to point out faults or try to discuss important issues without all this bad feelings coming into the discussion. After all, its a product and ppl should be glad that any problem will be identified and therefore (hopefully) fixed. Better for all us consumers.
But it was some what easy for me being software, all I had to do was format and install windows, not sure how I would deal with the hardware side of this situation.
Do you sell/destroy the products you own because of this?
Eh, you know, you kinda just have to ignore it. You can bet IRL, none of these big talkers would have the stones to:
(a) Talk that insultingly to someone’s face – Big bark, little dog, always.
(b) Demonstrate that they are so obsessed with a computer platform that it makes them emotional
I can’t imagine choosing a computing platform on the basis of the most extreme in a given community. A certain type of computer obsessive is often deficient in basic interpersonal skills and lacks any kind of objectivity. They also tend to have a lot of free time on their hands and so, you get posts like the ones you link to.
They are dweebs, and they have been with us since day one. And the only people they impress is the very small, pathetic community of people *just like them*. They lack any kind of credibility with people approaching some sense of normalcy.
All operating systems suck. All of them. All of them have some kind of stupid unreasonable idiocy to deal with. The trick is picking the one you can best live with. People who judge you on the basis of either your platform of choice or even your skill level, are nerds – the really bad kind. They should be pushed out of the way and into the mud.
But since I’m used to them being around (ever since the days of Apple II l33t h4x0rs vs k0mm0d0r3 k1dd13z, at least, probably much longer), I can’t really let them influence what I use.
Computing platforms are best experienced, initially, in a vacuum, so they can be objectively obsessed without legions of fanboys and detractors telling you how to feel about them.
Personally, I could probably adapt to and be productive on any platform, if I had to.
I am in the same boat as you. I’ve owned a MacBook and two iPods. I found the Apple store decent enough and I am satisfied with their products. They honored their warranty when my laptop broke with no questions.
I did have some initial problems with the MacBook purchase when I bought it online. They misquoted me, as I am a Canandian customer, so when I authorized the additional expense they recharged the ENTIRE cost; this caused my credit card to bounce. This was eventually sorted out.
I dislike the majority of Apple users. My family in-laws are Apple users. They loyally purchase the next big Apple product and love to remind me how superior their computers are. Apple users in general are very smug.
I believe this has a lot to do with Apple’s marketing. Apple provides a lot of services and uniquely renames them the Apple way. Boot camp=dual boot, file vault=encryption, Air drop=ad hoc networking, time machine=revision control, etc, etc. Apple generally dosent offer new technologies, instead they make them user friendly and market them. iPad is praised as innovative and unique but Windows was in the tablet market long before Apple. Technically speaking the OS X series is not even a operating system but a fancy desktop and windows manager. The BSD core is the OS.
I don’t hate Apple, just their users. I am writing this review on my iPod touch at this very moment. Apple makes great products albeit at a very high price. I have long since retired my MacBook and now use a dual booted Linux and Windows Box. I use my iPod touch because it is a good product and Archos Android mini tablets have yet to catch up.
Apple products are great, it is some of their users who idolize them that bother me. Apple makes things easy and for the majority of computer users that is exactly what they want.