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Mac OS X intimidating...

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I just went to the library at my college for the first time in a year. I immediately noticed something interesting. There was a fairly long line for all of the Windows/PC computers.(finals week) There were 9 open mac computers that no one in line wanted to use because I guess they don't want to try to use them.

What was more surprising was what I found next to the Mac computers.

IMG_0072.JPG

IMG_0075.JPG

Apparently students at my school (Georgia Tech - decent public tech school) are intimidated by Mac OS X...

I am not really saying anything with this post, just thought it was entertaining.
 
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Man...it only benefits us...

No line!
 
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Imagine if Apple wasn't the underdog we might not have all of this nice stuff for it.
 
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Well, sometimes we do get some bad apples here.

I had to do it... ;D
 

cwa107


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It's all about familiarity, not the OS. People know Windows. They also know they have work to get done and don't want to take the time out to learn to use a computer that they're not already familiar with.
 
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I have the same thing at my school. There's this separate room with Macs and it's almost always empty, which I find funny because there are so many people on campus with Macs
 
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I have the same thing at my school. There's this separate room with Macs and it's almost always empty, which I find funny because there are so many people on campus with Macs

Exactly... people with Macs are USING their own Macs while people with PC's have to use the schools because their own computers are probably crashing :)
 
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Haha, good point. I just use the lab to print the things that I used my Macbook to work on ;P
 
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I just went to the library at my college for the first time in a year. I immediately noticed something interesting. There was a fairly long line for all of the Windows/PC computers.(finals week) There were 9 open mac computers that no one in line wanted to use because I guess they don't want to try to use them.

What was more surprising was what I found next to the Mac computers.

View attachment 7470

View attachment 7471

Apparently students at my school (Georgia Tech - decent public tech school) are intimidated by Mac OS X...

I am not really saying anything with this post, just thought it was entertaining.
umm georgia tech isnt decent. its pretty badazz!!!
 
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yep... we have a comletely different room (besides the mac labs for tech ed students) that there are apple computers. almost no one goes to it, basically becuase they are scared to use a computer they arent used to... my philosophy anyway. I know alot of people here that have used mine, or have been forced to be in that lab by me that say they will buy a mac as their next comp... apple = greatness. obviously
 
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Interesting. Certainly a generation shift. When I was a kid, there was only Macs, as window had not taken off yet, and people felt imitated by like Windows 95.
 

cwa107


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Interesting. Certainly a generation shift. When I was a kid, there was only Macs, as window had not taken off yet, and people felt imitated by like Windows 95.

Same here when I was in middle school - Macs, Apple IIe, and IIgs were everywhere. Our writing lab in high school was all Macs (LC II, if I remember correctly).

By the time I was in college (95-99), Macs were similarly unused. At PennState, the labs were divided into two sections, Macs and Windows 95 machines. I remember people waiting for a spot to sit in front of a Windows box, while the Macs remained empty. Only a few adventurous souls would say "the heck with this" and go sit down at a Mac. Back in the day, they were awful. I think they were some sort of "Performa" model, running OS 8 as I recall. It would take them no less than 5 minutes to boot from cold - and once they were running, they were no speed demons. I remember preferring the Win95 machines too.
 
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I think they were some sort of "Performa" model, running OS 8 as I recall. It would take them no less than 5 minutes to boot from cold - and once they were running, they were no speed demons.
Don't blame the Macs. Blame the school's feather-bedding, Windows-centric IT drones who on purpose, less likely through ignorance, crippled the Macs.

Any Mac, running anything as simple as OS 8, especially, and that would take more than 30 or 40 seconds to boot was sabotaged by IT-types afraid of losing their jobs.
 

cwa107


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Don't blame the Macs. Blame the school's feather-bedding, Windows-centric IT drones who on purpose, less likely through ignorance, crippled the Macs.

Any Mac, running anything as simple as OS 8, especially, and that would take more than 30 or 40 seconds to boot was sabotaged by IT-types afraid of losing their jobs.

Hey, I resemble that stereotype!

But seriously, the labs were maintained by students. I'm sure they weren't optimized, but I remember staring at the screen and watching the "puzzle pieces" fitting together as they booted. I think those were called "extensions" back in the day - and there were a ton of them.

On the subject of "IT drones", I see this misconception spouted over and over again. Quite the contrary, most Windows-centric IT employees HATE Microsoft, even though it keeps them gainfully employed. I have never met a single IT person (at least at my company), having seen my Mac sitting on my desk, say a negative thing about it. More often, they're usually pretty curious and after having had a chance to touch it, usually end up buying one (at least the true enthusiasts that work in IT because they love computers). Sure, there's plenty of people who got into the field for the money, but the enthusiasts among us (I would say the majority of us), would just rather have a computer that isn't trouble-prone, regardless of the logo on it.
 
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But seriously, the labs were maintained by students. I'm sure they weren't optimized, . . .
Nothing worse than unoptimized students. Why, I remember. . . .
On the subject of "IT drones", I see this misconception spouted over and over again. Quite the contrary, most Windows-centric IT employees HATE Microsoft, even though it keeps them gainfully employed. I have never met a single IT person (at least at my company), having seen my Mac sitting on my desk, say a negative thing about it.
My experience has been the opposite, but a point, counter-point discussion on this subject could go on forever. Nothing, however, will shake my belief, formed through years of experience spanning decades in many work environments, even those of publishing, that IT departments would do anything to keep Macs out.

Edited while hoop-jumping to fix OS 9 JavaScript quotes.
 
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Don't blame the Macs. Blame the school's feather-bedding, Windows-centric IT drones who on purpose, less likely through ignorance, crippled the Macs.

Any Mac, running anything as simple as OS 8, especially, and that would take more than 30 or 40 seconds to boot was sabotaged by IT-types afraid of losing their jobs.
I agree with this 100%.
I worked for an IT Support Desk for a couple years who did exactly that. When I started, they had two Macs as test machines for support calls, since some of the users had Macs
Both of them were aged Power Mac G4's. They were running 10.3.x at the time and one only had 64MB of RAM and the other 128MB. Nobody ever quit apps, cleaned caches, installed anything properly, They were formatted as UFS, they never thought of repairing permissions or running maintenance scripts and they had a laundry list of software updates and patches that had never been installed. Yet, they all complained about how "slow" it was and how unreliable the machines were.
When I got there I made sure they both got upped to 1GB RAM each, cleaned out the junk on the HD, did all the updates and basically got all the machines up to spec. Once I did that, these old-school 450Mhz G4's ran beautifully and were more efficient and faster than many of the Dell POC systems we had at our desks. So I told that I was the "Mac Guy" at work and had to handle all of the calls for Macs from that day forward... (of which there were practically none, :) ). Still, even when they had nothing to complain about anymore, they complained anyway... but, they had to resort to the baseless, idiotic compalints like "No right-click? st00pid one-button mouse", et al.
 
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I'm one of those IT guys who want to get rid of his Macs, and it's not b/c of fear of losing my job. It's b/c Macs make up 15% of my machines and 50% of my service calls. It's b/c I've had to replace a row of memory on a year old Xserve twice while two racks of HP and Dell servers chug along, "just working". It's b/c I spend so much time at forums like these learning and applying all the tips you mentioned to my G5's and I still have $800 HP's that run Photoshop and Illustrator just as well as they do. Not to mention how whenever we plan a project/upgrade, we have to spend a lot of extra time getting the Macs to work with whatever we are doing. I just tested out a great Internet monitoring device. The techs who came in were both big Mac guys with their Macbooks. The device was incredible, except that the Macs wouldn't work with it. They never could get the Macs to work so we had to scrap it, but that didn't stop the two them from constantly making "baseless, idiotic compalints" about my pc's and Vista, even though all of those machines worked perfectly. So, scared I'm going to lose my job b/c of Macs, no. Want to quit my job b/c of Macs, yes.
 
M

MacHeadCase

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I'm one of those IT guys who want to get rid of his Macs, and it's not b/c of fear of losing my job. It's b/c Macs make up 15% of my machines and 50% of my service calls. It's b/c I've had to replace a row of memory on a year old Xserve twice while two racks of HP and Dell servers chug along, "just working". It's b/c I spend so much time at forums like these learning and applying all the tips you mentioned to my G5's and I still have $800 HP's that run Photoshop and Illustrator just as well as they do. Not to mention how whenever we plan a project/upgrade, we have to spend a lot of extra time getting the Macs to work with whatever we are doing. I just tested out a great Internet monitoring device. The techs who came in were both big Mac guys with their Macbooks. The device was incredible, except that the Macs wouldn't work with it. They never could get the Macs to work so we had to scrap it, but that didn't stop the two them from constantly making "baseless, idiotic compalints" about my pc's and Vista, even though all of those machines worked perfectly. So, scared I'm going to lose my job b/c of Macs, no. Want to quit my job b/c of Macs, yes.

As has been said many times in threads you started, stevenyc, you don't care about Macs, you don't want to learn about them or how to set them up properly, you just find them to be a nuisance and you do everything you can to make them malfunction so your boss, as you once posted, will get rid of them.

I think Brown Study's first post in this thread said it all. In fact, when I read that post of his, I was wondering when you'd put in your two cents. :)
 

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