02-16-2006, 04:32 PM

Why are we mac users so in love and passionate with apple? what nerves in our brain are twitched? what eye candy drives us to hold our stance in love and war for mac? What social behaviors are associated with our interest in mac?
Why do we feel so happy to be the "elite" desktop computer users? Are we all clean people? Are we ok?
comments/ suggestions/ dissertations on this matter are welcomed? :p

02-16-2006, 05:51 PM

My random (drunken) general thoughts on mac users:
-alternative
-liberal (not necessarily in the american politicized sense)
-free-thinkers
-appreciative of quality and thoughtful design
-openness

Whether these behaviors lead to mac-usage or whether they are enforced/induced by mac-usage is another question though

02-16-2006, 06:12 PM

Creative
Likes simplicity
Likes Power
Likes Control
etc.

02-17-2006, 10:55 AM

The Mac fanboys:
See having a Mac as part of their "cool" image, which often also includes driving a VW, drinking Starbucks coffee, and never being seen in public without an iPod. True consumers of marketing.

Other Mac users:
Just like using OS X.

Geeks:
Like using as many operating systems as possible: Windows, OS X, Linux, Unix, BSD, Amiga, OS/2, Solaris, etc.

02-18-2006, 12:43 AM

My number one reason is I break Windows daily that means every version from 95 to xp. Where I might break something in MacOS X once a month. Secondly is that everything just works and most problems are easy to fix. Thirdly when new OS revisions come out there are new features that seem nice the 2-5 months later I wonder what I did before they were there.

02-19-2006, 10:27 AM

Well actually I like my mac because it works period. Out of the box and I am up and running in minutes. Also I am a sucker for the powerbook and old ipod packaging.

Actually dont drink startbucks but do drive audi TT, VWR32, mercedes E class and my new huny will be my aston.

I but technology every month. As my father said if you have got it spend it you cant take it to the gave with you.

I also own the entire colllection of apple products. Not that I use them for anything other then web browsing, email and itunes but it goes with eveything.

02-19-2006, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by timswim78

Other Mac users:
Just like using OS X.

Without being a fanboy, there is more about Apple than just OS X. It's the only computer company that initiated the home computer business, and still builds it's own computer AND OS/software, and was there from the beginning. That simply is cool.
There definitely is also a certain "cool" factor that atracts me (and others) to Apple, comming from the sleek design for the hardware as well as for the software, but I do not drive a VW nor do I drink Starbucks coffee. And I don't praise the holy Mac nor is Steve Jobs my prophet. :cool:

Thinking in stereotypes is definitely a stupid thing...

02-19-2006, 04:32 PM

why, i like know i can go to one store and it will have all the Tech i could ever want

(well maybe it they had some Cell Phones, but i'll a an iTunes Cell Phone this summer)

02-19-2006, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by timswim78

The Mac fanboys:
See having a Mac as part of their "cool" image, which often also includes driving a VW, drinking Starbucks coffee, and never being seen in public without an iPod. True consumers of marketing.

So true.

02-19-2006, 06:35 PM

I wish I had money where I could buy a decent mac notebook.
=[

05-01-2007, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by unpresi

Why are we mac users so in love and passionate with apple? what nerves in our brain are twitched? what eye candy drives us to hold our stance in love and war for mac? What social behaviors are associated with our interest in mac?
Why do we feel so happy to be the "elite" desktop computer users?

Excellent questions, I would also like to know..
What journeys are out there that lead us to the Mac, in its variety of forms? What mac culture shapes and informs our thoughts and lives?

Personally, I am a switch. Well sorta. Many many moons ago, I primarily used a mac (or really then it was an apple). I fixed them, used them, swore by them, and then PCs consumed and controlled my life. It wasn't all of a sudden, but it was definitely a takeover. I began teaching training classes and all there was were PCs - of many delicious flavors and varieties. And apples were on the wane. Years later, I furnished a partial G4 lab and macs were back in my world, lurking on the fringes. I was doing less training then, and more fixing. Macs were not on my call list - why you may ask? Well, in the labs I repaired, the macs chugged along without need of intervention - no virusus, no muss no fuss. I took note. Then when my new office was going to be doing a great bit of video, the choice was easy. Imacs all the way to train kids in video! Then, when my PC laptop (the 3rd in a series) began to bellyache over all the video and formats and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Into my personal life came a tiny white macbook - Dr. Girlfriend. The very girl I use right now. Now that Parallels bridges the gap between the PC junk I cant live without and my essential mac side, I doubt I will ever go back.

-njoying..all my macs

05-01-2007, 12:37 PM

well i reckon i switched - and am in love (well almost) with apple becuse..

1. Design
2. Performance
3. No viruses (or like 2 or 3)
4. Hope to go into photography and the mac seemed the right choice for me.
5. ' Just works ' pretty much all of the time.

love it !

05-01-2007, 03:00 PM

I never paid much attention to computer types/systems. Sure, I knew there were differences, but I didn't much care. I'd used Macs on a couple of jobs and never thought much of it. Only in the past few months did I realize there was such contention between camps! I like Macs now because I'm tired of the merry-go-round. Sometimes it feels like the "whack-a-mole" game using PC!

05-01-2007, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by unpresi

Why are we mac users so in love and passionate with apple? what nerves in our brain are twitched?

When I started using computers, they were pigs — all command-line interfaces with arcane key combinations, and incomprehensible geek jargon in the instructions that would go on and on to describe the simplest function.

The instructions for computers were written to impress other geeks, not the end user whose life didn't revolve around the bloody things. They forced the user to conform to some geek's notion of his own geekabilities, the logic of which, to me and countless others, was completely lacking: Never do in one step what you can do in five or six, and if you make a typo, kiss all your work, and possibly the system, goodbye. And never explain in 10 words when you can use 100 or 1,000.

When the Macintosh came along — I used it first with System 6 — the rug under the foundation of the closed computer priesthood was yanked from under it. That era should be considered the beginning of the Reformation. The echoes of this battle against vested-interest computer priests still reverberate, most noticeably in IT departments the world over.

The Macintosh was logical. It made sense. It was easy to use and easy to maintain, and the results it produced knocked the best that could be achieved with the geeks' beloved command-line interface into the dustbin of history. Who could run a command-line-only Photoshop? Who would want to?

Windows, of course, tried to emulate the Mac, always playing catch-up, or trying to. But with Windows, the command line psychology still reigned supreme. The mindset that produced it — along with a single click or two that could hose the entire system — cast its long, anti-innovation shadow onto what is supposed to be a friendly graphical user interface. With Windows, it was anything but.

Even Windows' instruction manuals reflected this, most of them being as bad as some of the worst in the height of the command-line era. It took authors who wrote books on Macs to write Windows books before these invariably droning tomes disappeared. Even now, the best books on Windows are written by Mac experts — David Pogue and Robin Williams, to name only two.

Windows was never as good as the Mac. Using Windows was like riding a horse-drawn streetcar as the Mac sports cars and limos whizzed past.

And using Windows was never fun. The culture of Microsoft banned and still bans fun. Its mobster-like psychology was focused on the ruthless crushing of its competition and the ancillary "little people" who got in its way. It used methods unseen since the days of the robber barons, then the Chicago mob, by ignoring those laws passed since 1900 meant to prevent it from happening again. Many of the people who ran Microsoft then are running it now. A list of those victimized by Microsoft extends well beyond the companies and developers cheated by it. It extends to its customers, big and small, who have been cheated by it and are continuing to be cheated by it.

Windows has always been a third-rate OS concocted by a bloated, sociopathic organization, and nothing in Vista shows that that has changed. I wouldn't be even the inconsequential Mac "evangelist" that I am if it weren't for Microsoft. But Microsoft exists and so does this board, and now this post as an answer to the question that itself likely wouldn't have been asked if it weren't for Microsoft.

I'm not blind to Apple's many shortcomings. But destroying fun isn't one of them.

05-01-2007, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by timswim78

The Mac fanboys:
See having a Mac as part of their "cool" image, which often also includes driving a VW, drinking Starbucks coffee, and never being seen in public without an iPod. True consumers of marketing.

Other Mac users:
Just like using OS X.

Geeks:
Like using as many operating systems as possible: Windows, OS X, Linux, Unix, BSD, Amiga, OS/2, Solaris, etc.

Hey, I own a VW and am definitely not a fanboy in search of a cool image...