Yesterday, myself and a friend - who is one of the Tech Support guys at a London university - got onto the topic of Macs while chatting on IM. He waxed somewhat lyrical on exactly why he has so little love for them, and - while I made a fair few points in their favour - there was still much that he stood-by.
Just to make it clear, I'm not posting this to troll or offend, I'm just genuinely curious to hear your responses & opinions on what I should say to him the next time the topic comes up...
Here, in a suitably edited & consolidated form, is what he had to say:
Just to make it clear, I'm not posting this to troll or offend, I'm just genuinely curious to hear your responses & opinions on what I should say to him the next time the topic comes up...
Here, in a suitably edited & consolidated form, is what he had to say:
So, I'm sure there'll be plenty of dissenting points of view; let's hear 'em!I hate Macs...
As to why...
I don't think much of the OS; it's just a UNIX-derivative like FreeBSD with a restrictive GUI dumped on top of it (if I want a UNIX-like kernel with a custom shell I’ll go with Linux). The hardware is all blow and no go; last year's technology for triple the price it's worth. Restrictive upgrade potential, locked into using (expensive) Apple components for EVERYTHING - even HDDs and RAM. Instant incompatibility with 99% of other computers on the planet; Macs prefer their own file system - in PC country you just plug and go. Plus blind faith in the benevolence of Apple, against any common sense appraisal of the company, on the part of the majority of the users...
Mac Users: Desperate to set themselves apart from the mainstream because to be a part of the mainstream is to be a mass-market sheep... But not realising that they’re simply aligning themselves with a different flock...
I have little time for devotees. Particularly devotees who claim they are because they're “smarter”. No. Jumping on the anti-bandwagon PURELY to not be on the bandwagon itself is being led all the same; except that instead of going with the better platform, or the most versatile platform, or the platform which suits your needs best, you're going with the *other* platform just to be a part of a "cool" minority.
I guess it's reassuring for some people to think that it's been made impossible to do anything wrong... But, they fail to realise that anything that's designed to be idiot-proof is, by definition, designed for use by idiots!
"It's for your own good!" That's the Apple motto. You're not using the Mac, Steve Jobs is. You ask him if he'll let you do the things you want to do, and he says "no, but tell me what you want and I'll do it for you, unless it's something I don't like in which case you can't do that", which some people like; if you don't know how to do it and what you want to do is simple OS X does it for you, but if you want to do anything else? No chance...
It's sad really...
But, still, I can't really fault Steve Jobs for taking advantage of those people... I'd sell people £300 of hardware & an essentially free OS just with a proprietary GUI for £2000 if I could! I'll admit, form a purely aesthetic point of view, that Macs look nice; and in their favour the hardware is immaculately built; but that's not the reason to choose a computer! Even given the comparison of set-up procedures:
Mac: Take out of box, plug keyboard into monitor, plug into wall socket, turn on. Done.
PC: Take base unit out of box, take monitor out of box, take mouse and keyboard out of box, take sixteen power bricks out of box, connect everything to everything else, plug in seventeen 4-way outlets, turn on, wait four hours. Done.
I just honestly cannot see the long-term appeal. It's about recognising when X platform is more appropriate than Y. Genuinely evaluating something, based on its merits, rather than saying "WAH!!! MAC RULEZ PC IS FOR L00Z3R$!!!1!” I think of myself as somebody who knows what he's talking about to a certain extent; and even with intimate familiarity with the problems that Windows and PCs have in general... I'll ALWAYS pick Windows and x86 architecture.