My Mac Rant on the class discussion board :)

[MattG]

In one of my online classes, I posted a comment about how PC companies always copy Apple, and a PeeCee user got on my case about it. It's always fun to get a Windows user riled up :)

A friend of mine responded to his post, and then I responded to his post. I thought I'd post it here on MacRumors to see what you all think about what I wrote:


Andrew's response

Current Forum: Notebook

Date: Sat Dec 6 2003 11:08 pm

Author: ******, Andrew_<Andrew_******@******************.edu>

Subject: For all you mac "haters" out there..... (Jason)

this is kinda off topic but...... This is a qoute form an interview with Red Hat's Manager of Community Relations, Jeremy Hogan. He is respinding to why Red Hat disontinued their consumer version of Red Hat Linux.

"The consumer desktop is a pretty big market, and we already have a chunk of it, but it's fickle, it's full of folks happy enough, or used to what they have. It's full of people using technology because they have to, or using an OS because it came installed. A number of things have to be right to really get into that, technological superiority, as we've seen is not enough or else OSX would have the desktop."

This just goes to show that the best technology can't beat marketing and questionable business practices


My response to Andrew's response

Current Forum: Notebook

Date: Sun Dec 7 2003 11:01 am

Author: Gudites, Matthew_<mgudites@******************.edu>

Subject: Re: For all you mac "haters" out there..... (Jason)

It's funny how people are like that...I know people that constantly whine and complain about all the problems they have with their Windows computers, and are unwilling to try somethingbetter when I suggest it, just because Windows is what "everybody" uses and it's what they're used to. Windows users are what I've started referring to as the "martyrs of the computing community"...gluttons for punishment. I just don't get why people choose to use an inferior operating system.

If you go to the car dealership and buy a new car, and for the time you own it you have constant problems with it, do you just shrug them off and hope they go away? If the engine in the car stalls on you every time it rains (the vehicular version of the Blue Screen of Death), do you just accept it as "one of those things that happens with cars?" The next time you're in the market for a car, are you likely to buy from the same company, given that you had so many problems with the last one? Are you likely to buy from them again when you know that you can go down the street to the OTHER dealership, who is advertising cars that are easier to drive, don't need the constant maintenance that your last car required, and are almost crash-proof? Of course not! Ok, so why shouldn't the same logic apply to buying computers?

[jxyama]

comparisons to cars are often made but aren't always the best comparison.

in his argument, you'd have to modify it as follows...

first, BSOD of pretty darn rare these days on XP and 2000. it still doesn't excuse the poor OSes those 9x were, but i think it's fairer if you updated that fact.

second, you need to consider the fact windows is the de facto standard OS. i can't think of how to incorporate this fact into a car analogy, but a good one would be say windows is unleaded fuel cars and mac is diesel cars. i know for a fact diesel cars get better milage but fuel is less readily available and mechanics are a little rarer...

something like that. except the dominance of windows is lot stronger than inconveniences of owning a diesel car. plus people find ways to work around problems - familiarity is often more important than superiority. i use Macs and i like it much better than anything in the PC world, but that doesn't apply to everyone.

[MattG]

Originally posted by jxyama
comparisons to cars are often made but aren't always the best comparison.

in his argument, you'd have to modify it as follows...

first, BSOD of pretty darn rare these days on XP and 2000. it still doesn't excuse the poor OSes those 9x were, but i think it's fairer if you updated that fact.

second, you need to consider the fact windows is the de facto standard OS. i can't think of how to incorporate this fact into a car analogy, but a good one would be say windows is unleaded fuel cars and mac is diesel cars. i know for a fact diesel cars get better milage but fuel is less readily available and mechanics are a little rarer...

something like that. except the dominance of windows is lot stronger than inconveniences of owning a diesel car. plus people find ways to work around problems - familiarity is often more important than superiority. i use Macs and i like it much better than anything in the PC world, but that doesn't apply to everyone. You make some good points..Although, where I work, we do still see our share of the BSOD (and we run all 2k machines).