Is it just me or...

[Narse77]

Are alot of the members here very new with computers? I come from about 20 years of corporate Network and Server support and I spend alot of time on PC hardware forums helping people out and it just seems the things most PC users find basic about computers members here seem to have never heard of. Is it because Macs really are in the long run that much easier for the novice so users don't learn all the little tricks etc?

I am new to the Mac world and of course the first place I came to research my Mac purchase was popular Apple forums. Macrumors soon became my favorite goto spot for info. Don't get me wrong I LOVE my Mac and will be switching my entire household to the Mac platform.

Also I know there are some VERY knowledgeable people here, some of the threads have saved me TOMS of time!

 

[menomano]

you're spot on.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Are alot of the members here very new with computers? I come from about 20 years of corporate Network and Server support and I spend alot of time on PC hardware forums helping people out and it just seems the things most PC users find basic about computers members here seem to have never heard of. Is it because Macs really are in the long run that much easier for the novice so users don't learn all the little tricks etc?

I am new to the Mac world and of course the first place I came to research my Mac purchase was popular Apple forums. Macrumors soon became my favorite goto spot for info. Don't get me wrong I LOVE my Mac and will be switching my entire household to the Mac platform.

Also I know there are some VERY knowledgeable people here, some of the threads have saved me TOMS of time!

There are a lot of newbies here. They come here for advice. Don't judge them for their lack of computer know-how or if they misspell words that they typed out in all capital letters.

 

[Narse77]

There are a lot of newbies here. They come here for advice. Don't judge them for their lack of computer know-how or if they misspell words that they typed out in all capital letters.

Touché!! I am not judging anyone, was just surprised. I make my living helping people with computers and even do it on my free time. :-D

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Touché!! I am not judging anyone, was just surprised. I make my living helping people with computers and even do it on my free time. :-D

Good to see you have a sense of humor. Sometimes, that quality is lacking here...

 

[Narse77]

Life is too short to not have a sense of humor!

 

[HLdan]

Life is too short to not have a sense of humor!

While I'm sure your intentions are very good you are stereotyping regardless. For example, I have a degree in electronics and computer science and we had to learn the IBM PC and learn the ins and outs of DOS which is no picnic, that was before Windows came out and the Macintosh was very new. I know quite a lot about computing yet after 3 PC's in 3 years that caused me the biggest 3 years of headache I decided to buy into the world of Macintosh 14 years ago and never looked back. Mac users don't equate to dumbasses so please be sensitive about the stereotypes.

 

[TrojanX]

Yes there are alot of new people to the Mac world on here, like myself, and some may not know a lick about computers but, they are still people and they deserve respect. I have been with this forum for a few weeks and I feel I have a good grasp on computers and am pretty tech savvy. This forum has taught me alot and I consider myself decently versed in the mac OS not that I have played with my own new mac and read as many posts and threads as I can. Don't judge and be kind. It is everyones duty on here to help each other learn!

 

[plethon]

I think this impression depends on work culture.

A friend of mine in IT insists that Mac users are idiots—this is because he's always known Macs as consumer–level users, while the people he talks to most about the PC platform are professionals. I worked for a small repair/upgrade business as a teenager, and nothing I experienced led me to think that long–term PC users were any better off than long–term Mac users, it was in the type of person.

Some people will pick things up, and retain them very well. Other people (I am thinking specifically of an older relative in this case) can use computers for thirty years, but never remember how to do tasks more complicated than saving files and installing programs. The brain doesn't "click" in the virtual workspace. Other people (I'm thinking of my brother, here), have a moment when they finally wake up and are ready to stop fumbling in the dark.

 

[Corndog5595]

It really all depends on the person, and your perspective on the users (as the poster above me pointed out very well). A lot of people have no desire to know more than: saving, opening, installing, and facebooking.

I am 15 and am extremely technologically smart. I am amazed by the lack of knowledge by some of my friends and other people I know. I was sitting in my guidance councilors office working out my schedule for next year, and she asked me how to send an entire folder in an email. After I showed her how to create a zip archive and email, she actually asked me to write that down for her.

When you spend a lot of time on internet forums talking with people that are on the same level of knowledge as you, you really get conditioned to think that the world should have the same knowledge as you, but that just isn’t the case.

 

[Narse77]

While I'm sure your intentions are very good you are stereotyping regardless. For example, I have a degree in electronics and computer science and we had to learn the IBM PC and learn the ins and outs of DOS which is no picnic, that was before Windows came out and the Macintosh was very new. I know quite a lot about computing yet after 3 PC's in 3 years that caused me the biggest 3 years of headache I decided to buy into the world of Macintosh 14 years ago and never looked back. Mac users don't equate to dumbasses so please be sensitive about the stereotypes.

I like you learned DOS, I did not touch a Mac until two months ago. I have spent my entire education and professional career on PCs and Cisco. I was just comparing my experiences on both types of forums. I noticed that most people on PC forums seemed to understand the basic workings of computers where it seems a higher percentage of people on Mac forums seemed to be brand new to computers. I in no way was trying to judge anyone, everyone was new to computers at one time or another.

Was just something I found interesting and was curious if it was because in the PC world to get a task done required a user to learn something about the basics of computer hardware whereas in the Mac world the system is so much smoother the user was able to complete the task with less hassle.

I do not think I am a good judge when it comes to ease of use because I find the command prompt of almost every OS to be easy much less the GUI.

 

[HLdan]

I like you learned DOS, I did not touch a Mac until two months ago. I was just comparing my experiences on both types of forums. I noticed that most people on PC forums seemed to understand the basic workings of computers.....

You know why that has been your perception of PC users? It's because on PC forums you'll find most of the forum members talking about building their own PC's which entail constantly switching out graphics cards, upgrading CPU's, adding eSATA cards and special cooling systems etc.....Building a PC doesn't require a post graduate degree but that's the conversation you'll find frequently on PC forums which makes them seem technologically advanced. Macs are built one way and Apple doesn't give people the option to build their own however the UNIX Terminal will make a Mac user extremely smart with computers once they learn it. The Mac Pro desktop is the only Mac that customers have more flexibility with but it's more of a workstation machine than a consumer level product and you still can't really build it from scratch.

What you need to grasp is most Mac users are the same as you, they have an extensive amount of knowledge about computers because most Mac users were once PC users that tinkered with PC's and went through the frustration of dealing with Windows so people were forced to learn how to use a computer because of the frustration dealing with Windows.

True, there are some Mac users that bought a Mac because it was pretty and OS X was easy because they don't know much about computers but those same non-techy people are also PC users, I have plenty of those in my family.

 

[menomano]

What you need to grasp is most Mac users are the same as you, they have an extensive amount of knowledge about computers because most Mac users were once PC users that tinkered with PC's and went through the frustration of dealing with Windows so people were forced to learn how to use a computer because of the frustration dealing with Windows.

That's not what's happening in this subforum at least. Half the posts are people asking some inane question about a new MBP or an about-to-buy new MBP. There are very few threads with "serious" topics. Same questions keep popping up over and over again. There is also an attitude issue where instead of trying to find a solution on their own (just google really or mroogle) they just post a question and sit back and no amount of "use the search first" does anything.

The people you seem to be describing are a super small minority.

 

[BobbyCarbn]

I have been using Macs since high school (mind you I graduated in 1988), but when I got into the Information Technology Field it was all PCs. Whenever I wanted my Mac fix, I would have to purchase the gear on my own, and usually catch grief if I dared bring it to work. "You cant use that here!!! Its against policy" or "we don't support that here" is what I would have to hear.

As I look back, there are few times in my career whether it be dealing with PCs on the desktop side or dealing with the MS, HP, Sun, Cisco Operating Systems in the data center world, that you didn't have to be somewhat of an engineer to get things working properly. This has changed a little with Win 7, but it always seems, in order to get things tweaked the way you needed them to be productive, you had to turn into a hard core enthusiast or know someone who would take care of the tweaking for you.

Lastly, I also think that people who use Macs tend to be more of the kind of people who look at the Mac as a tool. They need to create something and the Mac is just a tool to help them along the way. The bulk of the Mac community doesn't care what speed the memory is running at or if they can overclock the GPU.

A perfect example I witnessed several months ago. My friend who is a surgeon called me up and asked that I come right over. His wife also a surgeon, needed to print something on her HP laptop and it was not working. I asked for them to describe the problem, took a quick look (somehow the printer installed itself 8 times), and thought to myself "oh man I am going to be here for hours". I then asked where the MacBook I talked him into buying for himself was hiding. He went and grabbed it, I started it up, plugged in the printer and it just started working. I know there are countless times when people plug a printer in to a Windows machine it just works as well, but it is not always the case. So, had I not been around, my buddy would have had to spend his entire morning and possibly afternoon troubleshooting an issue just to print something.

Lastly, and this just a fact, under normal circumstances, Macs just work. When I got into music production as a hobby I would spend days trying to get my music hardware (mixers, mics, turntables, soundcard) working on my PC gear. When I broke down and bought new macbook, everything worked without a hitch. I did have to downgrade a firewire driver once when a new revision to OSX came out but that was it.

I will say the general attitude towards Mac users has changed though. Now when I pull out my MacBook Pro or iPad people run over and want to talk about them.

Thats my 2 cents...

BC