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I'd imagine the latter.

Though, as I have been a 'contributor' for the past 16 months, I am at a loss to know what my 'appropriate title' would be at the moment, as things get a bit hazy in the stratosphere where time and space and numbers all bend and seem to become strangely elastic.

From this it looks like you would be a G5.
 
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A couple of graphs to amuse you. They look at the number of members in two ways.

Percentage of registered forum members who have never posted, are "newbies" (1 to 29 posts), are "members" (30 to 99 posts), and all other user titles combined ("regular" and above). As you can see, only 5% of registered members make more than a few dozen posts.The 95% who post little or nothing are fairly evenly split between never having posted and having made at least 1 post.



Number of registered forum members across the user title spectrum. It's weighted so heavily toward the low-post-count categories that it can't be shown clearly as a standard pie chart or column chart, so I used a logarithmic scale for the number of members.


Wow, 95% of member have either no posts or are newbies!:eek:

Have you looked at deleting accounts that have been set up but have no posts?
 
Re those who post once, - I suspect quite a number of those were spam, or are the spam entires (which are often caught and reported by members) included in this statistical analysis?
MacRumors gets quite a few spambots (or real people posting promotions). When they are banned after a spam post or two, their posts are deleted, and they fall into my "no posts" category. That could explain, in part, why many memberships have no posts. Still, there are people who join without posting, and since they are mute we're never sure why.

Where does G4 end and G5 begin - I am not entirely sure of the borders of such designations once you hit the stratosphere. Congrats on being one of the 35 G4s.
Most of the cut-offs are in the FAQ, but the ones past G5 are left as a challenge for observant users to spot.

Funny story: When I first joined MacRumors, there was no FAQ about user titles. I was just a regular member, with no inside information, but I was determined to figure out the user title post ranges by regularly checking the member list, every so often month after month. I even set alarms for the dates when I expected a member to hit some round number, like 3000 posts, so I could see if their user title changed. Watching those counts was part of the inspiration for the Top Posters Extrapolated project.​

Does the second graph include individuals who have titles such as 'contributor' and so on? Were they excluded or grouped with the appropriate title based on total posts?
Yes, contributors and demi-gods and demi-goddesses are in the categories for their post-count-determined user title, so they are all accounted for.

Though, as I have been a 'contributor' for the past 16 months, I am at a loss to know what my 'appropriate title' would be at the moment, as things get a bit hazy in the stratosphere where time and space and numbers all bend and seem to become strangely elastic.
Your "natural" user title is "macrumors G5".
 
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From this it looks like you would be a G5.

MacRumors gets quite a few spambots (or real people posting promotions). When they are banned after a spam post or two, their posts are deleted, and they fall into my "no posts" category. That could explain, in part, why many memberships have no posts. Still, there are people who join without posting, and since they are mute we're never sure why.


Most of the cut-offs are in the FAQ, but the ones past G5 are left as a challenge for observant users to spot.

Funny story: When I first joined MacRumors, there was no FAQ about user titles. I was just a regular member, with no inside information, but I was determined to figure out the user title post ranges by regularly checking the member list, every so often month after month. I even set alarms for the dates when I expected a member to hit some round number, like 3000 posts, so I could see if their user title changed. Watching those counts was part of the inspiration for the Top Posters Extrapolated project.​


Yes, contributors and demi-gods and demi-goddesses are in the categories for their post-count-determined user title, so they are all accounted for.


Your "natural" user title is "macrumors G5".

Thank you for that clarification. When I became a member of the 'private' section I was offered a choice of user titles, and did debate keeping the 'natural' one, but opted instead for a more neutral one. At the time, though, I was one of the '600' titles, I have forgotten which one, and I didn't keep abreast of the subsequent possible changes.

Yes, I had wondered about the statistical expression of all of those spambots, or real people posting spam posts. There are - or were - days when the site seemed to have been inundated with them. While many of them merely manage a single post before they are caught, and culled, a few have succeeded in making several posts across the forum.

Anyway, I did suspect that the large number of 'no' posts (or single posts) may well have been largely - if not wholly - due to these members.

The other thing some of these spambots - or spam posters who are real people - seem to be rather prone to is the resurrection of long dead threads from the vaults, but that is a different topic.

Anyway, thanks again, for the brilliant work, @Doctor Q and thanks, too @Weaselboy for putting me out of my misery by answering my query. Much appreciated.
 
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The first Mac I used!
The names are the processors used over the years by Apple.

Well, I had been contemplating a switch, but knew next to nothing about Macs.

The different OS, different software, complications of trying to change documents so that they could be read from one system (Windows) to the other (Mac), and vice versa - their sheer otherness - not to mention their disdain for floppy discs, all meant that I had never even so much as really played with one before 2008.

A colleague was quite persuasive on an election mission in early 2008, - and demonstrated his own PowerBook - and, as it was something I had been mulling over, I was more interested than I might otherwise have been. Moreover, this colleague was a guy I liked and respected, not a dismissive techie, and I listened to what he had to say, and watched his demonstrations with interest. Furthermore, he offered to help (via email) with problems, and was most encouraging of the idea of switching as he was an Apple aficionado.

My first Mac was a MBP in 2008, but I had little idea of the backstory or history beyond what I subsequently read.
 
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I wish I did it years ago!

Picture of a G5 Mac.
image.jpeg
 
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I wish I did it years ago!

Picture of a G5 Mac.
View attachment 609495

Thanks for posting that.

In fact, to be honest, until Macs (or Apple) began using Office for Mac they were so far removed from my experience and needs that they weren't even on the radar. It was no use explaining to me that the Apple system - and their word processing - was better. I don't doubt it. But everyone I knew - myself included - used (and use) Word, and I needed to be able to send and receive stuff - without hassle - in this system, and until Apple made that possible, switching was out of the question.
 
Thanks for posting that.

In fact, to be honest, until Macs (or Apple) began using Office for Mac they were so far removed from my experience and needs that they weren't even on the radar. It was no use explaining to me that the Apple system - and their word processing - was better. I don't doubt it. But everyone I knew - myself included - used (and use) Word, and I needed to be able to send and receive stuff - without hassle - in this system, and until Apple made that possible, switching was out of the question.

Until Microsoft made that possible. ;)
 
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I think it was the pervasive use of Windows in office environments that scared away many Mac converts. After all, Microsoft Word for Mac, albeit with some incompatibilities, has been available since 1985, while Windows was a barely functional operating system until the 1990s.
 
I think it was the pervasive use of Windows in office environments that scared away many Mac converts. After all, Microsoft Word for Mac, albeit with some incompatibilities, has been available since 1985, while Windows was a barely functional operating system until the 1990s.

And MS still can't get their act together. I was shocked recently at how terrible documents transfer between OSX and Windows. This is why I stick with LaTeX as much as possible. It may be a total pain in itself, but I still have far fewer problems!
 
Until Microsoft made that possible. ;)

My bad. Of course, you are absolutely right, until Windows made that possible.

I think it was the pervasive use of Windows in office environments that scared away many Mac converts. After all, Microsoft Word for Mac, albeit with some incompatibilities, has been available since 1985, while Windows was a barely functional operating system until the 1990s.

Equally off putting was that sense of disdainful superiority cultivated by some of the Mac community; most of the world used Windows to get something done, it wasn't a badge of identity, or a lifestyle choice, it was a tech tool used by people who were not necessarily technologically proficient. They merely used computers for a living and couldn't care less about the details as long as they worked without hassle.
 
Which, of course, Windows barely did, hence the Apple slogan, "It just works."

Yes and no.

I doubt that many Windows users much noticed that, unless they 'just didn't work' very, very, obviously.

On trips abroad, I have been astounded at how bad some (not all) of the Windows operating systems - that some of the bodies and organisations worked for used - were (and are), and at how much better my little Apples are. But not all Windows systems were equally bad, and somewhere actually quite good.
 
Yes and no.

I doubt that many Windows users much noticed that, unless they 'just didn't work' very, very, obviously.

On trips abroad, I have been astounded at how bad some (not all) of the Windows operating systems - that some of the bodies and organisations worked for used - were (and are), and at how much better my little Apples are. But not all Windows systems were equally bad, and somewhere actually quite good.

Well, it certainly worked well enough to gain massively wide adoption. Anyway I'm hardly an evangelist for anything, and Apple sure has its fair share of :mad:.
 
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Thanks for posting that.

In fact, to be honest, until Macs (or Apple) began using Office for Mac they were so far removed from my experience and needs that they weren't even on the radar. It was no use explaining to me that the Apple system - and their word processing - was better. I don't doubt it. But everyone I knew - myself included - used (and use) Word, and I needed to be able to send and receive stuff - without hassle - in this system, and until Apple made that possible, switching was out of the question.

Were you aware that Excel was developed for the Mac first? Word came in 1998 along with Office fo rMac.
 
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Well, it certainly worked well enough to gain massively wide adoption. Anyway I'm hardly an evangelist for anything, and Apple sure has its fair share of :mad:.

Agreed. Apple eater though I am (and you were about the only person to get that), I am hardly an evangelist either.

Were you aware that Excel was developed for the Mac first? Word came in 1998 along with Office fo rMac.

No, I wasn't.

However, to my certain recollection, Excel was on Windows machines in the early 1990s; you mean Office for Mac, surely?
 
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However, to my certain recollection, Excel was on Windows machines in the early 1990s; you mean Office for Mac, surely?
From Wikipedia:
Prior to packaging its various office-type Mac OS software applications into Office, Microsoft released Mac versions of Word 1.0 in 1984, the first year of the Macintosh computer; Excel 1.0 in 1985; and PowerPoint 1.0 in 1987. Microsoft does not include its Access database application in Office for Mac.

Microsoft has noted that some features are added to Office for Mac before they appear in Windows versions, such as Office for Mac 2001's Office Project Gallery and PowerPoint Movie feature, which allows users to save presentations as QuickTime movies.

Early Office for Mac releases (1989–1994)[edit]
Microsoft Office for Mac was introduced for Mac OS in 1989, before Office was released for Windows. It included Word 4.0, Excel 2.2, PowerPoint 2.01, and Mail 1.37.
 

Thanks for that, @GGJstudios.

I certainly remember having Word, Excel and so on in 1993 on my first (Windows) computer, an antique with a total memory of 80 MB…..so that makes sense.

And, while I admired Macs (from a distance), I remember - again that dismissive techie air - their withering contempt at a university trade stand around 2000, when I wondered about floppy discs (which is what I used for my own notes for my own lectures on, to be printed out in a university machine whereas I wrote them in my flat on my first laptop, a nice little Olivetti).
 
Well, it certainly worked well enough to gain massively wide adoption. Anyway I'm hardly an evangelist for anything, and Apple sure has its fair share of :mad:.

I think the other big change that helped Apple was the switch to Intel processors and leaving behind the Power PC processors.
 
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Still, there are people who join without posting, and since they are mute we're never sure why.

Don't forget that there are many Apple users from all around the world who stumble across Macrumors through Google searches.

If English isn't their first language, they may not feel confident enough to post themselves, but interested to follow the discussions here.
 
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@Doctor Q , I can't remember whether I asked this before, but the post count numbers you use for this do not include PRSI posts, right? PRSI is generally excluded from post counts on profiles. I know some posters there post a LOT, so it would be really interesting to see how the numbers fell with that included. And since I post almost exclusively in PRSI these days, I know my post count is way different.
 
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