4 Oct
2010
4 Oct
'10
8:32 a.m.
On Oct 4, 2010, at 8:55 AM, Tom Uban wrote:
On 10/4/10 8:10 AM, Daniel Seagraves wrote:
Well, my post was more directed at the OP saying that the iPad is absolutely useless and
braindamaged and would disappear in a couple years. I wasn't trying to attack you
personally. If that was my intention I would have used your name and called you an idiot
directly.
Posting ones views and experiences is all well and good, but you're desperately trying
to compare Mac OS X to Windows on a 1:1 basis and it can't be done. One of them is a
desperate last-ditch-resort port of OpenStep with "Save Apple at any cost!" as
its only goal, and the other is an overgrown DOS shell swimming in an ocean full of sharks
wearing a large weight made from decades of legacy code chained to its neck. Sure your Mac
doesn't crash as often, but how often can you go to Wal-Mart and run the latest game
on the shelf? How often can you open the complex VBA-macro-infested Excel spreadsheet your
co-worker emails you, edit it, and send it back without garbaging it? What about throwing
together an emergency machine for $500 using parts from the local PC junk shop?
There's a multitude of things out there that only work on Windows, and if you have to
trade off on reliability to achieve compatibility, then that's what you have to do.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Personally my view is that everything sucks in its own special way, and there is always
room for improvement. My "improvement" may not be better for everyone else. Some
things really bother me but not everyone else. I'd love it if the Apple Mail reply
default was not top-posting, but everyone else in the office is too lazy to scroll to the
bottom of a message for the new parts. How about fixing the bug where the wrong app gets
focus when you switch Spaces? I think that irritates just about everyone who experiences
it. There's always no shortage of issues to fix in any system. Apple is not unique in
this regard.
On Oct 4, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
No, saying that I use products from the company that I'm criticizing means that I am
not simply
joining a bandwagon without experience. I was not "bashing" anybody for their
choice, I was simply
making my opinion known and primarily saying that I think that Apple could make their
products,
which are already pretty good, better.
Clearly I implied that the choice is dependent on the user/use when I indicated that I
use several.
I think that I can quantify some amount of better by the fact that my mac, running three
different
operating systems has only frozen once on me whereas my PC running Windows has blue
screened many
times. Of course everyone's mileage varies depending on their use and application
sets.
Since when is posting ones experiences and views "flawed and intellectually
dishonest"?
Instead of tying your personal attacks to my comments, saying that I can and cannot do
this or
that, please start your own fresh comment on the topic... Tom Uban wrote:
Choice of device or operating system should be based on the intended user and workload
required. It's not a religion. Saying "I am typing this on a mac..." to
qualify bashing someone for their choice is like saying "I have a few black friends
too..." to qualify racism. It's hollow and cliche and nobody believes it. You
just sound like a dope to everyone except other people who share your bias.
I have a Mac and it pays my bills. When I go home I run Windows for playing games. I have
a Wii and a Playstation 3 and an iPhone, all of which are hacked for various reasons. Here
at work we have many Windows machines and many Linux machines. Each item is picked for
their intended task and workload. Some of these workloads are more clearly defined than
others, and some of them exist just for entertainment value, but none of them is
"better" than the others. You can't say with any sort of accuracy that
device X is stupid and useless in all situations because you don't know every possible
user/workload combination in existence. Nor can you say that item X is better than item Y
in all respects for every workload because everything is designed differently by different
people for different goals. It's like saying a crescent wrench is always better than a
Vise Grip. They may look vaguely similar, they may have the same user in mind, but they
were designed with two different tasks in mind, so trying to compare them and speak
authoritatively about this comparison is flawed and intellectually dishonest. As with many on this list, we have been using
computers pretty much since their inception. And while
I too am typing this on a MacBook Pro, which I do like for the most part, my experience
with Apple
products is that they are about 90%. They get the basics right and the potential for
being really
great is there, but there are always a handful of gee wouldn't it be nice if this
application did
this, etc.
They could rule to world if only they could get past their smug sense of, "we know
your needs better than you do"...