Why I use a Mac

[Heru]

Lets see, the first GUI was actually made by Xerox around 1980.  
Mac's GUI was around in 1983.
MS's GUI(Windows 1.2) was around in 1985.
Ms was promptly sued by Apple because Windows looked too much like MacOS, Apple also sued a company that made GEM(an alternative to Windows; it was a DOS GUI, like Windows, but looked almost exactly like the MacOS GUI)

Anyhow, if a wintel drone is so obsessed with games tell him that many Windows games do work on the mac, some natively(like Starcraft, Warcraft2, Diablo 1 and 2), and others with VirtualPC.  I even own a few of them.

[IvoryTower]

timrob: I enjoyed reading your post. I wish I had been a fly on your wall that day    

BTW How often are you approached like that? I hope it's not a frequent occurance. It would be interesting to know where all of this FUD originated and how/why it is spreading to our youth.

I have to say it...I find it laughable to think that a computer sucks because there is a limited number of games available for it. I'd like to find out if these 'hard-core' gamers think that Sun or SGI machines (to name VERY few) suck becuase "all they do is provide the backbone for global e-commerce" or "continuously render terabytes of special effects for movies". What ever happened to the notion of a computer being a tool vs. a toy? (heh, and geeks have said that the Mac OS is a toy...the tables have turned)

Cheers

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: IvoryTower ]

[voidmain]

Are you kidding? As far as those kids know, Sun is for tanning and Silicon Graphics is what makes Britney Spear's boobs so large.

[cloudstrife]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
Are you kidding? As far as those kids know, Sun is for tanning and Silicon Graphics is what makes Britney Spear's boobs so large.

Ya got that right - at my school, me and my friend are the only two people that know that "macos" and "windows" DO NOT mean "mac" and "pc".  Nevermind our school's tech "professionals", their motto seems to be "plug the cord where it fits and hope it works!"
Most of the time when i am working in solaris and one of the "h4x0rs" comes up it goes like this:

h4x0r: whoa!  what version of DOS is that?
me: ummm... it's solaris
h4x0r: huh?  what does that program do?
me: it's an operating system
h4x0r: you mean like windows?  can i play counter-strike on it?
me: no... but you can run for over a day without rebooting ten times.
h4x0r: man you are dumb, why use an operating system thats so useless?  there's not even a mouse pointer!!  I'm gonna go download sub7 and crash another losers windows xp machine.

[Heru]

quote:Originally posted by cloudstrife:


Ya got that right - at my school, me and my friend are the only two people that know that "macos" and "windows" DO NOT mean "mac" and "pc".  Nevermind our school's tech "professionals", their motto seems to be "plug the cord where it fits and hope it works!"
Most of the time when i am working in solaris and one of the "h4x0rs" comes up it goes like this:

h4x0r: whoa!  what version of DOS is that?
me: ummm... it's solaris
h4x0r: huh?  what does that program do?
me: it's an operating system
h4x0r: you mean like windows?  can i play counter-strike on it?
me: no... but you can run for over a day without rebooting ten times.
h4x0r: man you are dumb, why use an operating system thats so useless?  there's not even a mouse pointer!!  I'm gonna go download sub7 and crash another losers windows xp machine.

Ya, at my high school the tech people are about that smart.  There is a PC repair class, and one of the things they make sure you know how to do is how to install Windows 95.  They don't even mention Linux or Unix at all.  They teach you about Windows, and that all, while leading you to believe that it'll get you far in the IT industry.  I brought up Linux once and a few students said: "What's that?  Some sort of game?  Does it work in Windows 2000?"  Laughable really.
When I explained that it was an OS, they said: "Who cares if I don't have to reboot it, can I play Ultima Online in it?"

And as for the teacher, he knew what Linux was, but he didn't think it was necessary to teach us anything about it.


And one time I had brought my Hal91 Linux floppy, and used it, interesting reactions I got from people for that one.

[IvoryTower]

VoidMan:

Good point    

Seriously though, I think that puts the impetus on those who do know the difference to teach those who don't...if only one at a time. You can't let their ignorance deter you from making a good impression upon them.

BTW I'm not just talking about computers either...as you well know, education goes far beyond the binary world.

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: IvoryTower ]

[voidmain]

Well, my uncle is a high school teacher, and also happens to be the shool's computer guru "on the side". Last time I went home and saw him he was wearing a "Microsoft" polo shirt. I told him he was a sorry excuse for a human being (joking, I really like the guy). I have tried and tried and tried to get him interested in Linux and to use it at his school where he can. I told him the M$ police were going to come down on him like the other schools sooner or later and that he should stop wasting my tax payer dollars and do the right thing.

For some reason he's a tough nut to crack. He won't even try it (he says he will and I keep giving him the latest distro CDs but it never happens). I almost feel like taking a year off work and doing some charity work to get their school on the right foot. At least use a Mac. It might not save them a lot of money, but at least they won't be caught up in "License 6.0".

[Calum]

i know plenty peopl elike him. Scared shitless on the inside they are, it's a basic human instinct.

That's what marketing is all about, ensnaring basic instincts without the advertisee knowing what's going on. And who's got the biggest and most effective marketing machine in computing today?
(and no, it's not Apple)

[ravuya]

Is it wrong to feel elitist because you use an operating system where at least 70% of the users are capable of carrying on a coherent stream of thought without using homophobic slurs?

[Calum]

maybe not elitist, but priveleged.

By contrast it seems to me that within the unix faction, the people who use it tend not to be derisive or elitist towards Microsoft users in the main, but instead dismiss them as hopeless cases, much like that thing about people's brains being badly trained for programming if they had had any experience of BASIC programming already.

The whole Microsoft versus unix thing has only been brought to the fore with the upsurge of desktop GNU/Linux boxes, while the "PC vs Mac" thing has been raging for a lot longer, so it's bound to have some stronger feelings behind it.

As you say though, the hate and puerility seem to originate almost exclusively from the Microsoft using side of the fence, and tends to be directed at anybody who is in some way "different". Maybe they have a base insecurity that they are loath to deal with.

[ravuya]

A base insecurity? Maybe it's that every home version of Windows, XP or not, is essentially based off of the old clunky DOS-Shell concept... makes for security issues too (truncated file names like IMPORT~1, etc cause holes in IIS that let you access files that you shouldn't) that really can't be patched properly without a complete overhaul.

I think they're just a bit more scared of trying something new and getting labelled by the other bigots and flamers out there (Linux==Geek, Mac==Nongamer, etc), or even worse, not being able to play Counter-Strike, which seems to be the rotten game that most Windows lamers I've met spend their time on.

The reason why all of us users of non-microsoft platforms are so elitist when it comes to this kind of thing is that their users are so ignorant and so biased against other platforms, despite never trying them in the first place - or even worse, assuming that nothing other than Windows has games and coming here and dropping homophobic slurs and flames.

With an enemy like that, how can you not want to attack their users directly? Maybe this is what is at the root of all trolls..

I think we should all take a step back and take a look at how much flaming and trolling we've been doing lately. Or we could increase the bigotry and ignorance and maybe, hell, we could start a holy war against the users of Windows.

[the_black_angel]

going back a couple of posts - I'm currently going to senior high and almost all the people who actually know anything about computers have or want a unix/linux/macos system including our sys admin.

Alot of my friends want to get the X86 darwin and run that on a box  

Just recently all the teachers laptops have been (forcibly) upgraded to windows XP over our sys admins objections. It took them over a week to get them all to connect to the server (windows 2000) and have been having trouble with them ever since.

My school also has a Linux server (don't know what make - probably redhat ?.?) windows refuses constantly to even see this server - it is used for one piece of software WebCT its used to put up information about courses students are doing.

This school is new (opened last year) and it has system wide crashes at least 1 every 2 weeks - the linux server is always up    - and there are 2-3 machines that do not work everyday (different machines!)

[misfitnumber57]

Machater lists his interests as "fucking Macs."


i think you's the one with the screwed up sex life, buddy


:uh-huh:

[Refalm]

Machater's d**k is small enough to put it in the FireWire input

[choasforages]

why stick it in the firewire port. that would be a waste of a perfectly good firewire port. y not were rubber gloves and cut off the stump that left behind since his mother bit it off