Right. Rant hat: on.
Topic of the day: snobbery and Apple. There is a very vocal group out there that pops up every time Apple releases a new product, new feature, or basically anytime Macintoshes are mentioned. No, I'm not talking about the supporters. I'm talking about the people that complain about Mac supporters. According to these people, there is a vast army of slavering Mac zombies out there that diefy the virtues of Apple products, completely oblivious to all these other (obviously better) products. Now, here's the thing. Maybe it's just the communities I frequent (which are, admittedly, mostly gamer communities), but the only marginally oblivious Mac supporter I have ever come across is my Mother. I don't know where people are meeting these eyeless, earless Mac supporters, but seriously, all of you staunch PC supporters out there are making yourself look bad. Like, really fucking bad. Like, I-want-to-buy-Apple-products-just-so-I-don't-have-to-associate-with-you bad.
I get it. Mac's are by no means a perfect machine. But they aren't that bad, either. They do a lot of things really well. Interface design, useability, simplicity; these are things that Macs do very well. Certainly better than Linux, where interfaces are mostly tacked on as an afterthought. And way better than Windows, where making even simple changes to your setup requires hours of work, compounded by inconsistent interfaces and no logical categorization of utilities. Computing flexibility? Mac has the linux command line, bitches. DOS ain't got nothing on that. This isn't to say Mac's aren't without their downsides (high cost, inflexible hardware), but seriously guys: rabid fanboy-ism has never been in style. Try for some objectivity next time, eh?
"And way better than Windows, where making even simple changes to your setup requires hours of work, compounded by inconsistent interfaces and no logical categorization of utilities. "
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to be ironic?
You're either trying to be ironic or your head is so deep in the Apple propoganda you are THAT blind, to claim Mac is somehow a faster and better option for consistency then Windows. In both OS you do two things
1) Find the setting.
2) Change it.
Considering the many hours I have spent recently attempting to get network connections working properly on my computers recently I am going to have to respectfully disagree. The first few screens in use a Windows Vista/7 format, but as you go further in the format and layout change to older styles, which they obviously never bothered updating.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly for installing MinGW. The actual installation: pretty easy. Updating the $PATH variable? Not so easy. I have to go to "My Computer", right-click, "Properties", "Advanced System Settings" on the right, then "Environment Variables", then down to the actual Path variable, and finally "Edit". I know have 5 windows open, have followed no logical path to get there, and have to close three of them for the changes to take affect. On linux/mac os, I need to type ONE line. "PATH=$PATH:/Newdir". That's it.
The Windows system utilities are a mess. Are the Mac ones perfect? By no means. But at least they are consistent.