It's official: Mac users think they're superior

Hmmm... I wonder what a study of Linux users would reveal...

Actually, I find this very enlightening. I always get interesting responses when I boot my laptop into Linux (Ubuntu at the moment) on onsite jobs, usually because I need to download something to fix the clients' nonfunctional machines. When I open the terminal, type "pon verizon," and start downloading, it gets their attention; and I usually offer them the opportunity to play with the laptop once I've done whatever I needed to do.

Windows users seem to genuinely enjoy trying Ubuntu, if for no other reason than curiosity. Some have liked it enough that they've had me install it on their machines, either to replace Windows or in a dual-boot configuration.

Mac users, on the other hand, seem to get downright angry when I boot into Linux. They have uttered vile words and accused me of trying to prove myself superior because I use Linux, and they avoid touching my laptop as if it had some wasting, contagious disease.

I have always found this baffling, but this study explains it in an inverse way. Clearly Mac users are secretly suffering from feelings of inferiority, so they need the assurance that using a Mac gives them of their inherent worth, adequacy, and lovability. But when in the same room as a Linux machine, their self-assuredness vaporizes, and they become hostile and defensive.

Surely this phenomenon stems from an unresolved Oedipus complex brought about by the trauma of having experienced a BSOD on a Windows 98 machine while they were in the phallic stage. This left them with feelings of "reboot anxiety," and their professed love affair with the Mac actually reflects hostility toward that Windows machine that, so many years ago, caused them to suffer humiliation, shame, and lifelong feelings of inadequacy.

Using a Mac gives them a feeling of mastery over the trauma, but it's nothing more than a defense mechanism. When confronted with the far superior Linux operating system, their inadequacy is brought to the surface, and they become openly hostile. Unlike the Windows 98 machine that hurt them so cruelly when it BSOD'd, Linux is strong, stable, and virile -- all the things they crave, but secretly fear, from a computer.

Thanks for posting this article. It really does make things clearer.

Rich
 
This topic..Just amazes me. Neither party on either side of the debate is capable of recognizing their ignorance. There are the few that can--but the majority can't. Why be so damn attached to one product?
 
Speaking as a Mac guy who can also use a PC..............


stop talking about this crap.


what's the freaking diff?


and who cares?

not me

DW
 
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Rich,

That actually surprises me. When I run into someone running Linux I think of them as a kindred spirit who has shaken off the shackles of microsoft. Plus, we're both using unix at some level. I see most Linux users as being very smart people. And some of the stuff that's being done on Linux is really impressive. A friend of mine showed me around his install of Fedora Core and I was very impressed.

Of course, the linuxppc folks were very good friends of mine so maybe I'm biased.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Rich,

That actually surprises me. When I run into someone running Linux I think of them as a kindred spirit who has shaken off the shackles of microsoft. Plus, we're both using unix at some level. I see most Linux users as being very smart people. And some of the stuff that's being done on Linux is really impressive. A friend of mine showed me around his install of Fedora Core and I was very impressed.

Of course, the linuxppc folks were very good friends of mine so maybe I'm biased.
Click to expand...

Actually I have had some Mac users express some minor hostility at my laptop, but nothing as severe as what I posted, lol. I thought all the Freudian nonsense would make it clear that the post was tongue-in-cheek.

You have to understand that I rarely work on Macs other than in environments where both Windows and Macs are used. Typically, the "business" side of the operation uses Windows, and the "creative" side uses Macs. The users rib each other, and sometimes the ringleaders gather around to see what system I use. When they see the Acer laptop, the Windows users tend to get smug, and the Mac users tend to get dismissive. But when it boots into Ubuntu, the Windows users start to laugh, and the Mac users usually get annoyed.

It's also true that I've "converted" a lot of Windows users to Linux, but never a Mac user. But overall, the post was exaggerated and intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and I thought all the psychobabble would make that apparent. Guess I missed the target.

Rich
 
Actually, just for the record, I use Windows XP for most of my Web design work because I like Macromedia Studio (now Adobe CS, but I haven't upgraded yet) and I haven't gotten it to work acceptably under WiNE. (Poorly, yes. Acceptably, no.) I also use my Windows XP machine to do things like post to this board because it's usually the computer I'm sitting at when I decide to do so.

I use Linux for pretty much everything else, especially when I'm doing on-site repairs. One frequent duty my laptop gets pressed into is scanning the hard drive of a Windows machine that's so infected with malware that it can't boot. Usually I just slave the drive to my laptop and scan it in Linux. I also do the same to backup data from Windows machines that have crashed for software reasons (registry meltdown, etc.) before I work on them, if I think there's any risk of data loss. Slaving the drive is a little faster than booting the Windows machine into a live Linux disk, especially if it has < 1GB RAM.

But post-WinMe Windows really isn't all that bad, and the NT line has always been decent. I think Windows 2000 was the best Windows ever. It rivaled Linux in terms of stability. XP is very decent, but I think it lost a little in terms of stability because of the VXD support. Vista ... I'm still undecided.

As for Macs, well, they're fine machines, fast and stable, but expensive. And I haven't come across anything they can do that my Linux machines can't (at least anything that matters to me).

Rich
 
For years I've been calling arguments over technology platforms just another religious debate. If this keeps up, technology platform arguments are gonna become auto-spin zone material, I swear...
 
I find a problem with this statement in the article:
A survey conducted earlier this year by Internet ad network Mindset Media found that Mac users are “more liberal, less modest and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large.”

This may be true to some degree, but I'm not liberal, and am quite modest. On the other hand I can identify with the superority part.

As for Linux, as I understand it, my Mac software is a version of Unix, so we're related. My Son runs Linux on his PC's, and it sure looks good to me. If I had PC's, that's what I'd run.

Finally, I agree with Greenbo: "For years I've been calling arguments over technology platforms just another religious debate. If this keeps up, technology platform arguments are gonna become auto-spin zone material, I swear... "

I have to use a Wintel machine at work, and I get along just fine. B)
 
bsdunek said:
Finally, I agree with Greenbo: "For years I've been calling arguments over technology platforms just another religious debate. If this keeps up, technology platform arguments are gonna become auto-spin zone material, I swear... "
Click to expand...
I dunno who Greenbo is, but I like the way he thinks. ;)
 
bsdunek said:
This may be true to some degree, but I'm not liberal, and am quite modest. On the other hand I can identify with the superority part.
Click to expand...

:D Can anyone else see the irony in the bolded part of this statement? I'm just joshing ya, I don't want to start an argument here (which apparently is easy to do in a thread like this). I just found the statement humorous...
 
Rich, I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

And to be clear the castrated version of the unix core in OS X in NOTHING COMPARED TO POWER OF THE ONE TRUE OS.

You puny mortals will cower before the might of my 12 MIPS processors and graphical file system.

IRIX forever

~ Christopher

(although KUbuntu ain't bad. Just lets not start a Gnome vs. K thread, or else someone might get hurt)
 
Greetings from dead center in the ADIZ. Since I recently replaced my desktop PC with an iMac, but still have a Windows laptop - I guess that makes me bipolar, since I'm obviously conflicted between feelings of superiority and inferiority.
 
GaryS said:
Greetings from dead center in the ADIZ. Since I recently replaced my desktop PC with an iMac, but still have a Windows laptop - I guess that makes me bipolar, since I'm obviously conflicted between feelings of superiority and inferiority.
Click to expand...

Welcome aboard, Gary! Both to the Mac and to PoA. :yes:
 
RJM62 said:
As for Macs, well, they're fine machines, fast and stable, but expensive.
Click to expand...

Sigh.

I know I ramble a lot, and tend to provide too much detail... But, we've hashed this out in a few other threads, and equivalently-equipped Macs and Dell machines tend to be very close in price (generally within $200), with the Macs being the cheaper of the two the majority of the time. The old "Macs are expensive" thing hasn't been true in a while. The one thing that IS true is that you can't buy a bare-bones piece of crap with no features from Apple for $300 new. The Mac Mini is the cheapest new Mac, at $599. You'll need to bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse but you get 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, DVD/CDRW combo drive, the Apple Remote, and iLife and FrontRow software. It's actually pretty good for a media center setup.

And I haven't come across anything they can do that my Linux machines can't (at least anything that matters to me).
Click to expand...

And that's what matters. What gets me utterly incensed is when I see a Worst Buy employee talking to a grandmother who wants to do word processing and e-mail the grandkids saying she needs the latest whiz-bang Windows system with all the accessories for upwards of $4,000. :mad: Your average non-computer user will do much better with the Mac.
 
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RJM62 said:
Hmmm... I wonder what a study of Linux users would reveal...

Actually, I find this very enlightening. I always get interesting responses when I boot my laptop into Linux (Ubuntu at the moment) on onsite jobs, usually because I need to download something to fix the clients' nonfunctional machines. When I open the terminal, type "pon verizon," and start downloading, it gets their attention; and I usually offer them the opportunity to play with the laptop once I've done whatever I needed to do.

Windows users seem to genuinely enjoy trying Ubuntu, if for no other reason than curiosity. Some have liked it enough that they've had me install it on their machines, either to replace Windows or in a dual-boot configuration.

Mac users, on the other hand, seem to get downright angry when I boot into Linux. They have uttered vile words and accused me of trying to prove myself superior because I use Linux, and they avoid touching my laptop as if it had some wasting, contagious disease.

I have always found this baffling, but this study explains it in an inverse way. Clearly Mac users are secretly suffering from feelings of inferiority, so they need the assurance that using a Mac gives them of their inherent worth, adequacy, and lovability. But when in the same room as a Linux machine, their self-assuredness vaporizes, and they become hostile and defensive.

Surely this phenomenon stems from an unresolved Oedipus complex brought about by the trauma of having experienced a BSOD on a Windows 98 machine while they were in the phallic stage. This left them with feelings of "reboot anxiety," and their professed love affair with the Mac actually reflects hostility toward that Windows machine that, so many years ago, caused them to suffer humiliation, shame, and lifelong feelings of inadequacy.

Using a Mac gives them a feeling of mastery over the trauma, but it's nothing more than a defense mechanism. When confronted with the far superior Linux operating system, their inadequacy is brought to the surface, and they become openly hostile. Unlike the Windows 98 machine that hurt them so cruelly when it BSOD'd, Linux is strong, stable, and virile -- all the things they crave, but secretly fear, from a computer.

Thanks for posting this article. It really does make things clearer.

Rich
Click to expand...
There's a difference between Mac users who have been Mac users since Steve brought out the beige box and users who came to it as the solution of choice like me and Jesse. I had discussions with inbred Mac users who tell me there is no command prompt. If it's not behind an icon somewhere it's nto there.

I got mine specifically because it DID have a shell and I knew I could do useful work with it.

BTW, there are Windows users and admins who think the same. They needed a GUI and IDP to do sysadmin stuff.

Ask them if Windows ships with FTP. ;) I can FTP without downloading a thing.
 
mikea said:
...

I got mine specifically because it DID have a shell and I knew I could do useful work with it.

BTW, there are Windows users and admins who think the same. They needed a GUI and IDP to do sysadmin stuff.

Ask them if Windows ships with FTP. ;) I can FTP without downloading a thing.
Click to expand...

That astounds me, too. I don't expect average users to know how to use command-line FTP, Telnet, and so forth. But when I have a supposed admin on the phone and I tell him he needs to download something from my server, and he says he can't because he doesn't have an FTP client installed... It's just sad.

Rich
 
no ftp? ok, then I'll just telnet to the server and push the *.tar.gz file via mailx, ok? All from the little old obsolete, white on black command window left over from dos 1.1 ...

but the shell window on the mac looks and feels familiar as well, so... whatever tools you choose or are stuck with to do the job, eh?

My desktop is just the portal to the server world I have to support - doesn't really matter how I get there. Some tools are nicer than others, but they all end up being a shell, xterm session or tunnelled command somehow, somewhere ...
 
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gkainz said:
My desktop is just the portal to the server world I have to support - doesn't really matter how I get there. Some tools are nicer than others, but they all end up being a shell, xterm session or tunnelled command somehow, somewhere ...
Click to expand...
Exactly
 
smigaldi said:
Mac users think they're superior but VAX/VMS users KNEW they were!
Click to expand...
Fixed that for ya ... sadly ...

I used to get the Unix weenies' knickers in a bunch when they had to work on the VMS systems with me. They would ask "How the heck do you do ___ in DCL?"

I would tell them "Just like that..."

Usually met with a "Huh?" and a blank stare.

"If you can say it in English, that's probably the DCL command for it. If you feel really lost and want it to be more unix-like, just abbreviate every command to 2 or 3 characters and you'll feel right at home." :)

The only thing they ever found on that project that unix could do and dcl didn't was 'tail' ... but a few lines of DCL and a call to EVE/TPU and 'here ya' go - tail ...

ah, the good old days...
 
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