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I'm So Tired of Hearing about Apple
delsquacho.com — As it ’s slowly but steadily gaining market share, Apple has grown its small cult of followers into the makings of a mainstream religion. While this is certainly a good thing - I love seeing Microsoft actually have to compete - I’m getting really, really tired of hearing how great Apple is.
Cancerkitty- 36 diggs
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- beautafly, on 05/12/2008, -2/+3While I am perennially seduced by Apple's hip marketing scheme, I would agree that a little competition makes the lot of them stronger.
- nickwalters, on 05/12/2008, -2/+3They've gone from small, cool, unsigned indie, to major league 'Walmart' almost overnight, and I'm really bored by it. The PC now has more 'cult' credibilty because of 'mods' and 'gaming' .
- colincornaby, on 05/12/2008, -2/+4"Apple folks like to say that, with a Mac, everything “Just works.” Well guess what. So does damn near everything on a PC. In fact, it’s extremely rare that I plug in some USB hardware and it doesn’t work immediately. Big. Goddamn. Deal."
I've never had a printer "just work" when I plug it into a Windows box. Never. I've always had to install drivers. - monospaced, on 05/12/2008, -1/+6I'm so tired of hearing people criticize Apple and the Mac when they don't really know anything about them. This guy starts off his article claiming that Apple's cult status is relatively new, when in fact it has grown for decades in the publishing and media sectors along with such companies as Adobe. The author then states that he has in fact only used Macs when they were still PowerPCs, and if you know anything about Apple, those things were clumsy and ran on an unstable, bloated OS. Then, he makes completely idiotic statements, saying that Apple avoids compatibility issues by only working with Apple specific products. This is completely false, since the Mac pretty much supports all third party hardware that exists.
Today's Mac is popular not only because of a cult status and clever advertising. It is popular because they managed to get their computers up to par with the competition, and in some ways have surpassed it in very innovative ways. They've been faithful to their long time customers who rely on them for design, advertising, and the production of movies and music. From the entertainment industry (which is primarily Apple based) and advertising world (pretty much all Mac) we say thank you.
I wouldn't call myself a fanboy, but since a Mac is ideal for what I do for my career. I am annoyed by the new cult status I see in coffee shops, and I'm not alone amongst Mac users. I'm sure you'll all Digg me down, but you can't forget that Apple has never been an average consumer computer company. The Mac Pro doesn't come with eight cores and four video cards for nothing, and they will be bashed by gamers as long as they don't build a gaming machine.
I run XP for certain uses, and honestly, it isn't better in any way to OS X for normal computing purposes.- Cancerkitty, on 05/12/2008, -3/+2The point of the article wasn't to dog on Apple; I even said they made some nice stuff. The point was that I'm getting sick of hearing about how great they are constantly. I hear it all the time at work, and it's tiring.
And since when does Mac support all third party hardware? Can I go out an buy an Assus motherboard for a Mac now? If so, then you're right, I was off-base on that one.
- Cancerkitty, on 05/12/2008, -3/+2The point of the article wasn't to dog on Apple; I even said they made some nice stuff. The point was that I'm getting sick of hearing about how great they are constantly. I hear it all the time at work, and it's tiring.
- torgo112, on 05/12/2008, -2/+2Interesting thoughts. The article mentions security as an apple selling point, and I think a lot of the talk about security is mostly hot air. I use a PC both at work and at home, leave both machines on and online all the time, with only a basic CA AV program running and have never, ever had any viruses, spyware or other malware get on either computer. Having a secure machine free of viruses and malware has more to do with being a responsible user than it does with the operating system, in my opinion.
- thewump, on 05/12/2008, -1/+3Title mentions apple. Will hit the front page.
- clak, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1I read an article like this on Digg at least once a week. The writers never offer anything substantive in their claims. I've never read one of these articles that didn't repeat the mantra about Macs being secure because of the low market share. Why is that such a thorn with Windows users? Seriously, I hear mention of that in EVERY Apple bashing article. Apple haters never do quite GET IT, because they are too busy being wrapped up in Apple's commercials and the shininess of the computers and the old generalizations about Mac users being stupid. They don't stop to think that perhaps, a good majority of new Apple users are old Windows users. They don't stop to think that perhaps, it's Microsoft that is screwing up big time. No, it's easier for them to believe that people are being conned.
Look, it's really simple. Macs are better because Apple makes the whole widget, okay? If Microsoft made their own computers they might work better with Windows as well, but they don't, so you're always going to have compatibility issues in the Windows driver ecosystem. It's just a fact of the life. Apple has a better chance of getting it right out of the gate because of this very simple integrated software/hardware model.
OS X is a very good operating system that hasn't been plagued with legacy code. Compatibility with OS 9 was done away with 2 versions ago. Apple can do that because their primary business is in the consumer market. Microsoft, on the other hand, supports big government institutions and corporations which move at the speed of a snail. These ecosystems can't afford to upgrade their operating systems every 2 or 3 years without creating major training headaches for their employees, so Microsoft finds that they have to support outdated systems with every update. The end result is bloatware, as we've seen with Vista.
Apple has better software. I know Microsoft lovers want to think that more is better, but the Windows ecosystem is stuffed to brim with inferior shareware type programs that shouldn't even be on the market. The programmers developing for OS X are usually of the better variety because they are developing for a group of people that on average make more money. Microsoft users can't seem to wrap their heads around this. For them, saving money is very important, so the ability to build their own computers and pirate software is of primary importance to them, while Apple users, on average, work in fields where time is money. Building and tweaking computers for the fun of it, doesn't fit into their lifestyles. Apple users will actually *gasp* buy their software, insuring OS X developers of a paycheck. If you make a program on Windows, it will be on the Piratebay the same day. Time is money, so Apple users spring more money for solutions that work out of the box, which is why Apple computers continue to sell, in spite of the "overpriced" mantra that get thrown their way. What puzzles me in this: the very same PC users that can see perceived value in a BMW or high priced sports car that does essentially the same thing as a lower priced car (that is, driving you back and forth), can not for some reason, see the same perceived value in a Mac. Why is that?
Furthermore, because OS X isn't so much bloatware, Apple users can get better performance out of Macs with lower specs, which means that Mac users don't have to upgrade nearly as often. I have a G5 that's five years old and Leopard runs just fine on it. I didn't have to add one stick of RAM to get it to "just work." And because OS X rarely crashes, restarts are practically non-existent, a fact that extends the life of Apple hardware. And because the enclosure on my G5 is built in a way that limits my contact with the Mac's logic board, there is less chance of latent electrostatic damage whenever I do decide to change out RAM or hard drives. It's simple design elements like this that make Apple hardware last longer than their PC counterparts.
One more point and I'll shut up. Windows users too often simplify the whole security argument. The fact is, OS X is more secure because of some very relevant measures built directly into the Unix architecture.
1) Mac OS X users don't run with administrator privileges. Until Windows Vista, almost every Windows user had all privileges to install and modify their OS at all times. Mac OS X, on the other hand, always has users run without such privileges. That means you have to type a password to install or change any critical system software. That minimizes the damage that Web or email-based malware can do. And unlike Windows, there is no compatibility requirement for ActiveX binary code insertion into the user or kernel environment via the Web in Mac OS X.
2) Mac OS X has less spaghetti code. Ask any security guru and he or she will tell you: a simpler software model is easier to secure than a complex one. Any Unix has only about 200 entry points into the secure kernel environment. And while there are many libraries in the Mac OS X system, most of those don't have enough privileges to do anything really bad.
3) Mac OS X mail doesn't automatically run attachments.One of the poorest security decisions that Microsoft made was that back in 2000 or so, it configured its Outlook and Outlook Express mail systems to automatically execute script code on incoming HTML email without any user action required. This was one of the big vectors for virus proliferation earlier this decade. Microsoft has since patched that problem, but it remains a headache for the entire Microsoft ecosystem because unpatched systems still exist. Meanwhile, Apple mail systems have never run attachments or HTML code automatically, so this very common vector for virus transmission just doesn't exist in the Apple world.
4) Apple can actively manage and verify its hardware Apple doesn't need to sacrifice security for compatibility with a million different hardware configurations. In fact, as we've seen in its latest Leopard launch, Apple actively prunes the number of hardware configurations it supports. And Apple has demonstrated with its iPhone that it is no stranger to locking down its hardware/software products to guarantee a good user experience. As a result, Apple doesn't have to provide insecure compatibility interfaces for old hardware or software systems -- and therefore can minimize its threat exposure.
So, in conclusion, let me just say that if you don't understand the fundamental differences described above, you will never understand why Apple users love their computers.
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