Why do people hate the Mac so much?
Friday, August 4, 2006 by foreverserenity | Discussion: Personal Computing
I can’t understand it. Why is Macintosh so disliked by so many? I used to use the Mac a couple of years ago at one of my jobs. The boss liked Macs and only bought Macintosh. As a PC user at the time and having never used the Mac, I didn’t really feel intimidated by it.
It took me a couple of days to get the hang of it and I actually liked it! There was no big deal to it. After having used it for over three years (my time at that position) I actually loved it!
At my next position it was back to PCs again. Once again, it was no problem to get back with the flow of using it.
I came across some comments recently on a blog site and I can’t believe how much the each person either really hated or really loved Macintosh. I mean the things those people wrote, they got personal!
Is it really that serious? Can’t there just be some people who really, really love the Mac and some really, really love the PC? You know what? I blame that commercial that’s on right now. It’s their fault there’s all this ‘be hating’ around now. That or it just picked at a boil that was always under the surface and have opened up a really ripe wound!
These are some of the comments I read on the NY Times. It was an article that wasn’t even so much about PCs or Macs it was a totally different topic. I won’t post the article itself since it had nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, although it (the article) was interesting, that is for another blog at another time.
__________________-
“Mac users always fail to realize how few they are. It is a pain and expensive to create a parallel system for so few people. Don’t believe the product placement in movies, only 6% of our website’s visitors for example come from mac users (almost 3% use lineux for comaprison).
It would be like demanding MTV translate its site into spanish NOW, but at least there are a lot of people who speak Spanish.
You wanted an expensive white computer, and now you have it. Just don’t expect the rest of the world to jump.
Andrew
www.boomchicago.nl
— Posted by Andrew Moskos”
“macs suck
— Posted by Dom”
“Macs have an influential presence online which makes that 4% feels like 75%.
lonelygirl15 sounds like a show already.
— Posted by Ajit”
“# 1: Trying to mock Mac users by pointing out how few of them there are doesn’t work. In fact, that’s the key to Apple’s cult-like appeal. If everyone really started buying Macs, hardcore Mac users would be emotionally devastated. And if there are so few of them, why waste your breath baiting them, anyway?
— Posted by ted”
“Ted,
As a Mac user, I have to admit you’re right. If everyone’s computers ran an operating system as intuitive, beautiful, and straightforward as OS X, I’d be seriously upset at having lost my elite status.
Now if only we can get Microsoft to redesign the iPod, maybe I’ll switch back.
— Posted by Nick vdK”
“Mac users are very influential, much bigger than whatg they represent online. Only a single digit porcentage of people using Macs (4%) does not mean they are not important or influential. As an example, 45% of Wired Magazine users, a magazine read by influential people interested on advances in technology, life and culture, are Mac users (by the way, Jews are 0.5% of the world population but they account for more than 20% of Noble prizes).
— Posted by Max
“Andrew Moskos” is only partly right: Mac users are numerically a minority, but like “Ajit” notes, we have a disproportionate influence on the culture. We cluster into info. and other related media jobs, which control the mental world of all you PC hacks. Kind of like gay people. Oh, yes, I remember, the word is “elites”: few but strong!
— Posted by Tdawwg”
“August 3rd,
2006
4:36 pm
Mac Users may only be 6% on your site, but we are also better educated, make and spend more money and dominate the artistic and media-driven world. Once you go Mac you never go back.
— Posted by Mark Flora”
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Xiozan
Reply #62 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 6:37 PM
Reply #62 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 6:37 PM
Vista Envy... its both funny and sad. The underdog tactic at its lowest (greatest) moment.
AMD and Intel, anyone?
AMD and Intel, anyone?
MasonM
Reply #63 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 9:31 PM
nope
Reply #63 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 9:31 PM
| #59 by Septimus Tue, August 08, 2006 06:53 AM I'll have to disagree with the implication of that one. Yeah, there some of those types of *nix users out there, but I think they're in the minority and hardly the "average". I'm a long time Linux user and most of the Linux users I know aren't that way. Well, ok, we might crack a joke here and there, but it's all in good fun. You obviously don't use digg.com much |
nope
Haldur
Reply #64 Wednesday, August 16, 2006 1:30 AM
Reply #64 Wednesday, August 16, 2006 1:30 AM
I have to admit that I have a bias against Mac users and the Mac itself, but I didn't start out that way. My experiences changed that, though (I mean no offense to any current Mac users, but back in the day, the Mac caused me endless nightmares in my professional life). We had to convert all of our company's secretaries to use the Mac because when we got a new CEO, he brought along his old, long-time executive assistant when we recruited him from another company, and she INSISTED that all of the other secretaries use Mac and not PC (she refused to try to learn how to use a PC). Everyone (Especially the secretaries) resented her for that. And I had to support both Macs and PCs.
We had tons of problems, right from the start. First problem was that 3 out of 5 of the Macs we ordered had faulty hard drives (they had disk crashes right out of the box). They came with virus-infected pirated software preinstalled for our convenience (and this is from one of the big Mac retailers). The drives that were recommended to us seemed adequate for our uses, but we were still thinking like PC users -- they were far from adequate (the reason was not apparent until much later, and I'll get to that). Because of this one stubborn mac user (with far too much power for a brand new employee) we had to figure out how to network the VAX, PCs, and Macs, which also was a nightmare -- we went with Pathworks for Macintosh (we already were using the standard Client/Server Pathworks, to network the PCs with the VAX). Pathworks for the PC was not the greatest product out there, but it served our purposes. On the other hand, Pathworks for the Macintosh was a horrible piece of software that sort of worked, if you didnt' look at anything too closely.
Now I want to say that my PC Support duties were totally part-time == I was a programmer, but I just happened to be the only one with sufficient PC experience at the company to do PC Support. We had about 30-50 PCs total scattered among our offices across the US. Support for them, including installing new printers, troubleshooting, maintaining licenses, replacing hard drives, network software upgrades, etc. took up relatively little of my time, (except when we got major network software updates, but even then, the problems were not usually user problems). We now had only 5 MAcs, and the problems we had just were constant, and most of them were centered on the one and only supposedly EXPERIENCED Mac user -- the CEO's Secretary. She should have been training me; but no, she had to be the most PC illiterate person I have ever met that actually had PC experience (I mean PC in the generic personal computer sense). She did all sorts of stupid things.
She wanted to do backups of her work, but backups to floppy were too difficult for her. I agreed that it was a good idea. We gave her a some space on the VAX and taught her how to back up her work to the VAX drive. A few weeks later, the server crashed. IT turns out that she got tired with simply copying over the files that she wanted to backup there (she wanted to maintain her convoluted directory system that she had on the Mac) so every night, she woudld simply drag her hard drive icon to the VAX drive icon. Unfortunately, she didnt' bother to check which directory that icon was actually pointing to, so she kept making copy after copy after copy of her entire hard drive. It was nearly impossible to track down the problem, since the VAX limits you to directory nesting of 255 (I think) levels), but Pathworks for Mac did not actually check the nesting on the mac side (And left it to the VAX version to simply throw up when it saw that).
This happend 3 times in a row, every time we told her not to do that and she sounded like she understood, but she did it again and again.
So next we got her an Iomega drive (I forget which one) to do backups to. She said she understood how to do it, but there I Was every friday evening helping her. She finally gave up on doing backups completely, which was fine by me, until she had corrupted files...
Anyway, the whole experience for me was a nightmare. I'm 100 percent certain that no other Mac user in the world could have been as bad as this one woman. But this experience has soured me completely to Macs and I will never ever ever buy one or recommend that a friend or family member get one ever again (I used to recommend it to my pc-illiterate friends, but stopped doing it when I thought that my worst fears would be getting midnight calls about their Macintosh problems).
Anyway, that's my sad story. Use a mac if you like it. I just don't want to hear about it. -Haldur
We had tons of problems, right from the start. First problem was that 3 out of 5 of the Macs we ordered had faulty hard drives (they had disk crashes right out of the box). They came with virus-infected pirated software preinstalled for our convenience (and this is from one of the big Mac retailers). The drives that were recommended to us seemed adequate for our uses, but we were still thinking like PC users -- they were far from adequate (the reason was not apparent until much later, and I'll get to that). Because of this one stubborn mac user (with far too much power for a brand new employee) we had to figure out how to network the VAX, PCs, and Macs, which also was a nightmare -- we went with Pathworks for Macintosh (we already were using the standard Client/Server Pathworks, to network the PCs with the VAX). Pathworks for the PC was not the greatest product out there, but it served our purposes. On the other hand, Pathworks for the Macintosh was a horrible piece of software that sort of worked, if you didnt' look at anything too closely.
Now I want to say that my PC Support duties were totally part-time == I was a programmer, but I just happened to be the only one with sufficient PC experience at the company to do PC Support. We had about 30-50 PCs total scattered among our offices across the US. Support for them, including installing new printers, troubleshooting, maintaining licenses, replacing hard drives, network software upgrades, etc. took up relatively little of my time, (except when we got major network software updates, but even then, the problems were not usually user problems). We now had only 5 MAcs, and the problems we had just were constant, and most of them were centered on the one and only supposedly EXPERIENCED Mac user -- the CEO's Secretary. She should have been training me; but no, she had to be the most PC illiterate person I have ever met that actually had PC experience (I mean PC in the generic personal computer sense). She did all sorts of stupid things.
She wanted to do backups of her work, but backups to floppy were too difficult for her. I agreed that it was a good idea. We gave her a some space on the VAX and taught her how to back up her work to the VAX drive. A few weeks later, the server crashed. IT turns out that she got tired with simply copying over the files that she wanted to backup there (she wanted to maintain her convoluted directory system that she had on the Mac) so every night, she woudld simply drag her hard drive icon to the VAX drive icon. Unfortunately, she didnt' bother to check which directory that icon was actually pointing to, so she kept making copy after copy after copy of her entire hard drive. It was nearly impossible to track down the problem, since the VAX limits you to directory nesting of 255 (I think) levels), but Pathworks for Mac did not actually check the nesting on the mac side (And left it to the VAX version to simply throw up when it saw that).
This happend 3 times in a row, every time we told her not to do that and she sounded like she understood, but she did it again and again.
So next we got her an Iomega drive (I forget which one) to do backups to. She said she understood how to do it, but there I Was every friday evening helping her. She finally gave up on doing backups completely, which was fine by me, until she had corrupted files...
Anyway, the whole experience for me was a nightmare. I'm 100 percent certain that no other Mac user in the world could have been as bad as this one woman. But this experience has soured me completely to Macs and I will never ever ever buy one or recommend that a friend or family member get one ever again (I used to recommend it to my pc-illiterate friends, but stopped doing it when I thought that my worst fears would be getting midnight calls about their Macintosh problems).
Anyway, that's my sad story. Use a mac if you like it. I just don't want to hear about it. -Haldur
foreverserenity
Reply #65 Thursday, August 17, 2006 12:40 PM
Wow! I guess being she was older she didn't see why she should change uh?
Oy! I can bet you were biting your fingernails and your tongue too!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel your pain!
OMG........
My goodness Haldur, I don't blame you one bit! I would probably have jumped...and taken her with me! [just kididng] but I totally understand why you hate Macs...yikes! Thanks for sharing your story....if there were awards for the worse experience with Macs you would win hands down!
Reply #65 Thursday, August 17, 2006 12:40 PM
| his old, long-time executive assistant when we recruited him from another company, and she INSISTED that all of the other secretaries use Mac and not PC (she refused to try to learn how to use a PC). Everyone (Especially the secretaries) resented her for that. And I had to support both Macs and PCs. |
Wow! I guess being she was older she didn't see why she should change uh?
| and most of them were centered on the one and only supposedly EXPERIENCED Mac user -- the CEO's Secretary. She should have been training me; but no, she had to be the most PC illiterate person I have ever met that actually had PC experience (I mean PC in the generic personal computer sense). She did all sorts of stupid things. |
Oy! I can bet you were biting your fingernails and your tongue too!
| She wanted to do backups of her work, but backups to floppy were too difficult for her. I agreed that it was a good idea. We gave her a some space on the VAX and taught her how to back up her work to the VAX drive. A few weeks later, the server crashed. IT turns out that she got tired with simply copying over the files that she wanted to backup there (she wanted to maintain her convoluted directory system that she had on the Mac) so every night, she woudld simply drag her hard drive icon to the VAX drive icon. Unfortunately, she didnt' bother to check which directory that icon was actually pointing to, so she kept making copy after copy after copy of her entire hard drive. It was nearly impossible to track down the problem, since the VAX limits you to directory nesting of 255 (I think) levels), but Pathworks for Mac did not actually check the nesting on the mac side (And left it to the VAX version to simply throw up when it saw that).This happend 3 times in a row, every time we told her not to do that and she sounded like she understood, but she did it again and again. |
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel your pain!
| So next we got her an Iomega drive (I forget which one) to do backups to. She said she understood how to do it, but there I Was every friday evening helping her. She finally gave up on doing backups completely, which was fine by me, until she had corrupted files... |
OMG........
| Anyway, the whole experience for me was a nightmare. I'm 100 percent certain that no other Mac user in the world could have been as bad as this one woman. But this experience has soured me completely to Macs and I will never ever ever buy one or recommend that a friend or family member get one ever again (I used to recommend it to my pc-illiterate friends, but stopped doing it when I thought that my worst fears would be getting midnight calls about their Macintosh problems).Anyway, that's my sad story. Use a mac if you like it. I just don't want to hear about it. -Haldur |
My goodness Haldur, I don't blame you one bit! I would probably have jumped...and taken her with me! [just kididng] but I totally understand why you hate Macs...yikes! Thanks for sharing your story....if there were awards for the worse experience with Macs you would win hands down!
Ashley
Reply #66 Monday, December 11, 2006 9:00 AM
Reply #66 Monday, December 11, 2006 9:00 AM
If every one used a Mac, where do you think the viruses would go to then? I'm a mac user myself and have been since my younger days. I've always been in a heated argument on which computer to choose. People just have to grow up and accept the fact that there are two computers out there that are totally different than one another. If you like a family-oriented computer that has security on almost every thing, get a mac. If you want a computer that is more business and schoolwork-oriented, get a PC. Even though I support Macs, I still have to accept the fact that there are people out there that prefer PC computers over macs.
XX
Reply #67 Tuesday, December 12, 2006 4:32 AM
I'm Linux user. I'm also Windows user. Basically the only OS I don't like (but not hate) is mac. Each time I used mac computer I had some issues with it. In my photography class, it corrupted my thumb drive. Yes, that's right. I had to go out and take pictures again.
I liked mac computers 15 years ago. I certainly doesn't now. Not only hardware isn't as good as it was compared to other computers back then, the users seems to be more and more frantic fans the worse the whole thing is. There's maybe one, or even two things mac computers can that pcs cannot, but those isn't something I care about, IE: CISC as opposed to RISC. Now, when they switched to Intel, it's not even CISC.
Reply #67 Tuesday, December 12, 2006 4:32 AM
| Linux users dont like PCs and Macs |
I'm Linux user. I'm also Windows user. Basically the only OS I don't like (but not hate) is mac. Each time I used mac computer I had some issues with it. In my photography class, it corrupted my thumb drive. Yes, that's right. I had to go out and take pictures again.
I liked mac computers 15 years ago. I certainly doesn't now. Not only hardware isn't as good as it was compared to other computers back then, the users seems to be more and more frantic fans the worse the whole thing is. There's maybe one, or even two things mac computers can that pcs cannot, but those isn't something I care about, IE: CISC as opposed to RISC. Now, when they switched to Intel, it's not even CISC.
foreverserenity
Reply #68 Wednesday, December 13, 2006 9:13 PM
And that's all you can do Ashley! We should all just accept each others differences and tastes is one of those!
Yep, as I said before, some like it, some really hate it. Hate a strong word, but some people really do.
Reply #68 Wednesday, December 13, 2006 9:13 PM
| Even though I support Macs, I still have to accept the fact that there are people out there that prefer PC computers over macs. |
And that's all you can do Ashley! We should all just accept each others differences and tastes is one of those!
| I liked mac computers 15 years ago. I certainly doesn't now. Not only hardware isn't as good as it was compared to other computers back then, the users seems to be more and more frantic fans the worse the whole thing is. |
Yep, as I said before, some like it, some really hate it. Hate a strong word, but some people really do.
starkers
Reply #69 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:10 PM
Reply #69 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:10 PM
The sad thing about a lot of Mac haters is that they've never ever even tried one out. It's like they're sheep, one goes 'baaaad Mac' and the rest all follow suit without ever having grazed in the Mac pastures.
I've heard plenty of Linux bashers nastily commenting on how Linux OSes fail to do things I do or would like to, but being that I've never tried out a Linux OS, I'll reserve my opinion until I have. Even then I'd keep my opinion to myself if it fell into the category of flaming/bashing, cos what may not work for me may be perfect for somebody else....and to me, bashing someone's product of choice is tantamount to insulting their intelligence/intergrity, etc.
Personally, I think most flamers/bashers have an unsatisfactory (love) life and feel the need to pay out on somebody/something else to help feel better about themselves. I could suggest a much healthier alternative, but most would be too set in their nasty, despicable ways to form a sincere relationship that'd help put some meaning into their lives.
I met one such person not so long ago. We have two major car manufacturers here in Oz, Ford and Holden....and this bloke was so pro-Ford that he became quite obnoxious when ever anyone mentioned Holden. If only he'd wake up and smell the roses, he might eventually gain a friend, perhaps even two, maybe even a girlfriend and get some romance in his life....tho at 58 (and so wrinkled he'd put a prune to shame) it might be a bit late for him.
Some people make themselves hard, if not impossible to love/like.
I've heard plenty of Linux bashers nastily commenting on how Linux OSes fail to do things I do or would like to, but being that I've never tried out a Linux OS, I'll reserve my opinion until I have. Even then I'd keep my opinion to myself if it fell into the category of flaming/bashing, cos what may not work for me may be perfect for somebody else....and to me, bashing someone's product of choice is tantamount to insulting their intelligence/intergrity, etc.
Personally, I think most flamers/bashers have an unsatisfactory (love) life and feel the need to pay out on somebody/something else to help feel better about themselves. I could suggest a much healthier alternative, but most would be too set in their nasty, despicable ways to form a sincere relationship that'd help put some meaning into their lives.
I met one such person not so long ago. We have two major car manufacturers here in Oz, Ford and Holden....and this bloke was so pro-Ford that he became quite obnoxious when ever anyone mentioned Holden. If only he'd wake up and smell the roses, he might eventually gain a friend, perhaps even two, maybe even a girlfriend and get some romance in his life....tho at 58 (and so wrinkled he'd put a prune to shame) it might be a bit late for him.
Some people make themselves hard, if not impossible to love/like.
foreverserenity
Reply #70 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:30 PM
Interesting analogy!LOL! Funny too!
That they do Starkers. And some people are just too set in their ways to change, ever.
Reply #70 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:30 PM
| The sad thing about a lot of Mac haters is that they've never ever even tried one out. It's like they're sheep, one goes 'baaaad Mac' and the rest all follow suit without ever having grazed in the Mac pastures. |
Interesting analogy!LOL! Funny too!
| Personally, I think most flamers/bashers have an unsatisfactory (love) life and feel the need to pay out on somebody/something else to help feel better about themselves. I could suggest a much healthier alternative, but most would be too set in their nasty, despicable ways to form a sincere relationship that'd help put some meaning into their lives. I met one such person not so long ago. We have two major car manufacturers here in Oz, Ford and Holden....and this bloke was so pro-Ford that he became quite obnoxious when ever anyone mentioned Holden. If only he'd wake up and smell the roses, he might eventually gain a friend, perhaps even two, maybe even a girlfriend and get some romance in his life....tho at 58 (and so wrinkled he'd put a prune to shame) it might be a bit late for him. Some people make themselves hard, if not impossible to love/like. |
That they do Starkers. And some people are just too set in their ways to change, ever.
bakerstreet
Reply #71 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:30 PM
Reply #71 Thursday, December 14, 2006 10:30 PM
I'm with others who point to the commercials. I have always been vaguely annoyed with Mac people, but the commercials have raised my ire exponentially. They are basically lies in a cutesy package, insulting the very people they want to woo. Nice business plan.
XX
Reply #72 Saturday, December 16, 2006 11:41 PM
Reply #72 Saturday, December 16, 2006 11:41 PM
I would love to go and introduce the person who invented that ads to pain.
I can say that I don't like mac computers because I HAVE tried them. Each time I tried, it gets worse and I like mac computers less.
I can say that I don't like mac computers because I HAVE tried them. Each time I tried, it gets worse and I like mac computers less.
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Reply #61 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 10:25 AM
Thanks for the link thomassen.