News.com readers weigh in on Mac zealotry
CNET News.com readers almost blew out my inbox Tuesday morning.
I had a pretty good idea it was going to happen, after posting a request in this space from Mac readers for comment on the story I posted today, "Why do Apple customers care so much?" At one point, I received about 50 e-mails in 50 minutes before I had to ask people to stop.
I asked readers to consider a simple question: Why are Mac users so passionate about Apple? And why is that hardcore, unyielding group of Apple users unable to accept any criticism of the company or its products?
I received a variety of responses, mostly from those who told their personal story of converting to the Mac and their desire to let everyone they knew in on their experience. Some were of the typical fawning "Mac rocks! Windows sucks!" variety, but most were well-written and thoughtful responses that considered the history of the Mac vs. PC wars as well as the present.
Thank you to everyone who participated, and I'm sorry I couldn't personally answer everyone's notes. I've taken a few excerpts from some of the e-mails I received and posted them below. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.
• Much like racism divides America when one group is perceived to be different than the majority, Apple's products were different enough (remember "Think Different"?) to be shunned by the Windows majority. And just like racism, the arguments are often based on ignorance, misunderstandings, and a lack of respect for different cultures.
--Michael Walker
• It's hard to put my own feelings into words on this, but that's just it: I have feelings for my Apple computer. Not in the creepy obsessive way or anything, but I genuinely love my iBook.
--Ryan Spilken
• I will be honest, there was a time that I was a militant Mac user, compelled to point out the lemming-like behavior of my PC brethren even though their platform was inferior to that which I chose to use. As you stated, this was in the mid- to late '90s, when more and more consumers were gaining access to machines in their homes for the first time, and schools (my particular purview) were just beginning to consider abandoning Apple for cheaper (initially, at least) Windows-based PCs.
However, it was not long before I realized that technology, in whatever form, platform, software, hardware, what-have-you, is JUST A TOOL.
--Damon Osborne
• It's almost like a religious experience in that you feel like you have to tell everyone you know in an effort to "save them."It's crazy, and I never understood those people, but now I am one.
--Doug Otto, vice president of systems engineering for Govstar and a Sacramento, Calif., resident
• The Mac is anti-mediocrity. Anti-plain. Anti-cookie cutter. The Mac represents a certain standard of excellence that most PC makers seem to forgo and Microsoft has never practiced. Your average PC is a thoughtless box put together with all the personality and soul of a machine that makes nails. Your average Mac is designed, and thought out, and planned. These are machines with personality, verve, life.
That is such a rare quality to find from an American corporation nowadays. True excellence and appreciation for design and artistry in a product. That is what makes Apple a notch better than most corporations in my book and why I find myself so passionately attached to the Mac cause.
--Larry Madill, a freelance writer from Hollywood, Calif.
• In the end, it is what you grow up with. No one wants to change their comfortable environment, which is what technology ironically does all the time. People are changing and people are avoiding change, see the problem?
--Philippe Chaunu, a student at Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
• While these OS wars or chip wars have always existed, the Internet gives your average person a voice to be heard by many. With blogs and forums, anyone can offer up a point of view to be read by thousands. Combine all of the above points with a person's desire to be "right" about everything, and the Internet becomes the perfect battlefield. As we learned with e-mail (and now the Web), technology enables people to aggressively push their own opinions in ways that they would not during face to face conversation.
--Michael Walker
• My take on the passion that the Mac users exhibit comes from one thing. No one likes to be wrong.
--Daniel Wagner
• For my way of thinking, these platforms are tools and people should use the tools they feel comfortable with and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Now, more than at any other time in Macintosh history, these anti-Mac and anti-PC attitudes are changing. These days, even many hard-core PC users are gaining a new attitude toward the Macintosh, and the Mac zealots seem to be softening. At least in the forums and circles I run in.
I see the Macintosh finally earning the respect it never had from the PC crowd. It all really seemed to change dramatically when Apple chose Intel chips. Now we all can own a single box that can run Mac OS X, UNIX, and Windows.
--Jim Felbab, a retired engineer from Mukwonago, Wisc.
• Apple reaches out to its users. Take a look at the Apple stores, I live in Sacramento. Our store at Arden Fair Mall was getting so overrun by people asking questions and wanting tech support, they actually took the check stands out and converted them to additional tech support stations. If you want to buy something, the floor staff carries electronic registers on their belt now. It may not be a perfect solution, but it sure shows a lot more interest in the customer than you get from Best Buy or Wal-Mart. You make a customer believe you're working for him, the customer will stand up for your products. Apple is building brand loyalty, a concept lost in American business over the last 30 years.
--Curt, a graphic designer and Sacramento resident
• I am a 16-year-old and I always get friends saying "So, what is so special about this Mac computer then?" And I end up spending about 20 minutes talking about the basics like it's faster, doesn't crash, no viruses, etc. Even at school, I use my Mac to make presentations and such, and when I show them to my class everyone goes "WOW", how'd you do that? And again, I end up talking about how Mac and Windows are different. I am just closing in on being a Mac user for one year and I have already 'converted' people from Windows to Mac - and feel happy about this.
--Ramin Movahed
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
ya. ;-)
I use a Mac because for me and what I do it is just plain better
than the Windows platform.
Now does this mean 'Windows Sucks!'? Nope, not at all. It just
doesn't meet my needs is all. It may meet yours, and good for
you if it does.
I do have a few gripes about Macs as well. They really need to
slap the Open GL consortium a bit. All the bickering and infighting going on in that group is really slowing down progress
on something to compete with MS's Direct 3d.
Another gripe is their choice in video cards for the iMac. They
really should have at least made a better video card a BTO
option. And the lack of real choices in the Mac Pro for video
cards needs to be fixed as well.
Aside from those things I am quite happy with my Mac, and OS
X.
Do I pass the 'Zealot' test?
have a choice between them or a Mac.
windows based networks, multiple certifications, etc.) I originally
chose a Mac for my home computer because I just wanted
something that didn't need constant support.
As Apple's popularity continues to grow I've been getting an
increasing number of requests for Macs from my users. Today
most of our executives and increasing number of our managers
run Macs.
A laundry list of Vista problems has forced us to make changes
that is allowing us to replace many regular user PCs with Mac (or
Linux).
The end result is our support workload is dropping as Macs
replace PCs in our company. Loving that fact doesn't make you
a zealot. It does, however, make you grateful.
Never in a MILLION YEARS would I compare the differences b/w two operating system to the CENTURIES of STRUGGLE that humanity has faced on basis of culture, ethnicity, or skin color. Michael Walker, you are an idiot.
His point was that ignorance and unfamiliarity breeds distrust. And that those conditions can create a kind of hatred for something that's simply different from what you're used to. Not that Windows users are racist for harassing Mac users.
Because the Macs we are purchasing for our company are about
20% cheaper than a comparable Dell, and the cost of MS Office
is the about the same on each platform.
Then the PCs need about $200 of additional apps
(Antivirus/Antispyware, etc) and support licenses to keep them relatively safe.
Ding ding ding ding. You win!
This doesn't just go for MAC fanatics. This goes accross the board. Even though by and large, XP machines may be a little cheaper that Mac's, that doesn't mean they're necessarily cheap. And of course, who else besides us 'geeks' are going to come here and post our opinions? So the audience and the contributers here are already a small class of us that are overly zealot about the topics in which we respond anyways.
It depends on how you come down on the issue. Whatever youe currnet PC, if you love it, the other side bashing you is ignorant. If you hate it, you will bash right along side it.
My advice? Love technology in general and not corporations or specific products.
I mean aren't all arguments of perfection completly invalidated by the simple FACT that every OS has released subsequent updates and versions? If anything is perfect, why fix it, update it or change it? If it's not perfect, then why isn't it possible for a competitor to improve it? Simply stating that "it hasn't happened yet" isn't a fact. It's an opinion. It's always interesting to see what Apple comes up with but it's also as interesting to see what Microsft does next. Look inside yourself though. When you hear that Company A or M is releasing a new product, before you even see it or read about it or even know what it is, what's your prejudice telling you about it? History shmistory. Both of those two have had successes and failures over the years and even now.
I bet that an Apple fan know's in his mind that this secret product is going to be great unless it proves otherwise, and Microsoft is going to be crap unless proved other wise. Vice versa for Microsoft fans. Personally, I'll wait til I see what it is. If it's something that I want. Great. If not, why bash someone else for wanting it.
Do you honestly think the world would be better off with Apple as the monopoly? It would be the same damn thing the other way around. Green or not, innovative or not, Apple, like Microsoft, are not charities. They both want to sell as many products as possible.
(Right now, the Mac's USA share is only (IDC) 6.3%, and it's worldwide share is in the Others category, behind at least five other companies.)
majority of people who post on message boards or comments. I
doubt the majority of the PC market at large cares or knows much
about Mac Zealotry.
And Apple market share has been growing pretty steadily now with
the Macbook / Macbook Pro line and the switch to Intel.
Your statement that Mac has a more elegant interface is also stated as a fact.
Well I would say that if inded it is a FACT that the MAC is better, then the MAC is better.
But before those days, Macs by design were better suited to handle graphics programs. Not in the sheer brute force manner that makes todays graphic cards such 3D powerhouses, but by building into the Mac hardware, a complete set of graphic routines/libraries to be consistently called upon by any application. The QuickDraw graphic library defined ways for creating objects, patterns and shading. Because these routines were burned into the custom ROM chip of the Macintosh, they ran very fast. Windows computers from that era (Windows 286/386, and Windows 3.11) had to call those graphics routines from a software library (.DLL) for applications to use. Think how much faster a ROM cartridge game loads up on a game console, compared to a game that loads from CD. This gave Mac graphics apps a significant speed advantage.
Also, back at that time, PC architecture could not effectively address all of the RAM that you could install in the Windows PC. Windows computers crashed frequently due to lack of "System Resources". Microsoft promoted the ability to open many programs at the same time under Windows, but the reality was that you often could not run more than 3 memory heavy apps at one time, before needing to restart your computer to free System Resources. Every time a Windows computer exited from RAM, it did not return all of the RAM it used back to the OS. Word might use 1,024k, and return 968k back to the OS. This was memory leak, until your overall pool of RAM was less and fragmented much like a hard disk drive. Rebooting freed the memory and made it all continuous again. Some of you young guys have never had to deal with config.sys files and issues of extended versus expanded memory.
Macs had access to continuous RAM. Applications could fully exploit that RAM. Users did not have to play with cryptic text files to use their computers efficiently. So while a Windows machine was slowing to a crawl as it thrashed it's hard disk with swap file access, Mac users were working with large graphic files in a more productive manner. They simply got their work done faster.
Many things that we take for granted were introduced to the public on Macs. Built in networking support. On the early Internet, Macs were the most numerous clients out there because networking was built in. Sharing files easily between desktops on a LAN without the need for a server was a Mac thing too, back with System 7 (OS/7). So, a small business could by 5 Macs and a laserprinter, hook them all up and share files without the need for an IT guy such as myself. And THAT is very empowering. It is only in recent times that Windows users can make somewhat similar claims for ease of use.
So the Mac people who defend the platform are simply trying to say, "this is what we've been telling you for years". I'm not saying that Microsoft hasn't introduced useful software innovations over the years. They have. But Mac users were being excluded, while having their innovations mimicked. Much like your supervisor taking credit and getting a bonus from his boss, for all of the hard work that was actually done by you... without even having the decency to mention that the project was a success thanks to your work. This is the position that Apple users have been in for years.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
PowerPoint
Lotus Jazz
And, as someone who's creativity is based in numbers, it may amuse you to learn that the first spreadsheet was Visicalc, which ran on an Apple II computer and predated Lotus 123 and Excel. So if you wanted to crunch numbers back then, the Apple II was your business computer. :)
now Apple is in and PC is out. Why stand in line knowing full
well that their is no new products being given away and no
shortage of products online or at any other Apple store. Apple is
the perfect example of brainwashing marketing as I call it. Yes,
they make pretty good products. But more importantly they
make artistic products. Right now form is over taking function in
its importance.
This could spell trouble for Apple in the long run. Because if
they cannot keep up with what people want in terms of looks.
They are gone. This could just be a fad computer? I give Steve
Jobs credit he knows how to make people get excited about a
computer!
Apple has probably 2 to 5 hardware architectures at any time. Microsoft operating systems get the fun of running on thousands of architectures.
When your programmers and designers spend less time bug testing hardware, writing drivers, and making things compatible, they have more time to improve quality.
You can do one job well, or 100 jobs half assed.
PC users complain about the lack of variety and upgrade solutions in Apple land. But that's precisely what makes Apple products so good.
Let's not forget that Apple is just another company only interested in profits. No, they don't care about the users--they only use 'better than windows' as a sales catch-phraze. And forgetting all the alternatives (linux, pc-bsd, desktop-bsd, zeta, opensolaris) most Apple users do "free advertising" for apple. Think about it: it's a great business model!
PS. Let's not forget about the alternatives. Apple is no alternative when they lock you into ONLY THEIR OS and ONLY THEIR HARDWARE.
I smell another MSFT.
and ONLY THEIR HARDWARE"
WHAT the hell does that mean?
about what others think and just use whatever platform you
choose. Every 20 minutes you talk about making up for your
shortcomings macs, you're losing valuable alone time with the
one you defend so ademently. Spend that time with the one
you love instead of wasting pc's time used to have a life. A life
that would be infinitely more enjoyable if macs would accept
themselves and shut up.
(note: I am a mac user, and I have a life)
- Bloody knuckles
- by direvarg December 13, 2007 10:03 AM PST
- Bear with me on this, I will get to the Mac vs PC point. I used to
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- Good point
- by rolandk10 December 17, 2007 2:39 PM PST
- I actually used Snap-On for years along side other tools. My argument was a little different than your friends though. I worked third shift. While both has lifetime warranties, I could hardly get a tool replaced at three in the morning. I needed a tool that was less disposed to breaking in the first place.
- Like this
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(33 Comments)work with a guy who used to sell Snap On tools. Though he had
moved on he was still passionate about Snap On tools. He
explained to me that at only a slightly higher price people could
buy superior tools to your Craftsman level of tool. I asked what
he meant. He explained that when he went to mechanic shops
he would look for the guys who had bloody knuckles. Those
knuckles, he explained, were bloodied by the mechanic gritting
his teeth and putting his weight into his cheap wrench and,
when the tool (due to loose manufacturing tolerances) slipped
the mechanic's thrifty nature was penalized by his knuckles
getting bloodied by whatever he slammed them into. My friend
explained that for a slightly higher initial investment the
mechanic would make a ton more money because of greater
productivity (not much productive happens while hopping about
and cursing), and be a generally nicer guy (your hand being in a
regular state of agony because of stupid work place mishaps
would probably put you in a surly mood), and the shop where
the guy works making more money while reducing Workmans'
Comp claims and premiums. He then explained his frustration
with these guys who wouldn't believe that they didn't have to get
as many bloody knuckles while believing that my friend was an
idiot (or, worse, a snake oil salesperson) for representing a
company that was so obviously selling a bill of goods. The sad
thing, he told me, is that of all people mechanics should
understand the value of quality workmanship but so many of
them were not only ignorant but willingly so that he just could
not believe it. He still winces when he sees bloody knuckles.
Having been a long time Windows User before I opened my mind
and then switched to Mac 4 years ago, I look at my scarred
knuckles and then look up to see so many people with freshly
bloodied knuckles and I can't understand why....
As a tech, I work on bith Mac and PC often. It seems to me, that if you just use a computer for your work, you either like or dislike what you have. Since I fix these things, I have seen problems with both and I have seen both run flawlessly. I can't tell anyone with certainty that no MAC will ever break. Obviously. I would say that it may be less disposed to break. But by how much, in reality, I couldn't say.
I say buy what you like. The dangerous part (that word may be an exaggeration) is when a company develops such a blind following that they can do no wrong. It stumps the very innovation that fans tout. I've seen minor complaints retaliated to with such fervor it's scary.
There may actually be features that people want or aren't happy with. Fans stomping on them hurts the fans. I say push these comanies even harder to come up with more features, better reliability and for less cost. Buy the products, then push them harder for more.
Many people see on the news how many customers stand in line for products like the iPhone. To me, you are basically telling Apple, "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to buy your product." Kinda seems like borderline insanity.