Comments on: Review: 'MacHeads,' a documentary on the Mac faithful

The new documentary, by two Israeli brothers, is an interesting look at the passion behind the millions-strong Mac community. But it lacks clarity.

[iRhapsody]

I pretty much enjoy the fanboyism battle between Mac and Windows crowds. Simply Amazingly Hilarious. I'm looking forward to reading the ~!@#$%^&*(. Shall we begin, deadly polarized loyalists?

[8301]

And here I thought I was the only person who returned to CNET every ten minutes to take in even more of the invaluable contributions of the eternal Mac/PC argument.

[Mark_Anderson]

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Oh come on, it generates revenue.

[Renegade Knight]

The beauty of it is I can slam Windoze and Windoze users will agree. When I slam OS X. My oh my what a buch of bury your head in the sand in denial types who will stand up and denouce me like demonspawn. At least there are others like me I can find with Google so I can fix my OS X work problems.

[myles taylor]

You know, me and my friend Nada were talking about the glory days. Back when you saw a Mac user and you were excited because it was rare. Back when you were the underdog. Back when people didn't know what Macs were because they thought all computers ran Windows. Mac users these days aren't true Mac users, according to true "Macheads".

The Mac user base is growing, and the underdog status is being lost, as is the closeknit community. Oh well. It happens you know. Maybe it's sad, maybe it's good, maybe it's an improvement.

[Mark_Anderson]

Most of the Mac owners I know would shrink in horror from the people portrayed in this documentary. It just goes to show that one can be psychotic about pretty much anything.

[Renegade Knight]

I remember the glordy days. The fanatic base began with the first Mac. If you weren't a fanatic, you weren't crap. Fortunatly when I used Mac I wasn't afraid then to call it's stupid quirks stupid, or give a thumbs up when it did something better than windows.

[Mr. Dee]

25 million vs 1 billion, I think the decision was made ages ago which platform is superior.

[Sporlo]

awww, you ruined the streak. There was THREE WHOLE POSTS of non-Mac/PC arguments! :P

[kirkules]

Well then that should make issues like universal healthcare a no-brainer with most of the rest of the industrialized nations of the world doing it. Seriously and without sarcasm, if that works to get so called socialized medicine in the U.S. I'll take it.

Now to stay on topic, I think if we could role back the clock and implement and distribute the Mac OS like Windows was to business, with a few changes it might have made a difference. Macs could do graphics better than Windows for a long time. Anyway, this gets into the whole Mac/PC argument and I'd rather avoid that. I picked Mac in 95 cause i wanted the graphics capability. If you picked Windows for your needs than I hope you are happy. If you are switching welcome to the family or cult.

[Pishkado]

Totally illogical. Market share has little, if anything, to do with product quality.

[AllenKids]

Ever heard the word "Elite"?

Not that Mac users are elitists, just your argument is pretty weak & nothing new.

[Dalkorian]

You're flat out wrong. 25 million vs 1 billion just indicates which platform is more popular, not more superior.

Why am I bothering, slaves aren't worthy of an education. ;-)

[Mark_Anderson]

Slaves to fashion in particular, eh Dalkorian? ;)

[myles taylor]

2 million zunes vs 120 million plus iPods. Does this make the iPod superior? Numbers don't mean anything. Betamax was superior to VHS but that didn't change anything. HD might have been superior to Bluray but whatever.

[Renegade Knight]

Ha! That was OS/2 when it got it's GUI. It lost.

[jennyth]

you have got to be kidding, just because pc's were the only thing used in offices does not make them better than a mac. Maybe you should try one soon, and you will know what it is all about.

[Mark_Anderson]

jennyth

Uh... most Mac critics actually have. They're great machines but not 'better' than PCs in the sense that both systems have their pluses and minuses.

[LiamKe]

I suppose macs are good computers, I have even used some Macs in different moments. What I don't like about Mac is Mac-Users. I'm sorry (not all of them, I have some good friends among them, but 'in spite of' being Mac users), and I must add that I admire Apple as a company.
The computers market and the development of computing have been only possible because Microsoft (with all its problems and errors) created a big base of computer users. Mac is only an anecdote, although very useful indeed, but a peripheral one. If Mac dissapears now, NOTHING will happen, we still have Linux, and if even Linux dissapears, some other thing will appear.

[Sporlo]

I could be considered an Apple fanboy by some people, but I don't randomly flame Microsoft or viciously defend Apple. I don't get why people can't be an avid fan while still accepting any pros/cons about BOTH sides. I'll still defend Apple stuff if I feel the need to, but most of the time I don't find any reason to criticize Microsoft. It seems many people just won't accept that both companies are great. Besides, they're both very DIFFERENT in so many different ways, and I've noticed, like LiamKe, that the users can be very different too. (Your opinions of them are up to you to decide. I don't know enough Mac users to compare accurately)

[xcopy]

Bravo!!! I agree. Macs are a great second tier computer and I'm glad there's at least a "little" choice but it's the psychotic user group (iSheep, not "macheads"). These people need Stevie to tell them what to do, what to think, what to like - and not like, and when to queue up for the next over-hyped and overpriced offering because they'll buy anything with an apple logo on it. They have trouble thinking for themselves.... Bahhhh, Bahhhh!!! Uh oh. .the herd is moving. Oooh, look! There's some grass over there....gotta go..Bahhhh!

Apple makes all the decisions and insures their little (emphasis on "little" as it's still 5%) user group never paints outside the lines. If apple doesn't want you to do it, it's ain't never gonna happen. This is what most mac users want though and I guess it's a fair enough reason. Not many of us want to have to understand our cars in order to drive them, we just want them to work, and apple does an average, but far from great, job of delivering on that promise. If apple tells the iSheep their computers don't crash, lo and behold, iSheep everywhere believe it irrespective of what happens in reality with the constant crashing and hardware incompatibilities that exist.

The new apple tag line....

"Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?" R. Prior/G. Marx/S. Jobs


After using macs on/off since 85 (always because i had to, not by choice) the user base has stayed the same and that's fine. Most, but not all, mac users are not technically competent and need someone watching over them all the time to insure they don't injure themselves. I see this constantly, but there are lots of clueless PC users too..... It's the vociferous mac-is-the-only-option ones that I really can't stand. They're so narrow minded, so bigoted, and often clueless, that I'm unable to tolerate them.

Macs - and the TV commercials - can stay. It's the iSheep that have to go....

PS - We'll probably hear from that penguin dude in this thread (if he hasn't already posted) talking about how great macs are...can't wait....

As for apple "innovations", let's look at the new ipod nanos without a replaceable battery (can you spell revenue and landfill). now apple wants to sell a new laptop without a replaceable battery. Are we seeing a pattern here? Yet chief blowhard Jobs talks about what a "green" company apple is and the iSheep believe it because that's what they're told to believe. Baaaahhhh

[Renegade Knight]

@Sporlo

Thank you. You are exactly the kind of person who would REALISTICLY help me work with the Mac and fix the nits that get in the way of my computing.

[biznatch11]

Apple is so innovative, http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

[BillDemp]

ROFL! That video is great! I love The Onion.

[MacTel Man]

What made Mac users so special in the past, and what made them seem so cultish, was simply their rarity. In a sea of Windows users, the surprise and wonder of one Mac user running into another was just so exciting and wonderful that it automatically made for a feeling of camaraderie - like running into a long lost relative! This rarity of Mac users helped fan the flames of Mac-fanaticism by making we Mac members feel more like that of a family, or a group with a mission - a mission to save people from the drudgery of Windows and all things Microsoft!

Nowadays, the Mac has now become much more main stream, it's users are no longer a rarity, and these legends of new users no longer elicits quite the same feelings they used to. People and things change, and I guess that includes the Mac community at large, a community who's percentage of users now is beginning to be comprised mostly of 'former' Windows users, rather than the people that this film depicts!

As more and more Windows users, millions of them every year, continue to switch over to the Mac, then we should see less and less of the cult like atmosphere that this movie portrays. This for me is a good sign, but also a depressing one, as it means that the crazy days of the Mac cultist is numbered. I will miss it!

[Renegade Knight]

It wasn't the rarity. It was the cult like dedication.

[amphead]

good article, but I noticed that you wrote "...and between my wife and I, we have five..." I think you meant to write "...between me and my wife..." That type of grammatical faux pas is fine in a quick email or comment, but a professional writer should know better than to write like that in a published article.

[lenrooney]

Um, "my wife and I" is quite correct. "me and my wife" or "my wife and me" would be the faux pas. See:

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/meandi?view=uk

...unless you're just being sarcastic. In which case, never mind.

[Imamacandapc]

Um, you're wrong, lenrooney. The pronoun is the object of the preposition "between" in this usage, so "between you and me" is correct. You were also wrong in your reading of the reference you cited, so that makes two errors.

[websterphreaky]

IT SHOULD BE CALLED - ******** ... a day in the life in Fantasy Land, a World of Denial.

Apple the Great iNOvator.

A bit of the Truth for the Denial Crowd -
"Apple offers advice on 10.5.6 upgrade problems
CNet by Tom Krazit, December 18, 2008

If the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update caused you problems earlier this week, try, try again.

Apple has acknowledged an issue encountered by Leopard users trying to install the company's latest update released Monday."

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha .... this happens EVERY UPDATE!! EVERY RELEASE OF OS X!!

[lenrooney]

Didn't happen to me, did it happen to you, or are you just yabbering on about things you have no real experience with and really know nothing about?

Sure small problems crop up with the MacOS from time to time, but nothing ever as bad as Vista.

[Dalkorian]

THE SKY IS GREEN! THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END! REPENT, REPENT! I AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH AND THE TIME FOR PURIFICATION IS AT HAND!

See how ridiculous it looks when someone starts spewing out nonsense in all caps?

Because I believe you don't really know (likely paid by your master to spread lies), it should be pointed out that the problem you cited was minor, corrupted no one's computer and was a unique experience (meaning "never happened before"). Software Update barfed on the update and only partially loaded it, so when you tried to run it the computer would freeze. Rebooting it brought the machine back, without the update applied. Try that wintards!

[kojacked]

@Dickorian:
"Rebooting it brought the machine back, without the update applied. Try that wintards!"

I've had bad driver updates cause Vista to freeze, reboot, self repair and I'm back up without the bad driver installed. You really need to try an get at least one eye out of the hole once in awhile.

[websterphreaky]

For your information "by myles taylor", and as usual for ********, you've got the BS INFO.

Macs DO NOT HAVE A "user base is growing", he's the TRUTH AGAIN! -
Quote:
Apple Macs Fall Behind Windows PCs In Sales
The numbers are an indication that Apple may be feeling the competitive pressure of Windows PC vendors, such as HP and Dell, which have cut prices at much larger percentages.
By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Dec. 16, 2008
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212500783
Apple Macs in U.S. retail stores fell behind Windows PCs in sales growth last month, an indication that Apple's strategy of charging more for its critically acclaimed design may be showing weakness in the economic downturn.

PROOF AGAIN, ******** live in Fantasy Land.

[myles taylor]

Um....the Mac users base is close to 10%. 10 years ago it was around 3 or 4% I think?

[Dalkorian]

Don't bother Myles, this **** is now getting spanked by her mommy for sneaking onto her computer. She'll come back when she's done crying.

;-)

[Sporlo]

you can't cite a just a single source and declare your cause almighty. Not to mention there's virtually infinite different statistics that one could cite about 2 companies. You could decide to PROVE, WITH A REAL SOURCE that Microsoft employees use on average 7 less sheets of paper than Apple employees per day and proclaim Microsoft is clearly infinitely better than Apple. Really, most statistics are useless. In most cases, if you can cite one source against one company, there's another similar source against the other.

I've never looked at a single cited website on CNET for accuracy/proof of information because I don't really care. I don't know for sure, but I can GUESS (no proof! omg *** Sporlo f*cking cite your sources next time!!!!!!) that a majority of those sources aren't 100% accurate. Sure they might have the main idea, but details can easily get mixed up without detection.

[victor_sf]

IMHO Windows XP has a better user-interface than the Mac.

[Perry_Clease]

Well that is it in a nutshell, choose the OS that fits you.

[Speiler9]

Quoting victor_sf...
"IMHO Windows XP has a better user-interface than the Mac."

IMHO, my poop smells quite nice. And your point is?

[kojacked]

@Speiler9:
"my poop smells quite nice."

See it's not the mac, osx, or Apple that aren't liked. It's just the nutbags that go around smelling their own poop like you do that are despised.

[Sporlo]

in reference to victor_sf:
IMHO everyone has an HO.

Just to clear this up, I KNOW, and am 100% sure, that some people like Windows and some people like Mac. I don't need to know something I already know.

[trd1282]

I liked reading message boards better, when the nerds didn't have to worry about us (mac-users).

[spkrman6]

Some things Mac Users never say:
"I have to use a Mac at work, but I have a PC at home because they are more fun"
"I can just fix this by editing my register"
"Why does my home page keep changing?"
ha ha.
I love my Mac.

[Dalkorian]

A few more things Mac users never say:
"I better scan this thing for viruses."
"When was the last time this thing was defragged?"
"Uh oh, blue screen!"
"Why is WGA locking me out?"

Tis better to be free on a Mac than it is to be enslaved by winblows.

[xcopy]

"I have to use a Mac at work, but I have a PC at home because they are more fun"

You don't get out much do you? Use a mac at home by choice? Surely you're kidding, right?

"I can just fix this by editing my register"

What does this mean? Do you mean the registry? Oh, that's right, you'd never be able to tweak anything about your computer because Stevie didn't give you permission. Locked down tight so you can't hurt yourself, right?

"Why does my home page keep changing?"

Hmmm. Never happens to me, unless you're talking about a virus possibly? No one would defend windows as a secure system ("open window" would be a good name for it from a security perspective), but since we've already established you're probably not a very knowledgeable mac user, (that's OK, most (>90%) aren't) you should know that there's little fun for the virus writers going after 5% of the market. If you want to cause trouble, go after the machines that are used professionally by the majority (95%) of the world.

Uh, gee, I guess that leaves macs out. Apple has been selling them for 25 years and they've finally gotten back to 5% market share (after reaching their high point of approximately 10% in the late 80's/early 90's). That's telling em.....

I know, you love your mac, aka, leapfrog...

[rapier1]

Mac users never have to edit the registry... They just have to edit plists, 'defaults', and so forth. Same concept, different name.

Also, I do use a mac at work and vista at home. The mac is a great development platform for what I do. I just don't use it for much else. It's nice not being locked into one paradigm.

[AllenKids]

@rapier1

But the problem with registry is even Microsoft tried very hard to hide it from everyday user, one day your machine still most likely will snap, then suddenly Joe six pack or his eleven years old girl need to deal with a scary alien thing called ?Regedit?.

That won't happen on a mac, That won't even happen on a well preconfigured Ubuntu machine.

[websterphreaky]

Crucial Things Mac Users CAN'T SAY.

- Oh my drive is so Fragmented (and they are ********), I'll just use the built in Defrag Tool.
- Oh jeez, i need more RAM for this Video, Audio, Graphics etc. Project, I'll just use Windows "ReadyBoost" and plug in a cheap high-speed USB 2 flash drive and add another 2, 4, 6, 8 Gigabyte!
- Oh ****, Apple's OS X update fu@k3d up my system AGAIN, I'll just use ONE BUTTON RESTORE function to step back to any AUTOMATICALLY SAVE system state with ALL THE WORKING SYSTEM FILES. (See, with OS X you have to REINSTALL! bwah ha ha ha ha ha ) And NO OS X 10.5 DOESN'T REALLY have this.

And there are hundreds of other advanced technology features that you BSD CLONE of UNIX DOESN'T have the XP and VISTA does have! You know "VISTA" = Virtually Indestructible, Superior To Apple

********

[spkrman6]

Actually, I have a great deal of computer knowledge, and have been using and fixing them since the 8086 and DOS was state of the art. I will make some money tomorrow yanking some malware out of a PC, thanks. I do appreciate Windows for keeping me in business on a pretty regular basis, fixing silly things with arcane names and cryptic extensions. Repairing Macs is a pretty dead end prospect, unless someone drops theirs on the floor. I use a Mac because I like it, my updates have never caused any stress, my hard drive optimizes all by itself any time I install a piece of software or perform an update, and it has been running without a hiccup since i installed the OS quite some time ago. It's pretty to look at, too.

[ittesi259]

Articles like this do nothing to help us casual users of Apple products get away from the stereotype of being a fanboy.....thanks a lot....while I do love my Mac...buying it was a personal choice and nothing more.

[Sporlo]

u rock

[Walt Connery]

Today's Mac is nothing like the Mac of yesteryear. It's a 100% Intel, x86 platform that differs only aesthetically from all other x86 PCs sold. And, most importantly of all, today's Mac runs Windows ROOB natively with Apple's official BootCamp support now a standard part of OSX henceforth. Everything else considered, that is actually *the* milestone that is helping to make Macs more palatable to the buying public than they have ever been. Paradoxically, it is one of the least publicized of all neo-Mac capabilities and compatibilities, and it is by and large the most important of them all in terms the practical attraction of Macs in general. People who once avoided the Mac because of its hardware and software incompatibilities with x86 no longer have such incompatibilities to worry about when considering whether to purchase a Mac. What's so much better about the Mac today is that in order to buy one you no longer have to "think different" to do so, and you no longer have to be disadvantaged in terms of software and hardware compatibility and availability when buying a Mac--at least, nowhere near as much as was true prior to the Mac losing the last of its x86 incompatibilities.

Why is the "cult of Mac" dying on the vine? Not hard to figure out: the cult is right behind the platform itself. The traditional anti-x86/Windows Mac is indeed dead--long live the neo-Mac of today which embraces both x86 and Windows fully. For some reason, this is the side of the story that never seems to register among traditional Mac cultists primarily because they've been programmed to anti-x86 sentiment for so long that they're incapable of registering the fact that today's Mac isn't growing in popularity in some circles because it is different--it's growing in popularity because it is so much alike the general PC/Windows marketplace. Irony doesn't get much better than this...;)

[trd1282]

If OSX is comparable in any way to windows, then x86 is pretty much it, but hardly ironic in comparison. Apple is nothing like the "general PC/Windows marketplace", their market has always been clearly defined, consumers and creative professionals.

Apple computers sell because of great design, and who the hell doesn't enjoy good design? Does it bother all of you people so much that some of us like the experience and want our friends to give it a shot?

Do we have your permission to buy the computers we want? With such a large majority, die-hard windows users begin to sound anti-capitalist with this windows or nothing sentiment.

[kcotham]

And that is what makes it a sad thing. The going mainstream has marginalised the advantages. The hardware is not _exactly_ like a Windows PC, but very, very close. PowerPC architecture was, and still is technically superior to the legacy laden x86 architecture in many ways. But what makes the Macintosh so much better than your run of the mill PC is the operating system. Mac OS X is hands down more stable than Windows can ever hope to be. Why, because it is tailor made for the computer by the same company that made the computer. I hear Windows cronies all the time complain about Apple only allowing Mac OS X to run on Apple hardware. Of course, that's why it's so stable. If it were allowed to run on any computer manufacturer's computer with components made by a myriad of different contractors, it'd never be as compatible or stable.

And one thing I've noticed as a negative side effect of "going mainstream" is the small user interface philosophy changes Apple has made to court Windows users. These changes have, for the most part been contrary to Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines and degraded the usability of the Mac OS. I could and would cite these changes in detail if I had more time to research the changes with each new version, but I simply don't have the time.

Thinking differently is not necessarily a bad thing and I am always stunned by the attitude that it is. If we all followed the herd, we'd be no better off. It takes thinking differently to innovate. If Jobs and Woz didn't put the GUI innovations they saw at PARC to use, we'd all be typing arcane commands for the simplest of tasks still.


[I've used just about every major operating system since the Apple ][. This list includes systems starting with DOS since 3.1, Commodore 64's, Windows 3.11 to XP, various distributions of Linux, Solaris, AIX, and Mac OS from System 7 to Mac OS X 10.5.6. When I say I've used them, I mean just that. I used them to get work done and used them for an extended time. I don't mean I toyed with it for 15 minutes. This is something that Windows users often call "used a Mac".]

I've tried them all, and I continue to try new releases of alternate operating systems. It's sort of a hobby, but more of an eternal search for something that will work better. But I ALWAYS come back to the Macintosh. It's simple so that I can get tasks done, but still allows me to get under the hood if I need to.

[TheOriginalKLanD]

I watched the Movie and I have to agree with you that it was very sloppy. I was aware that some people were nuts for Apple, but not to that extent. To me a lot of what was presented was just Macheads spewing the same half-truth garbage that you often hear in Steve's speeches and the Apple ads.

Back in the day the Macintosh was a great machine, it was also my machine of preference at the time. Until about 96 or 97 when Apple was just way too far behind to compete with what windows was offering. By 98, I was a full blown PC user, and to be honest, I've never felt the urge to look back. When the G4 came out, I got excited, I thought "this is it! Apple has finally caught up!" I almost bought one, but being the cautious buyer, I decide to check them out first. I used one for about 2 weeks and almost thew it out the window. The experience was so confining that I couldn't take it. It had none of the flexibility I was used to and almost none of the Apps. So.. I gave it back and bought a new PC. I now have a PC laptop and a Mac pro at the office and to be honest, the only thing I use the Mac for is Keynote. Not for myself, but I get sent keynote presentations from time to time. All my graphic, audio and video editing is done on my laptop.

Violet Blue is a sex columnist?? Man.. she can't have too much experience with an attitude like that. Also, to the author of this article.. Seriously? Your wife would have dumped you if you bought a PC? Dude.. I would have kicked her out myself for having such a close minded attitude.

Which brings me to my last thought.

If you think you need a Mac to be creative, you really need to get your head out of Steve's @ss.