I Quit my Mac Addict and Mac World Magazine subscription about 3 years ago, when deciding that there was not much worth the content, since it was always slow, and I couldn't afford the new stuff they always had in it.
However, i found myself asking for a Subscription to Maximum PC Magazine as a gift for my holiday/B-Day gift, and got to thinking, have I really gone to the dark side?
I love my macs, and wouldn't give them up, but I find PC's much more fun to tinker with, and it would be more relevant to the work I am in to get a magazine like that, that would give me those odd tips that I might need in the future. These days, there is not much you can tinker with on a mac (like the G5's/Mac Pro's/Laptops) that I can afford to get/modify and play around with.
I am not a big fan of windows, but I DO like the hackability of it compared to OS X. Plus it gives me something to tinker with when something goes wrong.
So, am I losing touch with my Mac Brotheron?
There is no light side and dark side. Computers are tools. Use the best one for your purpose.
If you find PCs more relevant to what you do, then use them.
OS X takes a fair amount of time and knowledge to tinker with, but it has some nice stuff on the inside.
Your magazine and computer choices do not define you as a person.
I could not have said it better myself. As much as we bash pc's, ms, and such, at the end of the day it doesn't matter what platform you use. If it gets the job done, and you enjoy tinkering with it, then you're good. At this point in the game, with apple having gone to x86, there really isn't a "dark side" per se anymore, as even beige boxes can (illegally) run OS X.
In the last few months, I've been growing increasingly frustrated with some of Apple's hardware and software solutions at work. In a large network environment, Windows shows flexibility that the Mac OS just doesn't have. Both platforms have their place, as such I have both on my desk.
When properly managed, Windows can be a very reliable platform to work with. Sadly, it's often too easy and trendy to bash on Microsoft. I have a great deal of respect for them as their products do what needs to be done in an efficient and fairly straightforward answer.
Now, there are some who say that Linux is a better solution - for some people that's true. Since what I'm presently using works, there's really little reason to bother with it. While I am a support guy (I support all of the mac users in research, as well as some clinical applications within windows), I have nothing against MS.
Is MS software occasionally buggy, unstable, had a bad track record? Yes. Do I think that the horrible bugginess of Win95, 98, or ME was a bad thing? No. It created jobs, helped lots of folks build careers and helped boost our economy. It could be said that the delays of Vista are part of why the tech sector saw a dip in jobs.
That said, read what you like and don't worry about what others think. When all's said and done - you are the one who has to live with those choices, not other people.
Seriously, it's hard to justify make-work as good for anyone except the direct beneficiaries? eg: How does smoking-caused cancer benefit us all? It does provide lots of work for tobacco workers/sellers and the medical profession, but the cost to the rest of us is unacceptably high.
I'm not advocating against M$ really, just against the blind acceptance of faulty and/or resource-sucking products whose sale benefits a small portion of the population at the expense of the rest of us.
just a thought,
dan k
PS: oh yeah, re: darkside - forget it, as others have said, 'puters are just tools. It's what you do with them that counts.
As one who associates himself with Darkness, and has been described as darkness incarnate, I can assure you that there is no Darkside of Computing. I mean, I deal with cross-platform networking... if there were a Dark and Light side, I would be ridin' the Gray line.
Besides, with Jobs ever increasing Big Brother status, it may be that Macs are not the tools of the Rebellion any more, but are the tools of the uninformed minions of the Empire.
... just something to think about...
Thats not illegal, just unsupported.
By "beige boxes" I assumed the meaning was "generic PCs". If so...
It contravenes Apple's EULA. Doubly so, in fact, as the EULA forbids installing on non-Apple branded hardware as well as forbidding modifying it, which patching to break the TPM certainly does.
Because of that last bit, by my quick and haphazard investigating, using OS X on non-Apple hardware is in violation of the DMCA. Illegal it is.
Sorry, I'm kind of out of it today. I thought he meant Beige G3s.
I can see that mistake. Saying beige box around here can easily imply G3s. Of course in context of the thread it's a little harder.
I did have to read it twice, myself
Still can't see that 'buggy software helps the economy' idea. Spending a fortune on support and lost time merely to maintain equilibrium may benefit a handful of IT and phone support staff (who are probably in India), but it hardly helps the economy grow.
Think of what growth and innovation could have been gained by people using, rather than fighting with, their computers. At least in my industry, down time costs a lot more to the company than what we actually pay to have it fixed, so there is a net loss in terms of financial benefit.
I didn't meant to ramble like that. Windows 95 did a lot to build the PC support industry and infrastructure that is in place today. Considering the frustration that lots of folks went through in those days, we have things to show for it.
- USB (apple was responsible for the quick adoption by shipping that awful kb & mouse combo - creating a market for better input devices) - on the windows side - fewer configuration headaches, better compatibility
- Software vendors now have a market to sell products that address shortcomings of the MS product.
- Conflict, aggrivation, and frustration have a tendency to lead to innovation. Without those frustrations, people would not have made the jump to mac os x, or written software to address those issues (adaware, spybot, etc.)
Unfortunately, as cold as it sounds - those horrible MS products help build up IT departments, built skills in the techs supporting it, and ultimately made things better for everyone after a while.
Windows XP Pro, if properly admistered, is a wonderfully solid, reliable workhorse OS that gets the job done.
Heh, you say that like it's a good thing! I say the best IT dept is NO IT dept. There's no way I can be convinced crapware-driven IT is a positive thing.
Back in the day I used to visit lots of publishing houses and printers. The M$ shops had relatively huge IT departments. The all-Mac shops had mebbe one guy/gal who was the part-time troubleshooter when something went wrong (obviously not often.) A number of the Mac shops were just as big as the big wintel-based shops, but those companies wasted far far fewer resources dealing with IT problems.
Sorry if I sound cold-blooded
but IT depts are by and large the leaches of the corporate world. And I apologize in advance to leaches for lumping them in with M$-crapware-supporting IT staff. "skills" - Ha! Skills dealing with M$-junk! Why should anyone have to learn such otherwise useless "skills"?
Yeah, M$'s product is much less hassle to support than it used to be, but it's still loads more costly to support than any Mac OS.
dan k
ps: shoot, comes right down to it, mebbe there is a darkside after all! It ain't quite as dark as it used to be, but it's still pretty shady in there.
I know that the majority of your quote was sarcastic, but since I am 1/2 of the IT department for my company, and I support multiple Windows Active Directory networks, as well as Open Directory, basic peer-to-peer file sharing, Web, email, database, and backups... I gotta say, man... that stings.
IT is "it". If you think you can get by without knowing something about Windows hardware, software, and networking, as well as Mac hardware, software, and networking, not to mention ways to get two or more platforms working on the same network... well, I like to call that way of thinking '20th century'.
And I'll just go ahead and say that Yes, my company has a vested interest in Macs working on Windows networks, so see bias where you will.
if mods need to lock the thread before it gets out of hand, do it now.
the last thing I want as a flame war. As far as people doing the flaming, I work with both the hardware AND the software part of it. I make more money off of doing hardware support than I do with software. the main reason is people will just live with the slowness of the software, but when something goes out on their computer, they want it done cheap, and fast. That's where I come into the play
When possible, i have a 48 Hour turnaround, then again I have no life, so I can easily work through the night. However, when I get a lot of clients at once, i multi task and may take up to 36-48hrs on more troublesome machines (it could be that it takes more time, or it requires more dedication to fixing it). I rarely have a time when I have to go beyond that.
As far as software, even Macs have their share of software problems. Yeah, people say that macs can go pretty much forever without being reinstalled nowadays. But I find that the opposite. In fact, people talk all the times on forums about OS X going wonkey. you still need tech people to handle that, whether it means delving into the OS, or to wipe and reinstall. Not a lot of people are willing to do that, since a lot of them are just scared to move the mouse. Remember, there are people outside the forums here, ones that don't know anything but how to click-and-point at stuff on the screen
I still see tech support for even macs. it requires time to set it up, and maintain it. if unix/os x/linux was such an all powerful system that never needs maintnance, how come systems like blue Gene even go down for maintnance? most of it is done on the operating system than hardware.
It is nice to support this stuff, otherwise I would be bored. without the need to support a specific OS, means that it would get too costly to get certification on EVERY Operating system.
I special in Windows, because that's what I know the most. yeah, OS X is easier to trouble shoot, but still, windows is a lot more of a challenge. that's what I find fun about it. It's the quirkiness of it all that I like to muck with.
this being said, i have said what I believe to back my theory, and hope this thread doesn't start getting into a flame war
largely because of the many flaws and shortcomings in Windows. I know WinIT is needed now because without a fulltime IT staff, anything larger than a small Win deployment is unworkable. My point is, that's not acceptable. No product should be so tied to constant service.
Imagine if your car was as vulnerable to trouble as is Windows, even WinXP. Who would tolerate such dismal vulnerability and reliability? Sure, XP is much better than Windows used to be, but it's nowhere near as reliable and troublefree as consumers (including corp. consumers) have a right to expect.
Hey, Macs aren't free from their own problems, but noone here can name the last time they had to nuke and pave an entire Macintosh installation to 'cure' a particularly bad virus attack. Heh, but I'm certain many can recall doing that with Windows, and not just once either. Is there any bigger waste of mankind's time than anti-malware 'duty'? And another thing, different OSes working together without friction or trouble should be the default, not the exception.
I'm sure someone has done a study of how much extra using M$ products has cost vs. Macs (for example), measured against their utility and value. And I'm also sure M$-centered computing has a vastly higher cost than even a cobbled-together mess like classic MOS.
We (OS consumers) deserve better OS SW than M$ has ever supplied. Maybe that's why, by-and-large, we here seem to generally prefer Macs and Mac OS over all other OSes.
The more I ponder the choices M$ has made and the reasons why, the darker M$ looks.
dan k
Vista looks looks as dark as anything out of Redmond . . .
Hah, Vista is so evil, it really needs its own bashing-thread!
dan k
Wow all that about content protection is pretty crazy, especially about optical audio. My receiver only has DTS and DOLBY decoding on the optical input, that would be a big turn off for Vista. Thankfully all my machines are either too old to use Vista or Macs.
Even more fun: you just bought a big beautiful DVI monitor. You can do full 1080p HD video. But, since DVI doesn't have copy protection mechanisms like HDMI, you can't watch HD-DVDs on it with Vista...
HDCP works over DVI ports as well. Older high-definition sets that came out before HDMI usually have it. (The video section of HDMI is fully compatible with DVI. Adapter cables will work in either direction. You just lose the sound and control channels.)
Of course, most computer monitors don't support HDCP, so it's still a valid point.
--Peace