Originally posted by rice_web
My favorite comment is when she states that the iMac is price from $800 - $2000. Where can I find an iMac for $800?
I think she was including all iMacs, includung the CRT ones that Apple still sells.
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Why Windows has the edge over the Mac (formerly 'Flame Away!...')
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I think she was including all iMacs, includung the CRT ones that Apple still sells.
The unfortunate thing for us mac users is that there's at least some stuff that we can agree with.
I've been a mac user since way back in '84, and the original mac with the os on a floppy you had to load on each time. Now, because of my business I run both platforms. XP is the most maclike windows ever. It's also fast.
I say this a daily user of both platforms. I've been trying to like X as much as I liked 9 since the public beta. Jaguar is there at last. But in my experience as a user, programme for programme speed feels slower under x than XP on machines of similar clock speeds. Web browsing is evidently slower. iCal feels slower than Outlook. And it's not just me that thinks so.
I hope the rumors of an apple web browser are correct. I hope they can nail the problem. But it's wrong to flame somebody because they point out a speed issue which all of us, privately, admit is there.
I've been a mac user since way back in '84, and the original mac with the os on a floppy you had to load on each time. Now, because of my business I run both platforms. XP is the most maclike windows ever. It's also fast.
I say this a daily user of both platforms. I've been trying to like X as much as I liked 9 since the public beta. Jaguar is there at last. But in my experience as a user, programme for programme speed feels slower under x than XP on machines of similar clock speeds. Web browsing is evidently slower. iCal feels slower than Outlook. And it's not just me that thinks so.
I hope the rumors of an apple web browser are correct. I hope they can nail the problem. But it's wrong to flame somebody because they point out a speed issue which all of us, privately, admit is there.
Horrid Little Columnist
Well, what did you expect? It's not even an MSN article per se. It's direct from Microsoft bCentral, their business portal. The MS people holding her leash aren't dumb enough to tell her to go out and bash Macs. That would be too obvious. You have to tell her to make it sound like she gave the Mac an honest shot (which, anyone who has actually used a Mac can tell she didn't) and decided her Windows machine was superior.
That "1.533MHz AMD chip" she's referring to can only be the Athlon XP 1800+. AMD has a few marginal speed bump models over this one, but its hardly a bargain basement model performance-wise. I have one at home in my gaming PC and I have yet to ache for an upgrade. Notice also how she downplays the AMD's speed by referring to its clock rate rather than the 1800, a number chosen because its performance is comparable to Intel chips running at 1.8GHz, and she pumps up Intel saying they are "approaching 3 gigahertz," a clever bit of spin doctor handwaving that reveals exactly on which side her bread is buttered.
She then proceeds to claim she found them similar (that is to say, "there's no advantage to using the Mac because they work almost the same") but that the minor differences she found caused her widdle brain to spin. Clever.
"in general, it was just a few seconds slower than my Windows machine. But when you're used to instantaneous response, any lag can be aggravating."
She gets instantaneous response out of her Windows machine? Clearly she has managed to get hold of some magic transdimensional Intel superchip the rest of us don't have access to. And a few seconds? When you're talking about computer responsiveness, you talk in tenths of seconds. If any element of basic responsiveness took a "few seconds" we would have all kicked our Macs to the curb long ago. Even Finder window resizes in OS X 10.0 weren't taking a "few seconds." Yet again, we have a double standard in the exaggeration department with the Mac getting the short end of the stick.
"The iMac came with ClarisWorks, a less capable office package."
Here's a dead giveaway that she didn't use the machine for anywhere near as long as she claims, if at all. It shows she built her article on somebody's misinformed repository of Mac information. As you all know, there hasn't been a "ClarisWorks" (or a "Claris" for that matter) in YEARS. There's nothing on a new iMac called ClarisWorks.
"The most irritating drag came when jumping between Internet Explorer and Word. The iMac would sometimes take a couple seconds to make the switch."
Um, I have both Word and IE open on my slower 667 TiBook right now.
*switch* *switch* *switch*
Um, what in the holy hell is this woman talking about?
"A one-button mouse": Get a Kensington StudioMouse. Multiple buttons (supported in OS X), a scrollpad that's FAR superior to any wheel, and it complements all current Macs beautifully.
"The 15-inch monitor": You want a bigger monitor? Fine. Get a dual 867 G4 for $1699 and plug in your existing 21 incher. The G4 is not only comfortably within the iMac price range, it's faster too.
"No floppy drive": I still have a floppy drive on my PC. The eject button is broken. I've used it once, to bootstrap my IDE RAID controller while installing XP, and that floppy is still in the drive. Has been for over a year. If I need to carry data around with me 1.44MB is so not enough, and I can burn a mini-CDR that takes up about the same space, holds immensely more data, and costs me less than a floppy disk. Funny, though, that never comes up. I have this thing called the "Internet," you see...
"You're going to pay hundreds less for a comparable Windows machine."
We all know this depends on what you're willing to call "comparable." Let's look at the offerings from Dell (because you know corporate IT departments aren't cobbling together PCs from cheap off-the-shelf components), shall we? I chose a Dell Optiplex GX50 with a 1.2GHz Celeron in it, the lowest end business machine they make that offers comparable features as options. Configured with their cheapest 15" LCD, a CD-RW, a 40G HD, and a modem, and deleting the floppy drive (all to make it comparable to the entry-level iMac). Bottom line $1736.00. It sure looks attractive when you go to the initial configuration page and see "from $499," though, doesn't it? The entry-level iMac is $1299.00. In other words, the Mac is cheaper even before you casually dismiss the additional software.
Articles like this are aimed at people who manage IT professionals, not at IT professionals themselves. Essentially, when you're reading this article, imagine the effect on Dilbert's boss. That's what they're trying to exploit, and it's frankly disgusting.
I don't throw around terms like "corporate whore" lightly, but there it is, and I think the case to support it is pretty obvious.
Well, what did you expect? It's not even an MSN article per se. It's direct from Microsoft bCentral, their business portal. The MS people holding her leash aren't dumb enough to tell her to go out and bash Macs. That would be too obvious. You have to tell her to make it sound like she gave the Mac an honest shot (which, anyone who has actually used a Mac can tell she didn't) and decided her Windows machine was superior.
That "1.533MHz AMD chip" she's referring to can only be the Athlon XP 1800+. AMD has a few marginal speed bump models over this one, but its hardly a bargain basement model performance-wise. I have one at home in my gaming PC and I have yet to ache for an upgrade. Notice also how she downplays the AMD's speed by referring to its clock rate rather than the 1800, a number chosen because its performance is comparable to Intel chips running at 1.8GHz, and she pumps up Intel saying they are "approaching 3 gigahertz," a clever bit of spin doctor handwaving that reveals exactly on which side her bread is buttered.
She then proceeds to claim she found them similar (that is to say, "there's no advantage to using the Mac because they work almost the same") but that the minor differences she found caused her widdle brain to spin. Clever.
"in general, it was just a few seconds slower than my Windows machine. But when you're used to instantaneous response, any lag can be aggravating."
She gets instantaneous response out of her Windows machine? Clearly she has managed to get hold of some magic transdimensional Intel superchip the rest of us don't have access to. And a few seconds? When you're talking about computer responsiveness, you talk in tenths of seconds. If any element of basic responsiveness took a "few seconds" we would have all kicked our Macs to the curb long ago. Even Finder window resizes in OS X 10.0 weren't taking a "few seconds." Yet again, we have a double standard in the exaggeration department with the Mac getting the short end of the stick.
"The iMac came with ClarisWorks, a less capable office package."
Here's a dead giveaway that she didn't use the machine for anywhere near as long as she claims, if at all. It shows she built her article on somebody's misinformed repository of Mac information. As you all know, there hasn't been a "ClarisWorks" (or a "Claris" for that matter) in YEARS. There's nothing on a new iMac called ClarisWorks.
"The most irritating drag came when jumping between Internet Explorer and Word. The iMac would sometimes take a couple seconds to make the switch."
Um, I have both Word and IE open on my slower 667 TiBook right now.
*switch* *switch* *switch*
Um, what in the holy hell is this woman talking about?
"A one-button mouse": Get a Kensington StudioMouse. Multiple buttons (supported in OS X), a scrollpad that's FAR superior to any wheel, and it complements all current Macs beautifully.
"The 15-inch monitor": You want a bigger monitor? Fine. Get a dual 867 G4 for $1699 and plug in your existing 21 incher. The G4 is not only comfortably within the iMac price range, it's faster too.
"No floppy drive": I still have a floppy drive on my PC. The eject button is broken. I've used it once, to bootstrap my IDE RAID controller while installing XP, and that floppy is still in the drive. Has been for over a year. If I need to carry data around with me 1.44MB is so not enough, and I can burn a mini-CDR that takes up about the same space, holds immensely more data, and costs me less than a floppy disk. Funny, though, that never comes up. I have this thing called the "Internet," you see...
"You're going to pay hundreds less for a comparable Windows machine."
We all know this depends on what you're willing to call "comparable." Let's look at the offerings from Dell (because you know corporate IT departments aren't cobbling together PCs from cheap off-the-shelf components), shall we? I chose a Dell Optiplex GX50 with a 1.2GHz Celeron in it, the lowest end business machine they make that offers comparable features as options. Configured with their cheapest 15" LCD, a CD-RW, a 40G HD, and a modem, and deleting the floppy drive (all to make it comparable to the entry-level iMac). Bottom line $1736.00. It sure looks attractive when you go to the initial configuration page and see "from $499," though, doesn't it? The entry-level iMac is $1299.00. In other words, the Mac is cheaper even before you casually dismiss the additional software.
Articles like this are aimed at people who manage IT professionals, not at IT professionals themselves. Essentially, when you're reading this article, imagine the effect on Dilbert's boss. That's what they're trying to exploit, and it's frankly disgusting.
I don't throw around terms like "corporate whore" lightly, but there it is, and I think the case to support it is pretty obvious.
Impressive
Wow, it takes a good eye to find all the little hidden things in that article.
Thanx for a little clarification.
Wow, it takes a good eye to find all the little hidden things in that article.
Thanx for a little clarification.
I love how she said that the iMac came w/ clarisworks.... hehe. Claris went south a long time ago and the rights were bought by apple, thus Appleworks was born. Thats what comes with the imac you stupid dumba**. APPLEWORKS!!!!!!!!!! Cant you even read. O wait, you are the same person who cant get mail to work and keeps compairing XP to OSX. OSX blows windowz out of the god damned water. Most PC people would kill to have OSX runing on their x86 rigs because it deos one thing xp cant.... actually run...
Re: Horrid Little Columnist
From the article:
I don't really see any reason to not believe her. MSN, for example, has been very pro-Linux and anti-MS in its news reporting. I don't think MS hands down journalistic mandates from on high. Sure it's fun to believe in your elaborate "She's bashing the Mac quietly and succinctly in a grand Microsoft scheme to topple all competition" conspiracy theory, but I can't, in all seriousness, believe that's what's happening.
Still cheaper than the 800MHz G4 in the Mac, though.
How is that spin? They are approaching 3GHz, aren't they?
And definitely plenty of counter-exaggeration on your part to go up against that.
Or else it's a dead giveaway that she used Office.X instead, like she said in the article.
Yes, she screwed up here, no doubt about it. Maybe she meant to imply that AppleWorks is based off of ClarisWorks or something, and the editor screwed up. But yes.
I think her iMac probably doesn't have a lot of RAM. And by that, I mean it probably does have a lot of RAM, but OS X uses so damned much RAM that when you run it, a lot becomes a little, and Apple ships all its low-end machines by default with a suboptimal amount of RAM.
As she says, she reviewed the iMac because that's what Apple gave her. $1699 is pretty pricey for a computer as slow as the dual 867 Power Mac.
I agree with this. Floppies can be useful in some situations where two computers aren't connected to the same LAN or have slow connections to the internet and don't have CD rewriters, but that's about it. And there are always cheapo USB floppy drives. Then again, it's not like she condemned the Mac for this. She barely even mentioned it.
That's weird, I got more like $1400, even with the Optiplex. Funny how you picked the most expensive business desktop Dell makes, and then compared it to a home computer, but whatever.
Alex
From the article:
I don't really see any reason to not believe her. MSN, for example, has been very pro-Linux and anti-MS in its news reporting. I don't think MS hands down journalistic mandates from on high. Sure it's fun to believe in your elaborate "She's bashing the Mac quietly and succinctly in a grand Microsoft scheme to topple all competition" conspiracy theory, but I can't, in all seriousness, believe that's what's happening.
Still cheaper than the 800MHz G4 in the Mac, though.
How is that spin? They are approaching 3GHz, aren't they?
And definitely plenty of counter-exaggeration on your part to go up against that.
Or else it's a dead giveaway that she used Office.X instead, like she said in the article.
Yes, she screwed up here, no doubt about it. Maybe she meant to imply that AppleWorks is based off of ClarisWorks or something, and the editor screwed up. But yes.
I think her iMac probably doesn't have a lot of RAM. And by that, I mean it probably does have a lot of RAM, but OS X uses so damned much RAM that when you run it, a lot becomes a little, and Apple ships all its low-end machines by default with a suboptimal amount of RAM.
As she says, she reviewed the iMac because that's what Apple gave her. $1699 is pretty pricey for a computer as slow as the dual 867 Power Mac.
I agree with this. Floppies can be useful in some situations where two computers aren't connected to the same LAN or have slow connections to the internet and don't have CD rewriters, but that's about it. And there are always cheapo USB floppy drives. Then again, it's not like she condemned the Mac for this. She barely even mentioned it.
That's weird, I got more like $1400, even with the Optiplex. Funny how you picked the most expensive business desktop Dell makes, and then compared it to a home computer, but whatever.
Alex
Re: Re: Horrid Little Columnist
As I said, that article was linked from bCentral, which is NOT a journalistic source, but Microsoft's business services arm.
Not what I was saying, though, was it? She's playing down the speed of the Athlon because it's convenient to her argument.
See the above response. This time she's playing up the speed of Pentium 4 chips, again because it's convenient to her argument. Spin is about word choice and implication more than whether what you say is true or false. A spin doctor is someone who can take a single, dry fact and make it sound like a positive or a negative without technically abusing the facts.
Exactly, by way of highlighting the implications of what she's saying and the rhetorical tactics she's using in her argument. You fail to address the thrust of the comment, though, that she consistently exaggerates things on the Wintel side in the positive direction, and things on the Mac side in the negative direction. If you're saying she's not doing that, then please support that point directly.
In order to write about it, at some point she had to make the determination that a lightweight productivity suite was delivered with the machine. There is no way that she could have done so without seeing that AppleWorks was the suite she got. Sure she might have just leapt right into Office.X and ignored the existence of AppleWorks altogether, but then she wouldn't have mentioned it in the article.
Sure, I'll meet you on this one. It's possible that it was a less egregious example of sloppy journalism than it appears on the surface.
I'll agree, and admittedly I hadn't thought of that. If she got a model with 128MB RAM, it might have been swapping some. Honestly, though, I'm surprised if she got a model with 128MB. Standard policy for ANY company sending out a sample to a reviewer is not to skimp on optimizations.
Well, it's not THAT slow to start with, but that's not the point. The point is that she does have options that will address her concern, that fit into the same price range as the iMac.
(Ignoring the floppy thing, since we pretty much agree)
Well, her policy in that article was to evaluate the iMac as a business computer, wasn't it? The Optiplex, however, is NOT the most expensive business desktop Dell makes. The GX50 is a small Celeron-based unit, the kind of thing you'd have on your office admin's desk. Their most expensive business desktop would run her about three grand without adding any more bells and whistles than what comes with an iMac. Granted that machine will have a 1.8GHz P4 Xeon in it, but that's why I didn't pick that machine for comparison. As for your $1400, the easiest explanation I can think of is that you picked the 15" CRT instead of a 15" LCD. That makes the price around $1400.
As I said, that article was linked from bCentral, which is NOT a journalistic source, but Microsoft's business services arm.
Not what I was saying, though, was it? She's playing down the speed of the Athlon because it's convenient to her argument.
See the above response. This time she's playing up the speed of Pentium 4 chips, again because it's convenient to her argument. Spin is about word choice and implication more than whether what you say is true or false. A spin doctor is someone who can take a single, dry fact and make it sound like a positive or a negative without technically abusing the facts.
And definitely plenty of counter-exaggeration on your part to go up against that.
Exactly, by way of highlighting the implications of what she's saying and the rhetorical tactics she's using in her argument. You fail to address the thrust of the comment, though, that she consistently exaggerates things on the Wintel side in the positive direction, and things on the Mac side in the negative direction. If you're saying she's not doing that, then please support that point directly.
In order to write about it, at some point she had to make the determination that a lightweight productivity suite was delivered with the machine. There is no way that she could have done so without seeing that AppleWorks was the suite she got. Sure she might have just leapt right into Office.X and ignored the existence of AppleWorks altogether, but then she wouldn't have mentioned it in the article.
Sure, I'll meet you on this one. It's possible that it was a less egregious example of sloppy journalism than it appears on the surface.
I'll agree, and admittedly I hadn't thought of that. If she got a model with 128MB RAM, it might have been swapping some. Honestly, though, I'm surprised if she got a model with 128MB. Standard policy for ANY company sending out a sample to a reviewer is not to skimp on optimizations.
Well, it's not THAT slow to start with, but that's not the point. The point is that she does have options that will address her concern, that fit into the same price range as the iMac.
(Ignoring the floppy thing, since we pretty much agree)
Well, her policy in that article was to evaluate the iMac as a business computer, wasn't it? The Optiplex, however, is NOT the most expensive business desktop Dell makes. The GX50 is a small Celeron-based unit, the kind of thing you'd have on your office admin's desk. Their most expensive business desktop would run her about three grand without adding any more bells and whistles than what comes with an iMac. Granted that machine will have a 1.8GHz P4 Xeon in it, but that's why I didn't pick that machine for comparison. As for your $1400, the easiest explanation I can think of is that you picked the 15" CRT instead of a 15" LCD. That makes the price around $1400.
i don't think she understands what she was doing on her mac word has always had proformance problems and NETSCAPE who even uses that any more IE is so much faster (even though I think that apple should come out with a browser). and saying that 800 MHZ is not fast enough and saying that intel had chips that are close to 3 GHZ does she know where intel gets its speed, from over extending the chips pipeline (intel calls in "hyper pipeline teachnolgy"), the G4 altivec wich speeds it up a lot.
Re: Re: Re: Horrid Little Columnist
Yes... but as she said, she had her Mac experience before she even had anything to do with MS.
Besides, It is not in MS's best interest to bash the Mac, even lightly. They never do it. It would be hypocritical and counterproductive to bash a platform they're actively developing for.
That's true, but I don't see how it's is very important. X86 CPUs are so inexpensive, and there are so many different speed grades, the the difference between her AMD chip and a substantially slower one is probably, what, $40? Give or take.
I think you're taking what she said out of context. Read these paragraphs carefully:
I find quite a bit on the positive side in her Mac comments. The way it's written makes it look as if she is making special effort to be fair.
In fact, there is much more pro-Apple sentiment in this article than pro-MS or pro-PC sentiment. The only thing not pro-Apple about this article is its conclusion and a few small and tactful nitpicks, like what she thought of the mouse and and the small display. The problem is that Mac loyalists are so intolerant of dissenting viewpoints that they make up their minds before they even read the article - everything they don't agree with stands out in their mind and everything they do agree with must be some sort of ploy or subversion tactic.
I think she must have been thinking of ClarisWorks and slipped up. She probably meant to say "formerly ClarisWorks" or something. There's no denying she screwed up here, although I don't see why it's such a monumentally huge mistake she ought to be crucified for. It really makes little difference.
This could be true - and with that said, she should have made mention of the Power Mac in the beginning of the article.
Alex
Yes... but as she said, she had her Mac experience before she even had anything to do with MS.
Besides, It is not in MS's best interest to bash the Mac, even lightly. They never do it. It would be hypocritical and counterproductive to bash a platform they're actively developing for.
That's true, but I don't see how it's is very important. X86 CPUs are so inexpensive, and there are so many different speed grades, the the difference between her AMD chip and a substantially slower one is probably, what, $40? Give or take.
I think you're taking what she said out of context. Read these paragraphs carefully:
There is no pro-Intel spin here. She even compliments Apple at the end of her processor speed tangent.
I find quite a bit on the positive side in her Mac comments. The way it's written makes it look as if she is making special effort to be fair.
In fact, there is much more pro-Apple sentiment in this article than pro-MS or pro-PC sentiment. The only thing not pro-Apple about this article is its conclusion and a few small and tactful nitpicks, like what she thought of the mouse and and the small display. The problem is that Mac loyalists are so intolerant of dissenting viewpoints that they make up their minds before they even read the article - everything they don't agree with stands out in their mind and everything they do agree with must be some sort of ploy or subversion tactic.
I think she must have been thinking of ClarisWorks and slipped up. She probably meant to say "formerly ClarisWorks" or something. There's no denying she screwed up here, although I don't see why it's such a monumentally huge mistake she ought to be crucified for. It really makes little difference.
This could be true - and with that said, she should have made mention of the Power Mac in the beginning of the article.
Nope... $1457, 256MB, CDRW, 15" TFT, 40GB, etc. And I'm sure that price could come down with a little shopping around. I do admit my gross unfamiliarity with Dell's product lineup, though.
Alex
WTF.
Alex_ant...
I can't understand your blind defense of this woman's article. You sit here and blast us "Mac-heads" of blindly following Apple, then turn around and blindly defend this article.
This woman made mistakes in her article. She exagerrated her bad experiences with the Mac and looked through rose colored glasses at her Wintel past. While the article was in no way "Mac bashing," it was inaccurate and misleading in a few areas.
You defend her by saying that the average person would rather listen to another average person's advice about computers?? This does not sound like good advice to me. Would I ask another average person adive about investing or which car is best or safest?? Heck no. I go to a source that is informed whose opinion I respect. I cannot say that this woman represents any of these things.
The article contains glaring editorial oversights, half-truths, a lack of facts and worthless comparisons (business computer to a consumer Mac with very little in the way of specs). The ONLY thing this article would be good for is an account of this woman's personal experience, which is what the article sets out to deliver.
But the question I pose to you is this: what worth is an article such as this when it presents no hard facts, contains obvious exaggerations, useless and misleading comparisons and displays obvious bias? This article isn't bad so much because the woman is inept (though from this I don't believe her to be capable of delivering sound computer advice), but more because it contains no fair and useful information. It is at best useless and at worst will give people an inaccurate impression of Macs (according to all but you, that is).
And try not to drag us into a pricing debate here. When was the last time you priced a business PC. Last I checked Dell wasn't giving away their pro line of PCs.
Taft
Alex_ant...
I can't understand your blind defense of this woman's article. You sit here and blast us "Mac-heads" of blindly following Apple, then turn around and blindly defend this article.
This woman made mistakes in her article. She exagerrated her bad experiences with the Mac and looked through rose colored glasses at her Wintel past. While the article was in no way "Mac bashing," it was inaccurate and misleading in a few areas.
You defend her by saying that the average person would rather listen to another average person's advice about computers?? This does not sound like good advice to me. Would I ask another average person adive about investing or which car is best or safest?? Heck no. I go to a source that is informed whose opinion I respect. I cannot say that this woman represents any of these things.
The article contains glaring editorial oversights, half-truths, a lack of facts and worthless comparisons (business computer to a consumer Mac with very little in the way of specs). The ONLY thing this article would be good for is an account of this woman's personal experience, which is what the article sets out to deliver.
But the question I pose to you is this: what worth is an article such as this when it presents no hard facts, contains obvious exaggerations, useless and misleading comparisons and displays obvious bias? This article isn't bad so much because the woman is inept (though from this I don't believe her to be capable of delivering sound computer advice), but more because it contains no fair and useful information. It is at best useless and at worst will give people an inaccurate impression of Macs (according to all but you, that is).
And try not to drag us into a pricing debate here. When was the last time you priced a business PC. Last I checked Dell wasn't giving away their pro line of PCs.
Taft
Re: Re: Re: Re: Horrid Little Columnist
Do I use floppies in my business? Yes, occasionaly I get technical stuf on them but most of the time these are Windows targeted things like drivers so that explains why she thinks she needs it...
Well said and in my opinion, true. Skip the conclusion and it is a positive comparision for a business point of view. With errors, that is indeed obvious.
Do I use floppies in my business? Yes, occasionaly I get technical stuf on them but most of the time these are Windows targeted things like drivers
so that explains why she thinks she needs it...
She didn't say anything that wasn't true. For a first time Mac user, the review was honest. Windows people just do things different and expect different things.
I will whole-heartedly agree with her, though. The iMac is dreadfully, dreadfully slow in comparison to what's available in the marketplace. (100MHz BUS and PC100 RAM just kills it). But we all know, to, that the G4 is way behind. We've discussed that over and over and probably don't need to go there again.
She was also running OS X 10.1.X. It, too, was extremely slow in comparison to Windows.
And a one-button mouse is just rediculous to windows users. It is to me, too (considering Apple goes to great lengths to include contextual menus and I have to ctrl + click).
I will whole-heartedly agree with her, though. The iMac is dreadfully, dreadfully slow in comparison to what's available in the marketplace. (100MHz BUS and PC100 RAM just kills it). But we all know, to, that the G4 is way behind. We've discussed that over and over and probably don't need to go there again.
She was also running OS X 10.1.X. It, too, was extremely slow in comparison to Windows.
And a one-button mouse is just rediculous to windows users. It is to me, too (considering Apple goes to great lengths to include contextual menus and I have to ctrl + click).
I wonder, am I reading a different article than everybody else is?
Except I haven't blindly read it. I read it several times over quite thoroughly. It is not an anti-Apple article, period. Yes, it gets a few small facts wrong. If you'll pay attention to the author's wording, it is immediately obvious that she is taking great pains to be as fair as possible. She's walking on a minefield and she knows it, which is why all her comparisons are clarified and she goes out of her way to compliment and give the benefit of the doubt to the iMac even when she comes to the conclusion that she prefers PCs for what she uses them for.
No, she didn't. Read the article.
Firstly, you're exaggerating, and secondly, Wintel is what she ended up preferring, so of course she speaks more highly of it. I personally can't fault her for that. And if you had actually read the article closely, you would have seen that she gives many more compliments to the iMac than her old PC.
All articles are misleading to some degree. The ClarisWorks thing was really stupid, I agree, but I don't feel that any of the inaccuracies change the overall sentiment or validity of the article when all is said and done.
What I meant when I said that was that nobody wants to hear things in geek-speak. Of course they want the person they're hearing to be knowledgeable, but they also want him/her to be plain-speaking. Sometimes, technical details get lost in the translation from geek-speak to plain-speak. Her factual errors are small and don't make much difference in the end.
And does deliver, does it not?
Of course it's inaccurate. It's not a 500 page technical manual. You have to be inaccurate if all you've got is three pages and are planning on going into intricate detail on the differences between Macs and PCs. There are few exaggerations present in the article, and those that do exist are trivial. Is it biased? I don't think so. I don't sense any hostility toward the Mac in her tone; whenever she points out a perceived drawback of the Mac, she makes certain to pad it with another redeeming quality. As far as Mac-PC comparisons go, I'd say this is one of the fairer ones. I'd expect nothing more from someone who's only been using their Mac for a few months, and only has this amount of space in which to share their experiences.
Alex
Except I haven't blindly read it. I read it several times over quite thoroughly. It is not an anti-Apple article, period. Yes, it gets a few small facts wrong. If you'll pay attention to the author's wording, it is immediately obvious that she is taking great pains to be as fair as possible. She's walking on a minefield and she knows it, which is why all her comparisons are clarified and she goes out of her way to compliment and give the benefit of the doubt to the iMac even when she comes to the conclusion that she prefers PCs for what she uses them for.
No, she didn't. Read the article.
Firstly, you're exaggerating, and secondly, Wintel is what she ended up preferring, so of course she speaks more highly of it. I personally can't fault her for that. And if you had actually read the article closely, you would have seen that she gives many more compliments to the iMac than her old PC.
All articles are misleading to some degree. The ClarisWorks thing was really stupid, I agree, but I don't feel that any of the inaccuracies change the overall sentiment or validity of the article when all is said and done.
What I meant when I said that was that nobody wants to hear things in geek-speak. Of course they want the person they're hearing to be knowledgeable, but they also want him/her to be plain-speaking. Sometimes, technical details get lost in the translation from geek-speak to plain-speak. Her factual errors are small and don't make much difference in the end.
And does deliver, does it not?
Of course it's inaccurate. It's not a 500 page technical manual. You have to be inaccurate if all you've got is three pages and are planning on going into intricate detail on the differences between Macs and PCs. There are few exaggerations present in the article, and those that do exist are trivial. Is it biased? I don't think so. I don't sense any hostility toward the Mac in her tone; whenever she points out a perceived drawback of the Mac, she makes certain to pad it with another redeeming quality. As far as Mac-PC comparisons go, I'd say this is one of the fairer ones. I'd expect nothing more from someone who's only been using their Mac for a few months, and only has this amount of space in which to share their experiences.
Alex
Wow, alex, you must be an advertiser's dream. I thought every American who grew up since the advent of television had an intuitive understanding of marketing doublespeak. Since you seem not to, allow me to clarify for you. The overt text is less important than the subtext, and the impression it leaves in the mind of the reader.
You may have, at some point, gotten one of the stupid joke emails which claims to translate "meeting-speak" into plain english. The important one in this context, which is amusing but actually very accurate, is that when someone says, "I don't disagree, but..." what they really mean is "I disagree." This minor bit of doublespeak is often used primarily to soften a confrontation, but also to lure your opponent in with the pretext of agreement.
That's exactly what's going on in this entire article, and most people seem to see that even if they haven't put words to the intuition. The article is certainly not pro-Mac. Ms. Komando is saying, "I really like the Mac, but..." in the same way you'd say of a human being you're criticizing, "I really like Fred, but..." One thing you can be sure of is that whatever follows is not going to be complimentary of Fred, and the speaker may very well not like Fred at all. He leads in with that qualification just to avoid starting a brawl by saying, "that Fred, he's a wanker."
In the article, you're reading these qualifications as if they're the bottom line.
I'm going to draw some parallels here which, disclaimer in advance, are not intended to express actual opinions, but let me know how you feel about them. Imagine a prospective employer were contacting a past employer of yours as a reference:
"But, golly, 80 IQ just isn't very smart today. Given the difference in brain power, though, alex_ant did pretty well. My hat's off to his instructors."
"alex_ant has networking skills, but he couldn't get my router configured. That was no big deal, really."
"The only disappointing aspect of alex_ant was his lack of brains. Don't get me wrong: It wasn't that he was particularly dumb in general, he was just a little slower than my other employees."
"As I signed alex_ant's termination papers, I felt a pang of regret. I had grown fond of the little guy. But, frankly, I'm more impressed with the performance of my other employees."
Would you feel you had been complimented? Would you call this a pro-alex_ant description? Would you expect to be hired based on such sentiments?
You may have, at some point, gotten one of the stupid joke emails which claims to translate "meeting-speak" into plain english. The important one in this context, which is amusing but actually very accurate, is that when someone says, "I don't disagree, but..." what they really mean is "I disagree." This minor bit of doublespeak is often used primarily to soften a confrontation, but also to lure your opponent in with the pretext of agreement.
That's exactly what's going on in this entire article, and most people seem to see that even if they haven't put words to the intuition. The article is certainly not pro-Mac. Ms. Komando is saying, "I really like the Mac, but..." in the same way you'd say of a human being you're criticizing, "I really like Fred, but..." One thing you can be sure of is that whatever follows is not going to be complimentary of Fred, and the speaker may very well not like Fred at all. He leads in with that qualification just to avoid starting a brawl by saying, "that Fred, he's a wanker."
In the article, you're reading these qualifications as if they're the bottom line.
I'm going to draw some parallels here which, disclaimer in advance, are not intended to express actual opinions, but let me know how you feel about them. Imagine a prospective employer were contacting a past employer of yours as a reference:
"But, golly, 80 IQ just isn't very smart today. Given the difference in brain power, though, alex_ant did pretty well. My hat's off to his instructors."
"alex_ant has networking skills, but he couldn't get my router configured. That was no big deal, really."
"The only disappointing aspect of alex_ant was his lack of brains. Don't get me wrong: It wasn't that he was particularly dumb in general, he was just a little slower than my other employees."
"As I signed alex_ant's termination papers, I felt a pang of regret. I had grown fond of the little guy. But, frankly, I'm more impressed with the performance of my other employees."
Would you feel you had been complimented? Would you call this a pro-alex_ant description? Would you expect to be hired based on such sentiments?
thank god someone else who has some unerstanding of marketing chimed in! She didnt bash the mac, just like movie makers dont make you hate the villain too much if later they want you to sympathize with him. If you are harsh flat out people just take everything you say in relation to that. she doesnt like the apple for not to great reasons, mainly, its (DUH) differnt. She doesnt come out and attack the iMac she had but she throws enough little jabs in there to make it obvious shes a windows user who didnt care much to give the iMac a fair shake
You are using a quite liberal definition of the word compliment. Given her wording in most of the "compliments", which I read quite thoroughly thanks to your quotations and added inflections, I took many of them as carefully subversive and biting towards the Mac.
Apple buffs argue that chip speed is a misleading measure. AMD, which trails Intel in chip speed, makes the same argument. I agree, up to a point.
The quality of the hard drive, memory, bus, video card, etc., also affects a computer's speed. But, golly, 800 MHz just isn't very fast today. Given the difference in chip speeds, though, the iMac did pretty well. My hat's off to Apple's engineers.
Here is a perfect example of ineptitude on her part. She agrees with the megahertz myth, up to a point. OK, fair enough. But her second paragraph quite clearly displays her ignorance on the subject. She says that other things in the computer influence speed too, but golly, 800 MHz sure is slow.
What is the MHz myth??? It is certainly not that other components can make up for a processor with a slow clock speed. It is rather that a clock speed is not an accurate indicator of a processor's performance, not the computer's performance as a whole.
When I said exaggerrated, I was referring to her statements about lag times. Lag times which have not been experienced by any other people here. Lag times tht could suggest, lets say, her hard disk had spun down and had to start spinning again before doing work. A symptom which is present on ANY computer with power conservation of any kind.
My point is that her statements are certainly worth close scrutiny when she apparently lacks any real understanding of general computing and, if she has any, uses none of her deduction skills in an attempt to explain or accurately compare the apparent speed differences.
Misconceptions by a person in the media who doesn't have a full understanding of the issues at hand can breed misconceptions in her audience as a whole. This is not a positive thing for the Mac platform. It deserves scrutiny and opposing voices.
Taft
What opponent? It's an article about a woman's experiences with a Mac, coming from a PC background. Who or what is her opponent? Might it not be possible that she actually does like her iMac, as she conveys throughout the article, but likes her PC a little bit more, both of which notions are clearly expressed in her conclusion? This would be by far the simpler explanation, and the simpler explanation is usually the right one.
Yes. Now, here's the deal: She says the iMac's screen is too small, and she complains that it doesn't have a floppy drive, and she complains that it's just a little less snappy than her PC. How do you expect her to express this? She did it as tactfully as possible, and you still complain that she's launching a cunning subtextual attack. For her, it's a no-win situation. If she expresses her feelings overtly, you'll complain that she's biased and unfair and so on. If she expresses her feelings subtextually, you'll complain in the way you're doing now. What do you want her to do? Say the opposite of what she wants to say? Speak in code? I'm sorry, but if she thinks the iMac could be faster, then she thinks the iMac could be faster, and she is neither being unfair nor un-journalistic by expressing the shortfalls that she perceives.
She is being un-journalistic by getting a few of her facts wrong. That I agree with, although again, I think the net effect of her screw-ups in this department is minimal.
Nobody is hiring anybody. This is an article about a woman with a PC background trying out the Mac. And it's an important distinction: I would not expect to be hired based on such sentiments, nor would I feel very good about them. However, I would much rather have those statements said about me than mercilessly scathing personal attacks.
More accurately, you could have phrased it like this: Imagine I'm a drug-abusing hippie who smells like arse and steals from the petty cash drawer (in other words, I'm the iMac), and you, a prospective employer, are calling a past employer of mine for information about me. Do you want to know what I'm really like as an employee, or do you want to hear only positive, sugar-coated observations?
Alex
exactly. The iMac IS a druggie Hippie. but if your looking for a diligent, hard worker, his name is Mr. Powermac. I own one of these, so don't give me any BS on how it isn't fast enough to be useful. the only times it isn't is crunching, and offices don't crunch very often.
Yup, another screw-up. You're right, she does appear to be ignorant in this area. It doesn't really have an effect on the gist of the article, though. That's not an excuse, just an observation.
I would disagree that they've not been experienced by anyone else here, but I think that testing for such lag times is highly unscientific and dependent upon individual machine configuration, and thus will usually be exaggerated by the anti-Mac people and minimized or ignored by the pro-Mac. I would consider myself reasonably neutral, and I can understand how she would be experiencing these lag times if she doesn't have a lot of RAM, which is likely. She should have said how much RAM she had, though - if she had 256MB, that probably explains it, and if she had 128MB, then that definitely explains it.
You're right. My only explanation is that she's trying to aim her article to the crowd who doesn't know what a hard disk or RAM is (which is a lot of people), and doesn't want to confuse them or talk above them.
This goes both ways. There are inaccuracies in both pro-PC and pro-Mac articles. Nobody here seems to complain when MacWorld or whatever other pro-Mac publication screws up (like what's-his-name did a while back when he compared an iMac or whatever it was to an obsolete Vaio). Which doesn't nullify or disqualify this author's errors, but again, I think the ultimate effect of her errors is minimal.
Alex
and I also Implied that it was. Besides, I noticed that perhaps experimenter Bias may be afoot. I was once a blind Windows Zealot. I looked at a G3 PowerMac a few years back. I was drawn, intrigued. But alas, I in my blindness shrugged it off as "just a Mac". I FORCED MYSELF AWAY. I think this "Test" is much like my early Mac brush, If the tester doesn't want to see the benefits, they won't. It only works if they have an open mind.
She is attempting to persuade her audience to a particular point of view (namely, "no you should not switch to an iMac"). Her opponent is anyone with whom the "switch" ads might have struck a chord, anyone who might be at risk of jumping ship to the Mac platform. Her job, whether the opinion is truly her own or that of her employers, is to sway the audience to her point of view.
Your appeal to Ockham's Razor in this case is not appropriate, and you seem to have only a partial understanding of the principle. It is not merely the simplest explanation which tends to be correct, but the simplest explanation which fits the facts in evidence. What I've been doing this whole time is presenting evidence, taken directly from the text, to support my reading of it.
If she had presented a good case for her viewpoint, I would not consider her biased and unfair. If she expressed a negative opinion overtly, I would disagree, but I would have more respect for her.
Correcting factual errors is a minimum requirement in professional journalism.
Um, no, nobody is hiring anybody, but people are making choices about which computer to buy next, and they are soliciting opinions to help them make those choices. This article provides such an opinion. See, it's an analogy.
But you agree they are not complimentary statements, right? I mean, they are just adaptations of the same statements you cited when you claimed that the article was more pro-Mac than anti-Mac, and yet, by analogy, you wouldn't expect anyone to choose an iMac based on those statements. Despite the honey glazing, those are not complimentary statements. This is not a complimentary article. Q.E.D.
That's actually not accurate at all. In fact, it's quite a deviation, but if that's what you believe the iMac is equivalent to, then it explains a lot about your position here.
Suppose, though, that you were that sort of employee. Armed with such strong evidence that you could not be trusted with the job, of course you would expect the damning facts to be stated directly. That's kind of the point. If he's dancing around the issue, making veiled jabs of the sort I posted above, then one might well be suspicious not only of the accuracy of the implications, but also of the ex-boss' motives in trying to imply a state of affairs more negative than what he's willing to overtly commit to.
gonna have to agree with alex here....
my parents own a 700 imac. i've used it plenty. it is a bit sluggish. and i think she might have hit on the reason, though in reference to something else... she mentioned that it might have been the software at some point when talking about sluggish netscape... that might be the problem with ie and word too... then again, maybe not. could've been a lack of ram, or... could've been a bit slow computer....
don't get me wrong. it's not SLOW. but this WAS 10.1.x. and i find it hard to believe that no one remembers hearing some sluggishness concerns during 10.1.x... i certainly do. heck, my brother still bitches about it.
her discussion of ms office was bad.... cause well, it's flawed. and yet, she seems to say that she bets everything else would work as well as word did... sure, most things are fine. and office for the mac might well be best (never really use it on pc)... but there are still alignment issues and whatnot.... so it's not perfect.
she did a pretty bad job talking about that mhz myth... in that she seemed to flip flop a bit...
yes, her article might keep people from exploring the mac for themselves, and yes, that's not good for apple... but that said, i don't think that her comments were terrible, or that unfair. they were the types of things MOST pc users would say. "it's so different." and "it's only 800 mhz"....
her worst comments were about the iapps though... glazing over them as though they're worthless... but alas, she didn't need em and doesn't use em. she still shouldn't have claimed they were bad/not all that great though. without trying.
floppy drive. no reason not to get a mac.
speed. is a reason not to get a mac. but not really for consumers.
price.. yeah. my girlfriend's mom got a new p4 around january for about 1k, with monitor.... i couldn't sell her on the imac mainly caues of the price and "it's different, i don't want to get used to something new". the fact is, the people who know least about computers are most afraid to switch, though it would benefit them greatly (as most/all of us would agree.)
the woman DOES claim to be a computer guru (i've actually heard her show)... and clearly she's not as computer savvy as she seems... but i don't think it's "the worst article ever".
the salon one seemed a lot worse
i digress
my parents own a 700 imac. i've used it plenty. it is a bit sluggish. and i think she might have hit on the reason, though in reference to something else... she mentioned that it might have been the software at some point when talking about sluggish netscape... that might be the problem with ie and word too... then again, maybe not. could've been a lack of ram, or... could've been a bit slow computer....
don't get me wrong. it's not SLOW. but this WAS 10.1.x. and i find it hard to believe that no one remembers hearing some sluggishness concerns during 10.1.x... i certainly do. heck, my brother still bitches about it.
her discussion of ms office was bad.... cause well, it's flawed. and yet, she seems to say that she bets everything else would work as well as word did... sure, most things are fine. and office for the mac might well be best (never really use it on pc)... but there are still alignment issues and whatnot.... so it's not perfect.
she did a pretty bad job talking about that mhz myth... in that she seemed to flip flop a bit...
yes, her article might keep people from exploring the mac for themselves, and yes, that's not good for apple... but that said, i don't think that her comments were terrible, or that unfair. they were the types of things MOST pc users would say. "it's so different." and "it's only 800 mhz"....
her worst comments were about the iapps though... glazing over them as though they're worthless... but alas, she didn't need em and doesn't use em. she still shouldn't have claimed they were bad/not all that great though. without trying.
floppy drive. no reason not to get a mac.
speed. is a reason not to get a mac. but not really for consumers.
price.. yeah. my girlfriend's mom got a new p4 around january for about 1k, with monitor.... i couldn't sell her on the imac mainly caues of the price and "it's different, i don't want to get used to something new". the fact is, the people who know least about computers are most afraid to switch, though it would benefit them greatly (as most/all of us would agree.)
the woman DOES claim to be a computer guru (i've actually heard her show)... and clearly she's not as computer savvy as she seems... but i don't think it's "the worst article ever".
the salon one seemed a lot worse
i digress
Well, Microsoft bCentral isn't the BBC, is it? This article is clearly an opinion piece, yet you are judging it on other terms. As far as opinion articles go, this one is quite fair.
At least I can spell it properly.
As am I. And we continue to maintain different opinions about the overall message of the article. This thread is already long enough; I'm not sure continuing to blather on about it as we are will get us anywhere.
I doubt you would, but I'll take your word for it.
It's a good thing she's a radio talk show host and not a journalist then, although I agree, the factual errors are really sloppy and hurt the article substantially.
Some of the statements she makes are not particularly complimentary. Most of those that aren't are, I wouldn't say sugar-coated, but tactful. In other words, they are a way of expressing an opinion or fact that the author wishes to present as softly and in as non-inflammatory a way as possible. She is clearly taking pains to avoid incensing any of her readers. You said that you would have respected her more if she had been more up front with her criticisms; well, ya can't please everyone, I guess.
As for the article itself, I still think it's more or less complimentary to the Mac. I think it boils down to, "I tried the iMac, and I found some problems with it, but I still liked it overall. It's just that in the end, I liked my PC a little bit more, so I switched back." Even with the inaccuracies, I don't see what the big deal is; this may be where we'll just have to agree to disagree.
No, I like the iMac a lot, and I certainly don't equate it to whatever kind of person it was that I described. I was only trying to make a point, and be funny at the same time, but I guess I only half succeeded.
I understand what you mean, but I still disagree with the employer analogy. It's one of those analogies that seems to fit at first glance, but breaks down upon closer examination (like the Mac-BMW / PC-Camaro analogy or whatever). So I don't think I want to pursue it. In my experience, analogies tend to work best in comparing simpler systems/occurances. Using them in logical arguments to equate complicated scenarios can be very difficult and dangerous.
Alex