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Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

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Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#41

Post by catch23 »

cosmo7 wrote: post #39
anthonyrubin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you believe the answer is MS? http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2001/jw-0124-iw-mss... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_laws... There are countless other examples including the original versions of JScript and the burden that is IE6. This is not meant to be a defense of Apple. I was simply interested in why you believed that MS is somehow less "toxic" than Apple.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but despite all of the emotional baggage that surrounds platform choice, I do think Microsoft is kinder to developers. I remember the Stac case, but it was 18-odd years ago. It's more relevant to me now that, for instance, it is effectively illegal to write a book concerning developing for the iPhone. After all, you'd never see Steve Jobs running up and down a stage shouting "developer…

Microsoft is friendlier to developers, but the development environment in windows is not so friendly. The one major reason that I own a MacBook is due to the BSD development environment, I'd have to run vmware or colinux on a windows machine to get the equivalent feel. And no, cygwin just doesn't cut it.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#42

Post by cosmo7 »

catch23 wrote: post #41
cosmo7 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, but despite all of the emotional baggage that surrounds platform choice, I do think Microsoft is kinder to developers. I remember the Stac case, but it was 18-odd years ago. It's more relevant to me now that, for instance, it is effectively illegal to write a book concerning developing for the iPhone. After all, you'd never see Steve Jobs running up and down a stage shouting "developer…

Microsoft is friendlier to developers, but the development environment in windows is not so friendly. The one major reason that I own a MacBook is due to the BSD development environment, I'd have to run vmware or colinux on a windows machine to get the equivalent feel. And no, cygwin just doesn't cut it.

Unix is better than Windows because doing Unix development is easier on Unix than on Windows?

I like OS X, but this is not a very well-constructed argument.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#43

Post by rtw »

rtw wrote: post #30
anthonyrubin wrote: post #20

Honestly, who cares? Why are so many inane articles submitted to HN?

(original submitter here) I care. I care about end-user personal computing trends. They a) amuse me and b) affect my income. That's why I submitted, to see discussion on a topic I am interested in. Quoting from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."

I see downmods on above comment without explanation. On a whim, this prompted me to say a little more:

The more OSX crosses into mainstream consumer territory, the better. I only run Linux myself, but having been a long time developer and troubleshooter for Windows, I am seriously psyched about seeing the OSX market grow and grow. Getting over the stigmas of "coolness" and elitism is a good step in a positive direction. Whether you like it or not, these stigmas are out there (I doubt people frequenting this website were lured into Macs for this particular aspect of them).

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#44

Post by unalone »

potatolicious wrote: post #34
unalone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Word on both, and Word on Mac is better. It's not particularly good, but it's got a lot going for it - namely, a de-emphasis on over-the-top menus for sidebars - and it takes advantage of a lot of the neat Mac stuff that Windows can't do. It's still really ugly, especially compared to Pages, but it's better.

I've used Word on both, and while I like the UI better on the Mac, it lacks VBScript, which completely rules it out for many users, and is much slower than its Windows counterpart. Pages has a great UI, but doesn't do enough. There are an insane number of features that Word has, that even a high school student would need, that are entirely absent from Pages (a robust referencing system, for example). What I would pay…

I'm sure it'll come along eventually. And absolutely, Word on Windows has some good stuff too. My point was, the program on two different operating systems is quite different, so it's not worth judging somebody based on their liking Mac Word.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#45

Post by unalone »

mattmaroon wrote: post #31
unalone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they ever really have that aura? I mean, I'm a Mac fanboy. I've argued with you about Apple a thousand bajillion times on this site. I watch the keynote. But I never got into it because it was a cult thing. I got into it because every blog I liked reading took some time to talk about loving Apple (Shaun Blanc, John Gruber, John Welsh, even Paul Graham), and so I took some time out to try the computers and I reall…

Their brand clearly inspires a lot of cultlike devotion. Charismatic leader, followers who overlook their own flaws and magnify those of everyone else, feelings of persecution (fading since Microsoft's antitrust suit ended). OSX users often look down on Windows users, as if they just don't know better. They say things like "OSX is inherently better than Windows" without specifying what it's better at or pausing to co…

In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better.

Unless you go by customer satisfaction, wherein Apple trounces competition in both hardware and software.

I get what you're talking about. I just think that cultism stems less from a blind devotion to the "specialness" of the computers, and more from a general appreciation of them. I think OS X is better than Windows, and I've tried a few times to specify why, but mostly it's a combination of a lot of little things that are all very good, rather than any particular feature which crushes Windows. (I don't use Dashboard or Spaces, for instance, haven't turned on Time Machine for a while, and I'm not a big Unix person, so the big crowed-out features aren't it. But I still am absolutely certain that the OS is better quantifiably.)

The problem is that it's not easy to explain. There's a logic behind it, but it's a difficult one that depends on a bunch of little factors rather than one big one. That gets interpreted as cultism and fanboyism, but there's more to it than that. And I don't think that "special" ever had anything to do with it. Apple doesn't sell "special."

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#46

Post by GHFigs »

unalone wrote: post #26
sh1mmer wrote: post #19

The point is valid, the "signs" to back it up are tenuous and the attempts at humour lame. While I don't disagree with the author's premise the article probably isn't worth your time reading.

Here's a question that isn't addressed: does being special matter ? I thought the point of capitalism and competition was how good products were, not how special you felt using them.

How special you feel using a product is part of what makes it good. Where "special" can mean a lot of things. Don Norman covers this very well in Emotional Design.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#47

Post by kragen »

wmf wrote: post #8
gaius wrote: post #3

Excellent. Right now then, we're at the point in history we'd be at if things had gone to plan for SGI with the Indy, a Unix workstation as a desktop computer for the masses. Which is, umm, 15 years ago...

Wasn't the Indy $15,000? Even accounting for Moore's Law it would have been hard for SGI to go mainstream.

I think you could get them for less than that by 1994, like $5,000. But then Jim Clark gave up trying to turn SGI into a mass-market company and went to go start some software company.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#48

Post by mattmaroon »

unalone wrote: post #45
mattmaroon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their brand clearly inspires a lot of cultlike devotion. Charismatic leader, followers who overlook their own flaws and magnify those of everyone else, feelings of persecution (fading since Microsoft's antitrust suit ended). OSX users often look down on Windows users, as if they just don't know better. They say things like "OSX is inherently better than Windows" without specifying what it's better at or pausing to co…

In fact, by almost any easily quantifiable measure, Windows is better. Unless you go by customer satisfaction, wherein Apple trounces competition in both hardware and software. I get what you're talking about. I just think that cultism stems less from a blind devotion to the "specialness" of the computers, and more from a general appreciation of them. I think OS X is better than Windows, and I've tried a few times to…

How do you quantify customer satisfaction? It's murky at best. Not only that, it's an unfair comparison since you're comparing one OEM against a range of OEMs. There's no doubt that there are a lot of garbage Windows PCs built. That doesn't say anything about the OS other than that they license it out liberally.

You'd also be comparing one OEM that makes much more expensive PCs than most of its competitors. It's like comparing Accura vs. Ford.

And if you did quantify it, which is impossible to do meaningfully, wouldn't that take into account the fact that cult members would feel much more satisfied even if all other things were equal? That's what being in a cult is about. I would bet the average Scientologist feels much more satisfaction about their religion than the average Catholic. That doesn't mean it's better.

Re: Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special

#49

Post by catch23 »

cosmo7 wrote: post #42
catch23 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is friendlier to developers, but the development environment in windows is not so friendly. The one major reason that I own a MacBook is due to the BSD development environment, I'd have to run vmware or colinux on a windows machine to get the equivalent feel. And no, cygwin just doesn't cut it.

Unix is better than Windows because doing Unix development is easier on Unix than on Windows? I like OS X, but this is not a very well-constructed argument.

Well I like to use certain command line tools for finding stuff or moving files around, which tend to happen more often as a developer. I've gotten pretty good at scripting with the new powershell in windows, but still somewhat annoying compared to what is available in most unix environments.
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