Market Study: Mac owners think they are extraordinary

[imported_Salvatore]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PADkpyVWAwQ

A British take on it.

 

[DrPizza]

Acquaintance: "I have a Mac. They're much easier to use than PC's."

Me: "Meh, I don't care what kind of computer people have. If people ask me for advice, I go by their intelligence: the stupid people, I direct toward Mac's. Mac's are more idiot proof. You pay a premium for idiot proofing though. Anyone with average intelligence or better, I direct toward Window's based PC's. They're cheaper. Of course, there are the claims that Macs are 'faster.' Bullshit. Computers aren't any faster than they were 5 years ago, except you remember your 5 year old computer being slow because it was filled with spyware and crap, and your harddrive was a train wreck. 80% of users do little more than word processing, email, and surf the web. 5 years ago, a computer could spell check a book in a second or two. In that context, please explain "faster." You can type faster? Okay. Your email speed is limited by your internet connection. Ditto your web surfing. If no one told you what chip was in your computer or what brand your computer was, and all you could see was the webpage you were browsing, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a brand new Mac, a brand new Window's PC, or a 5 year old model of either."

 

[Train]

cant believe no one has posted this yet:
http://soniq.org/blogs/blogs/i...hp/all/2008/02/26/p821

 

[nervegrind3r]

mac owners DO think they are extraordinary, and well, its because they are very loyal to Apple, a company which they believe makes the best computers/technology out there. When you are loyal to anything, your job, your car, your spouse, you fee like you are better than others.

I think Apple does make good products, not the best, but they know how to market and dress up the product for the consumer. For example, when I get unboxed a a high end asus laptop at work, there was nothing special about opening it and setting it up. In fact, it looked kind of crappy to me (besides system specs). But I will say when I opened that macbook pro, it was sweet, even opening the damn box. Apple knows how to package shit and make your mouth water, no joke; its like opening up a gift wrapped toy you've been waiting for. That adds to the "extraordinary" part of their products. Then, their stuff is sleek and cool as shit. Hit the apple store and play with an iphone or macbook air if you havent, and your mouth with water if youre a gadget freak.

Thats all aesthetics and marketing are one aspect though. On the inside, I dont care what any mac user says, says f'in problems as Windows Xp and VIsta (well vista is another story). I do support, so I see all the crap that happens, and people call me to fix them. Same application crashes, bugs, hardware failures (heard of refurbs anyone), kernal panics, etc. In fact, some of the most annoying problems I deal with only occur on macs (eg permissions problems that cannot easily being change in the gui, but resorting to terminal).

Plus what really pisses me off about macs is that hardware replacement will cost an arm and a leg for anything. Try upgrading that video card (without PC modding it) and you will have to take a loan out. Try getting a new logic board for your 2 year old mini, and the genius as the apple store will tell you are out of warranty, and the board is $400 and that you are better off buying a new one --- HAH!

One other thing I could never get is how mac problems never go mainstream; they are confined to the mac forums. I bet if you ask anyone if they like vista, 9 out of 10 will say its sucks. Mac OS prior to 10.4 was PLAGUED with OS problems, who are mac users kidding. Aside from software, they too have a history of hardware problems out of the box just like pc systems do, with faulty batteries, systems not working problem and needed a firmware update, etc. I have read in countless forums about problems mac users have had (because I ask for help on mac forums too), but they endure whatever crap because they love their mac. If my sound card is annoying me and doesnt want to work, that shit is gone in like two seconds, doesnt matter who makes it, I'm loyal to things that really do work.

Anyway, as a pc user (primarily) all I can say is that I dont feel extraordinary with my system because no one built the perfect system for me... I did My loyalty goes in part to intel, gigabyte, adata, antec, samsung, pny, etc etc. The reason you dont hear that PC users feel are extraordinary is because there is a million different PC builds, and no vendor can make a large parts of PC end users feel proud to have a specific sytem/product (eg people buy a dell because there is a slick deal on it, and they get a half decent setup on the cheap, otherwise its a pofs). No PC user has yet to build a system that caught the attention of the public at large, its all the same crap, with some differentiation here and there. Who the hell wants a dell?

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: walrus
What PC owners can do and Mac owners can't


Also

http://www.news.com/5208-1002_...ssageID=224389&start=0

apparently pc users cant make a website that doesn't look like sh*t?

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: mikeyes

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: mikeyes
My boss has been a PC/Linux user for years, bought a mac and suddenly PC's are evil and full of problems while the mac is a gift from god (aka Steve Jobs) He could not however answer the following question:

Why is there PC emulation for the MAC but no MAC emulation for the PC??

no demand.
people who want to run mac run a mac.
people who run xp in parallels or vmware are just transitioning/keeping compatibility. xp compatibility not because windows is brilliant but because its just a chore they have to do because of windows ubiquity.

I don't think too many people will say that windows is brilliant, however there is a big difference between being brilliant and leading the market. Windows leads the market share because Microsoft made their product affordable. Their market share means that more software will be written and exists for the PC than the mac. Not everyone who runs xp in parallels or vmware is doing it just for transitioning sake. There are alot of Windows programs that will never be re-written for the mac. As long as that situation exists some mac users will have to emulate Windows in order to run all the software they need to use their computer for. Transitioning implies that one day they can throw away their windows emulation. That can only happen if and when the mac market share gets big enough that all software manufacturers can have value in releasing Windows and OSX versions of their software.

well thats the thing. for the majority of switchers they are transitioning. sure theres a subset that has apps that are specialized and must be run from windows, but as time marches on and mac market expansion continues it will be less and less of a problem. for the average user stuff like office is already available for osx. as time continues and open source software gets better stuff like open office will have more market penetration, more basic software will be available for both platforms for free the only thing keeping many users tied to pc is games really. not everyone is running vmware for transitioning, but i bet the vast majority are. i'm talking home user, not business with specialized applications of course. but thats really a given.

as for cost. how much did vista cost when it first came out?
add that chunk to the cost of your pc build and suddenly the price advantage not so great. its better now but the original prices were ridiculous. even now the ultimate version which should really be what the premium version is is still way over priced. plus if you consider the software you'd have to buy to match the functionlity of ilife and such the cost keeps creeping up quite quickly.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: mikeyes

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: mikeyes
"Apple would beat my ass down?" at what overcharging for hardware?. OSX is a unix varient with a nice GUI running on Intel hardware. There is nothing special or sophisticated about it. Apple fanboys have developed the snobbish attitudes because they need some reason for paying the premium price for the same Intel hardware that runs my PC.

No commercial mac virtualization exists because there is no demand for it. There are some mac only pieces of software but like someone said those who what that software will buy a mac. You see PC virtualization on the mac because there are alot of Windows only programs that people with macs want to run. The other reason is that since macs are intel based it was very easy to dual boot or emulate a windows environment.

Apple would beat your ass down if you were a commercial vendor. Why do you think VMWare doesn't properly virtualize Leopard out of the box? Apple put some triggers in the OS to make it fail on VMWare, and specifically asked VMWare not to fix it. If VMWare did fix it and tried to sell it as a product that could virtualize OS X, Apple would be all over them like ants on a sugar cube.

To answer number 2 - There is virtualization for OSX and EFI based booting. I have installed and run OSX inside a VMware session on my workstation. The only technical issues were driver based. If Apple would release VMware based drivers for OSX anyone could run it virtualized. There is no commerical virtualization because Apple wants to control everything about their products and won't allow it.This is accomplished via using the same EFI emulators that Hackintoshes run, not via real virtualized EFI support. It has the same problems as EFI emulation on a normal PC does, and any kind of commercial product would need to offer real EFI virtualization.

I love the Apple is like ants analogy

Booting Apple in VMware required no EFI emulation. There was a kernel patch to make the OSX boot with certain Intel and AMD chips but the base OS would boot in VMware unpatched (before Apple broke it). The following article (Link) shows how you can install OSX on Intel based hardware without any hacks or EFI emulation. EFI has been supported by Intel hardware for awhile now ever since oh I don't know macs started using Intel hardware. The fact that Apple had to intentionally break it and ask VMware not to fix it proves that there are no technical issues only Apple issues.

VMware sells emulation software. Even if VMware fixed the bug and allowed OSX to boot you can't take them to court because their generic emulation software happens to be able to run your OS, just like you can't take a motherboard manufacturer to court because their motherboard happens to boot OSX. VMware is like a generic virtual computer and you can't be sued because of what your computer might be installed with. If that was the case Microsoft could sue every motherboard manufacturer because someone might use their motherboard to install a pirated copy of XP.

At the end of the day it's all a joke. We are not saying Apple or OSX sucks. We are saying your attitude sucks. Almost every PC zelot will admit that OSX is a cool operating system. The main reason they won't use it or accept it is because of the snobbish attitude on the part of everything that is Apple. Realize it's just a friggin computer and nothing more. It's not an zen experience and logging into OSX won't give you sexual release. Stop pretending it's anything more than just a piece of electronics that lets you lookup your gay porn.

If Apple would come to this realization and sell cheap affordable PC's, or better yet release their OS as software only and let people build their own macs all of this snobbishness would disappear overnight. OSX would become what XP is, just another great OS to be used and enjoyed.

You're right to a point, but the failure in your chain of logic is who gets sued and for what. To boot vanilla OS X, you need EFI support and you need to falsely identify your hardware as Apple hardware. The former is completely legit, but it isn't done because there's little need for it right now besides booting OS X, so VMWare isn't going to put the R&D in to such a thing. The latter is what will get you sued, Apple most certainly has the rights to their hardware and can sue on the grounds of fake hardware, even if it's virtualized.

On the other hand if you use a hacked kernel, then Apple can nail you for distributing a hacked kernel since that's their property.

Apple knows the law and keeps some very good lawyers on hand to make sure they're always being protected by it. There are a million different ways they can nail you as a commercial vendor for specifically helping people pirate their OS, the above are just the most immediate methods. And that's why you'll never see it even if people did want it; Apple says that it shall not be done, so it will not.

 

[datalink7]

I find Apple users as a whole have a larger population of smugness.

 

[mcmilljb]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
I'll admit I LOLed when I first heard of macs new BSOD

They had to follow the standard :laugh:

 

[mcmilljb]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
You're right to a point, but the failure in your chain of logic is who gets sued and for what. To boot vanilla OS X, you need EFI support and you need to falsely identify your hardware as Apple hardware. The former is completely legit, but it isn't done because there's little need for it right now besides booting OS X, so VMWare isn't going to put the R&D in to such a thing. The latter is what will get you sued, Apple most certainly has the rights to their hardware and can sue on the grounds of fake hardware, even if it's virtualized.

On the other hand if you use a hacked kernel, then Apple can nail you for distributing a hacked kernel since that's their property.

Apple knows the law and keeps some very good lawyers on hand to make sure they're always being protected by it. There are a million different ways they can nail you as a commercial vendor for specifically helping people pirate their OS, the above are just the most immediate methods. And that's why you'll never see it even if people did want it; Apple says that it shall not be done, so it will not.

Actually, as EFI continues toward becoming a used standard, then VMware will have to create support for it. Although, I agree wiith Linus Torvalds on the BIOS & EFI discussion, "just load the OS
and get the hell out of there".

Cisco knows the law better than Apple! :laugh:

Apple says it shall not be done, but as long as some geeks want it done, it shall be done. Whether it be on Earth or in China or India...

 

[lektrix]

Macs can run XP but PCs can't run OSX =(

With that said, I'd take a custom built PC over a Mac anyday for half the price.

 

[IEC]

Hah, I work in a lab full of PPC Macs running 10.4.1 with 24" LCDs... used for FCP/Studio, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.

I don't think I've ever seen as many crashes and application freezes on Macs as I have since I started working there...

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: lektrix
Macs can run XP but PCs can't run OSX =(

With that said, I'd take a custom built PC over a Mac anyday for half the price.

Ever heard of a "Hackintosh"?

 

[mikeyes]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
You're right to a point, but the failure in your chain of logic is who gets sued and for what. To boot vanilla OS X, you need EFI support and you need to falsely identify your hardware as Apple hardware. The former is completely legit, but it isn't done because there's little need for it right now besides booting OS X, so VMWare isn't going to put the R&D in to such a thing. The latter is what will get you sued, Apple most certainly has the rights to their hardware and can sue on the grounds of fake hardware, even if it's virtualized.

On the other hand if you use a hacked kernel, then Apple can nail you for distributing a hacked kernel since that's their property.

Apple knows the law and keeps some very good lawyers on hand to make sure they're always being protected by it. There are a million different ways they can nail you as a commercial vendor for specifically helping people pirate their OS, the above are just the most immediate methods. And that's why you'll never see it even if people did want it; Apple says that it shall not be done, so it will not.

Some people say Phystar is real others say its not. Until they release an actual product no on will know for sure. The fact that there is such a strong support for the whole Hackintosh idea I would place a six pack on the fact that in the future we will see wider support for 3rd party macs and it will be like every other time people do things illegal. Company one will come along and get shut down and be replaced by companies two three and four.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: datalink7
I find Apple users as a whole have a larger population of smugness.

someone has to sustain Bose, , B&O, Furutech, Monster and Apple.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: datalink7
I find Apple users as a whole have a larger population of smugness.

someone has to sustain Bose, , B&O, Furutech, Monster and Apple.

argh I have an ipod and bose ipod dock!!!!

 

[Babbles]

Updated the thread title; I just now realized how aggressive the title was when I just wanted to mention that I merely found an interesting market study and not re-hash the entire PC vs. Mac debate. . . again.