In the near future, we might have my school’s robotics club start writing for this site, as a way to benefit everyone involved. They don’t have to shell out an annual fee, they get bonus points for “owning” a website, and I’ll have someone else writing, which means more updates.
What does this mean for you, our tiny readership? Nothing really, other than the fact that this site will be updated roughly twice as often, and that you might have to deal with some confusing strings of articles. That confusion will be gotten rid of when I get around to categorizing everything… eventually.
The customer satisfaction thing chart is nice data, but I dug it up on the ChangeWave site, and you’ll notice that the image is a year old, and reflects information from when Leopard had just come onto the market. Since I’ve already taken statistics classes, I know not to take the statistics at face value.
One important thing to consider is demographics. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Leopard market at time of survey consisted mainly of previous mac users, who will be more skewed toward praising the product, whereas XP (I’m not even going to try to defend Vista) has been on the market for quite a while, so that any excitement would have cooled down.
In addition, as far as I know, most people get a Windows for their first computer, and these people make up a relatively large part of those surveyed. Those with little computer experience will express disapproval of the machine and operating system and neglect to mention that they thought the PC came with a cup holder, or a foot pedal, or whatever. Before you dismiss these as isolated incidents, take another estimate of your measure of human stupidity. In an extreme case, I have read about a tech support guy who had three people, all experienced programmers, ask him why safe mode is so safe, and why they didn’t use it all the time. In a row.
The problem with any simple customer satisfaction survey is that it will never distinguish between the people with legitimate grievances against their computers and the people who don’t know how to double-click.
Customer service doesn’t make the product. It’s common knowledge that AT&T is a horrible service provider, (especially next to Comcast, and Bill will back me up on that) but they actually have incredibly helpful customer service, will fix problems for free, etc.
If you’re in the middle of Kansas, you will still have at least one friend who convinced you to get a computer, who is able to stumble through a help file. If not, I have my doubts about the likelyhood of you owning a computer, especially a laptop.
Anyone using a desktop computer will have someone around able to set it up, and anyone using a laptop either works at a company with eager tech geeks or is a tech geek himself. Either way, you don’t need to call customer service.
And as to the earlier complaint that Microsoft Customer Service is unfriendly and incompetent, that sounds like a stereotype, and let’s face it, you’d be that way too if half your job involved telling people that their laptop died because it ran out of batteries.
Ironically, the Blue Screen of Death is a good thing. When your comp crashes, it’ll tell you what’s going on, and if you have an aforementioned techie geek, he can fix it for you, whereas with a Mac you have to guess and assume a RAM problem. I’m not sure how rebooting a Mac is easier, but to be any simpler than Start-Shut down-Restart, depending on your settings, it would have to be something like shift+apple+R.
Whatever the Mac has for forcekill, it is vastly inferior. I don’t see any famous webcomics named after the Mac convention.
If you want to say that the Mac is safer precisely because it is a smaller share of the market, then Linux is probably thousands of times safer. Additionally, since Microsoft has the market shares, you’ll be the odd man out among your friends most of the time. Bill is an exception, since his school hands out Macs to all the students or something along those lines.
For example, I host a D&D game over instant message, and Bill is the only person who can’t get his needed files over a drag-and-drop into the AIM window, though that might be a problem with whatever alternative client he uses (possibly AIM express) rather than Mac. Still, it holds true, since he’s the only person in the game with a Mac.
I doubt the claim that most games are Mac compatible. For example, Team Fortress 2.
Take a good look at the box art. Note where it says “Game of the Year.” Also note that the letters PC show up 3 times on the box. Now note that the word Mac appears nowhere. It’s not on the back, either, I checked. Now, if the Game of the Year isn’t Mac Compatible…
Yes, you can run windows games on the Mac OS if you use some free software to make it compatible, but if we’re counting third-party software, then I’m sure a techie friend counts. Either way, Linux has everything else in existence blown out of the water and the atmosphere. Wait, I might be on to something…
This video summarizes the gaming situation pretty well.
True about the commandline. I think my problems with the Mac commandline might have been because the teacher was trying to get us to use Fugu (some sort of ftp client) with it at the same time, which didn’t turn out very well.
It’s been a while since I got a closer look at Mac, but I remember that they had some sort of software very close to MS Office, but I don’t remember if it was Microsoft-published, open source, or whatever.
Last I checked, Mac’s mice are all one-button mice, but I could be wrong about this. If you need a non-Mac mouse for the two buttons, see above: Linux, third party, water and the blowing out of.
The Mac hotkeys probably become second nature, but they take some getting used to. I imagine a Mac user might initially use the start/flag key as a substitute for the apple key until they get used to using Ctrl.
An additional point: the PC has and runs on C++, and I’m not sure what the Mac runs on. Either way, the PC has easier access to the C++ Visual Studio Development environment, though I’m guessing both can get the job done through
Finally, ignoring the fact that many companies won’t even let you through the door if you’re wearing such a blatantly casual outfit, the PC has the better resume by far.
The PC is the pioneer in the field of personal computers (arguable, I’m not sure if the C64 counts as a personal computer), and the biggest name in said field, as well as the one with the most experience (again, not sure if the C64 counts).
The PC is more specialized in the field, with spreadsheets, pie charts, and other tools useful to big companies. The Mac is more geared toward entertainment, movies, visual media, and editing. That could be useful depending on what company you’re applying to, but since we’re nerds here, nobody cares about the liberal arts majors. Another point here: considering how much Apple has tried to distance itself from the PC, Apple would be a hypocrite to jump back and claim it is just as viable a candidate for spreadsheets and corporate functions.
The only thing stopping Linux from running in and stealing the position due to it being a self-made man is that I’m leaving it out of the comparison.
Edit: Bill said that everything you can do on a PC, you can do on a Mac, but easier. To add to that, I say you usually need a third-party program or a specialized Mac port. Heck, when Bill wanted to look into the traveling salesman problem, I had to fiddle with the software/solver I found because it wasn’t Mac compatible.
Also, everything you can do on a Mac, you can do on a PC. This includes home movies, as I can throw together a video even when forced to use a software with even fewer options than windows movie maker.
Now, an anecdote. When I was at Ohlone, in the computer labs, one of the long tables was full of macs, which were noted to be reserved for anyone taking an art class there, as they came with various programs like photoshop, media editors, etc.
I never saw anybody using them. Literally everybody preferred to use the PC’s, even after it was clearly established that nobody from the art class would be using them.
Sorry, I didn’t post a reply earlier. School’s been quite busy.
Short Answer:
Above are the customer satisfaction ratings for 3 operating systems. I don’t think I need to say much more.
Long Rebuttal:
Customer service is NOT irrelevant. Tony and I happen to live in the heart of Silicon Valley, so it’s not difficult for us to find someone who happens to be tech-savvy. However, if you live in say, the middle of Kansas and your computer breaks down, the only people you’re probably going to be able to turn to are the customer service providers. As such, it is critical that customer service be of high quality.
It is true that the reason Mac’s don’t get viruses is because Apple controls too small of a market share to make the virus creation worthwhile. However, the reason for the immunity is essentially irrelevant. In fact, it could be argued that because Apple will never dominate as much of the market of Microsoft, Apple customers are guaranteed to be forever immune to viruses.
It’s much easier rebooting a Mac than a Windows, and Apple has its own version of Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Now, here’s where I feel Macs are really better than PCs. Less crashes, and contrary to what Tony has told you, fixing a Mac after a crash is just as easy as fixing a PC. The reason it took me so long to get my Mac repaired was that it was a hard drive failure, and I needed to get a new one.
Yeah, most games are Mac compatible these days. Next!
And really, who uses the command line besides really techie people? But if you must go down that route, I’ve used both, and they’re pretty much the same.
Windows is the corporate software of choice mostly because corporations get computers from Dell and IBM, and guess what, they come with Windows. Plus, Macs get MS office too.
Plug in a mouse with two keys, it works like normal. Also, in a Mac, Ctrl+C, is simply Apple+C. No difference.
Incidentally, this came from a website claiming to debunk the market share myth, pointing out that apple sells its software with its computers. What is harder to find is whether this pie is before or after an appropriate adjustment.
Spam aside:
Customer service is irrelevant. You can find any information you need through google, a tech friend, or some fiddling with cables.
Macs don’t get viruses because there’s simply much more profit to be had by making a virus targeting the vast majority of the computer-using populace than the piddly percents that macs make up. This is probably the same reason why you see freeware out there with one main download for PC’s and another sequestered in fine print saying “Mac compatible.”
When windows freeze, you know it, and you can fix it. When macs freeze, they idle indefinitely with the rainbow spinny ball, and you’re essentially stuck. When windows crash, it’s more of a hassle. I just copied everything onto an external drive and installed the OS back onto the same machine over the course of a whopping one hour. When macs crash, see what happened to bill. Incidentally, that took days to fix.
Name me one good video game that is compatible for macs but not PCs. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Microsoft boasts the better commandline. Whereas it’s easy to operate the cmd with windows, the mac version makes you jump through hoops. Yes, I actually used it when the computer class only had macs, and all the while I was thinking about how much easier it would be with some good old white text on black screen.
Microsoft is the corporate software of choice. Unless you’re a liberal arts major, in which case I look forward to employing you as a janitor in about ten years, having a development software in the form of Visual Studio and the uber-calculator known as excel is much more useful than making a home movie ever was, is, or will be.
I would also like to know the idea behind having the control key map to right-clicking and the modestly named apple key map to your common commands like copy and paste, while having the mouse have one button. This, along with the infamous Mac vs PC ads, is the kind of pompous buggery that makes PC users loath to switch over.
Wow, we haven’t had an update in a long time, so for that I apologize, O readers of NMSF.
As you all know, my computer was recently incapacitated due to a hard drive failure. This led to the loss of some of my data, including all my summer homework and quite a few games. I was only able to get Internet sporadically, but upon checking our website, I saw this:
“So Bill’s computer is down (Hey, that’s what you get for using a Mac. When my computer crashed, I was at least able to salvage all the games, programs, and porn ongoing projects from it).”
Mac bashing.
Now, I’m used to the Mac bashing by now. Almost everyone who doesn’t own/use one immediately goes “OMG Macs suck, PCs rule wooo!!!!111”. But now I’m here to strike back on behalf of all Macintosh users everywhere. Here is a list of reasons why Macs chomp PCs:
Stable OS:
Macs crash a lot less than PCs. There is no damned blue screen of death, and even when it does crash, it’s extremely easy to prevent it in the future. Most kernel panics are the result of bad or inadequate RAM, and a simple replacement or new addition of RAM will resolve it. With Windows, you can spend days or weeks looking for the problem, and then it might take forever to fix.
No Viruses
Mac’s don’t get viruses, PCs do. Macs win.
Better Customer Service
I hate Microsoft’s customer service. It’s horrible. You spend 35 minutes on the phone to get to a customer service rep, and God forbid that you require technical support. You end up on the phone with an incompetent monkey who spends two hours poking around your system, and then finally fails to fix the problem.With Apple customer service, you can actually see a real person who actually knows what they’re doing. It’s free too. If the problem does require money to get paid, you can usually have them diagnose it for free and just take it to a third party repair group who will fix it up cheap.
As you can clearly see, there are plenty of reasons why Macs are better than PCs. These are just the main ones.
Tony, the ball is in your court. Try (if futilely) to demonstrate why PCs are better than Macs.
So Bill’s computer is down (Hey, that’s what you get for using a Mac. When my computer crashed, I was at least able to salvage all the games, programs, and porn ongoing projects from it.
He told me to post something, and he gave me this link.
Basically, someone “dug up” a “birth certificate” “showing” that Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore should not be El Presidente. Now, I offer you a rare glimpse into the mind of an insane Chinese teenager, and show you how I processed this idea.
To start, I consider myself an open-minded person, but I’m also naturally doubtful. So I start by giving this article a credibility rating of 50/100
The first thing I notice is the title. It claims that Obama was born in Kenya. To quote Philip Defranco, there are only a few peole left with this misconception: some idiot soldier who didn’t want to get sent to Iraq on similar grounds, Sarah Palin, and about half of Alabama. I adjust the credibility rating accordingly:
Another attempt to discredit Obama; We’ve seen enough: -5
An idea shared by Sarah Palin: -5
Any ties to the South: -5
New Credibility Rating: 35/100
I noticed that the document looks pretty official. It’s not colored, or sealed or anything, and I don’t see footprints, and there’s a chunk of food or something one of the creases, but I might as well be nice and grant them pictoral evidence
Picture evidence: +5
New Credibility Rating: 40/100
Then I scroll down and notice the comments. Media conspiracy? Impeech [sic] Obama? Chemtrails? Great, we’ve got conspiracy nuts.
Association with Conspiracy Nuts: -25
New Credibility Rating: 15/100
I notice that the name of the Lawyer is Orly Taitz, along with some sentences in the article that could go either way: specifically the fact that it has a signature of some deputy or another instead of a doctor’s signature. I won’t penalize them for that, but that is a really stupid name.
Name matching an internet meme: -1
New Credibility Rating: 14/100
Then Bill points out that the birth certificate is marked 1961, but that Kenya didn’t become an independent nation until 1963. I verify this with Wikipedia.
Counter-evidence from Wikipedia: Set to 0
New Credibility Rating: 0/100
He also told me that Orly Taitz claimed that a person’s parents both had to be citizens in order for their child to be considered a natural-born citizen. I know this to be false, because neither of my parents were citizens when I was born. Besides, natural-born means… natural-born.
Making a statement that only a complete idiot would make: -10
Said statement being disproved by personal experience: -5
Inspiring Hovindian doubts about your profession: -15
New Credibility Rating:-30/100
I’m really suspicious at this point, so I scrolled back up and notice that this is an Alex Jones website. Phew, my hope for humanity is saved. The credibility on the other hand…
Alex Jones Website: WTF
New Credibility Rating: -273.15 degrees Kelvin / 100
Then Bill points out that the last paragraph (yes, that one little sentence) says that Alex Jones admitted that it might be a forgery. Now, if Alex Jones, a conspiracy nutcase who would never admit to any possibility other than a New World Order, relented on this…
Alex Jones Relenting: -EVERYTHING, INCLUDING KITCHEN SINK
New Credibility Rating: 9,223,372,036,854,775,807/100
Well, crap, it looks like I’ve caused an integer overflow error.
Oh hey, they have some nice T-Shirts in their store.
Nice and/or Funny T-Shirts: +1
New Credibility Rating: -9,223,372,036,854,775,808/100
Well, that takes care of the integer overflow error. Until next time.
