Re: Time for a vacation from CSMA, Happy New Year!

In article <yrudnQmbAZA-GSfenZ2dnUVZ_tOdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"MuahMan" <muahman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "George Graves" <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:gmgraves-DC9135.03035603012006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > In article <0pmdnUoJ270QoyfeRVn-sQ@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> > "MuahMan" <muahman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> "George Graves" <gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> news:gmgraves-53855C.19002002012006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> > In article <b_OdnWNep6csRiTeRVn-rw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> >> > "MuahMan" <muahman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> "TheLetterK" <theletterk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> >> news:1Akuf.75292$wq.74898@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> >> > foo@xxxxxxx wrote:
> >> >> >> On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:45:52 -0500, TheLetterK
> >> >> >> <theletterk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >>>foo@xxxxxxx wrote:
> >> >> >>>
> >> >> >>>>On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 22:32:31 GMT, George Graves
> >> >> >>>><gmgraves@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> >> >>>>wrote:
> >> >> >>>>
> >> >> >>>>
> >> >> >>>>
> >> >> >>>>>Not so. Marketing reasons quite unrelated to the Mac's ability
> >> >> >>>>>have
> >> >> >>>>>conspired to make it a minority platform. Much of the blame is
> >> >> >>>>>Apple's
> >> >> >>>>>own boneheadedness. But it has nothing whatever to do with the
> >> >> >>>>>Mac's
> >> >> >>>>>capabilities which are every bit as viable as a PCs, and in some
> >> >> >>>>>ways
> >> >> >>>>>is much better and always was.
> >> >> >>>>
> >> >> >>>>
> >> >> >>>>To you.
> >> >> >>>>Most people don't see many differences between the two platforms
> >> >> >>>>except that the Mac's vastly more expensive and has slower CPUs.
> >> >> >>>
> >> >> >>>$50 is really that big of an issue for you, that you consider it a
> >> >> >>>vast
> >> >> >>>expense difference?
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> Entry-level modern Mac is a G5. If you want a 20" LCD with that,
> >> >> >> it
> >> >> >> will cost you $1699, whether you want other features or not; there
> >> >> >> is
> >> >> >> no workaround (aside from Edu).
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> Entry level PC (Dell) (due to competition, they're all pretty
> >> >> >> modern;
> >> >> >> nobody sells many with old CPUs developed 3-4 years ago) with 19"
> >> >> >> monitor is $579 or so. Add $40 for some RAM and it's a great, fast
> >> >> >> machine.
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> That's what most consumers see. And it's no wonder Macs don't sell
> >> >> >> much.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > It still doesn't change the fact that the machines Apple offers
> >> >> > generally
> >> >> > aren't as bad as people claim. The iMac G5 is a very good value,
> >> >> > when
> >> >> > you
> >> >> > consider what you get and what it would cost from competing OEMs.
> >> >> > That
> >> >> > Apple offers no serious contender for low-end machines does not
> >> >> > invalidate
> >> >> > my point.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >>
> >> >> My Imac G5 is a good machine. It's equal to my PC is some respects,
> >> >> better
> >> >> than my PC in some repects, and worse than my pc in some repects. It
> >> >> definitely goes largely unused at the moment
> >> >> due to lack of knowledge of the OS.
> >> >
> >> > And who's problem is that? Certainly not Apple's. They gave you an OS
> >> > that's easier than Windows, yet you are unable to grock it. Why is
> >> > that?
> >
> >> It's definitely Apple's fault. I have no desire, no need, no drive, and
> >> don't care enough about a computer to re-learn everything.
> >
> > And your lack of ambition and intelectual curiosity is Apple's fault,
> > how?
> >
> >
> >> At my age i'm not
> >> going to re-learn 15 years worth computer skills. Not when I don't need
> >> to.
> >> If Apple wanted my business they shouldn't have waited so long to start
> >> making decent *** and marketing it.
> >
> > Got news for you buddy-roe. Apple was making "decent ***" when
> > Microsoft Windows 3.1 was a joke. Gee, that was... whattaya know, about
> > 15 years ago!
>
> Perhaps you missed the part where I said, "marketed it". This is where you
> chime and blame
> some sort illegal unfair business practices is why MSFT clubbed Apple like a
> baby seal.

Nothing M$ did had much affect on PCs becoming ubiquitous. It was
Apple's bone-headed marketing coupled with PCs cheap pricing that did
that. You obviously have me confused with some other Mac user.


> >> It would be career suicide to try and
> >> push a Mac.
> >
> > Who's asking you to do so? Not me. I certainly didn't ask you to buy a
> > Mac.
> >
> >> I would get laughed out of, or kicked out of every colo in town
> >> if I tried to run Xserves in there. It's Windows or Linux. I think that's
> >> why you guys get so crazy. I think the Mac crowd tend to be that "take
> >> myself, and everything to serious" crowd. The poetry slam crowd... The
> >> Jihad. It's that artsy fartsy metro-sexual liberal puke type of crowd.
> >> Maccies remind of the old Saturday Night Live skits where they used to
> >> dress
> >> all in black and talked pretty much like you'd think Lars would sound..
> >
> > The fact that you would get laughed out of every place in town likely
> > has little to do with Macs, Brian. (BTW, what's a colo?).
>
> Co-location factility.

That still doesn't tell me anything. I've never heard of a Co-location
factility.


> >> It's a computer and for me XP is twice as easy, twice as fast, twice as
> >> useful. Ad to that the fact that XP is the defacto standard in every
> >> business fucntion outside of graphics arts (always the smallest dept). I
> >> literally tried to give away my mac mini to my mother. I was like I want
> >> you
> >> to try this out, suppossedly it's easier than using XP. She's 66 and
> >> wanted
> >> NO PART of learning a new OS. She can open outlook, IE, and do her taxes.
> >> She has never seen an error on a computer outside of the red light
> >> flashing
> >> on the printer asking for more paper.
> >
> > Again, nobody FORCED you to buy that Mini. I just find it interesting
> > that as easy as OSX is, that you can't seem to learn it - not that I
> > really care what you use. Some of do care about the bull*** you spew in
> > this NG about macs being toys, and Apple being an iPod manufacturer, and
> > not a computer manufacturer. You know, the stuff you say ON PURPOSE to
> > provoke Mac users here. Then we find out that you aren't even capable of
> > operating a Mac and are 1000 times more zealous about Windows than any
> > of us ever were about the Mac. It makes you look foolish and, frankly,
> > just plain old mean-spirited.
>
> I guess that's subjective. Because I speak the truth.

No you don't.


> Apples Mac sales are
> shrinking while Ipod sales are growing.

You're half-right. iPod sales are growing, but in case you haven't
noticed, Mac marketshare has doubled in the last year. How you get
shrinking sales and growing marketshare simultaneously must be some kind
of Pratt marketing theory that the rest of us aren't privy to yet.

> Ipods become a bigger chunk of
> Apples sales on a daily basis. Someone put up number yesterday that show
> that Ipod already counts for nearly 55% of Apples bottom line.

Gee, that means that Macs account for 45% of Apple's bottom line. But if
you think that Apple doesn't recognize that iPod sales aren't
sustainable over the long haul, then you don't know very much about
Apple.

> Mean-spirited? Negative,
> i'm not the one going around name calling. I ocassionally call Timberwoof a
> ***, but he came out of the closet and should know the world does not accept
> him and never will.

I rarely call you names unless you consider Brian, or Pratt, name
calling. As for Timberwolf being gay, that's his right and as long as he
doesn't rub peopel's faces in it with with descriptions of his sexual
practices, I and most of the rest of the world have no problem with it
and aren't threatened by it.


> >> Hell I gave it a whirl. *** I gave it two whirls and 1.) it was harder
> >> to
> >> use 2.) the machines definitely respond slower. Maybe #1 is the result
> >> of
> >> using XP for so long, but does it matter? Every office I go to is going
> >> to
> >> run XP. Every Webserver i'm ever going to work on is going to be IIS.
> >> Every
> >> client wants Exchange.
> >
> > Sounds like you're trying to convince you, not me of something that you
> > don't even believe yourself.
>
> I wanted to believe you Jihad were telling the truth. That Macs are perfect
> or even equal to a XP. It's clearly not the case.

Nobody said that Macs were perfect, but that they are better than XP is
simply a documented fact.

> >> If Apple wants it's computers to take off and be a
> >> player they better make OSX better than XP.
> >
> > It already is better - much better. You cannot, by your own admission
> > operate a Mac, so that lets you out as being a judge of the relative
> > merits of the two platforms.

> That's the problem. Nobody taught me XP either. It was just so natural I
> figured it out on my own almost instantaneously.

You are in the minority Most people find the Mac MUCH easier to use.
Your problem is that you INSISTED that it work like Windows. It doesn't,
and if it did, there would be little to choose between them, now would
there? Remember, Gates wanted Windows to work like the Mac, but for
reasons of plagerism, couldn't, so his people cobbled together Windows
from a myriad of disparate sources and mixed metaphores. The thing about
the Mac is the metaphore is consistent and once you "get it" you'll find
that it applies everywhere. That's what makes it easy and logical


> OSX is completely backward and impossible to learn;

Maybe for you. to most average people, it's as easy as falling off a
log. If what you maintain were true, how come so many people have
learned it and have learned it so easily? I will say this, you'll never
get anywhere with it as long as you INSIST on making it work like
Windows, which is, apparently, what you did. Most people aren't that
pigheaded.

> it's disqualified from any
> meaningful competition.

You forgot to say FOR YOU.

> You just said OSX was easier to learn, yet you
> bitched about OSX for a long time
> trying to learn it's ass-backwards way of doing stuff.

Now you're putting words in my mouth. I never said that I had any
trouble learning OSX, but there were (and remain) things about the
interface that I don't like as well as I did the OLD Mac OS. Still, just
because OSX isn't as polished as the old Mac OS's GUI doesn't in any way
keep it from being better than XP - in almost every way.


> XP on the other hand
> BAM, figured it out, OSX, can't figure it out.

Again, that says more about Brian Pratt than it does about either OSX or
XP.


> An OS that is that difficult to learn cannot be that good.

But you keep forgetting, its not difficult for anyone who approaches it
with an open mind, its just difficult for YOU.

> That's why XP has 99% of the market and Apple sells the *** out
> Ipods but not computers.

That's probably one of the dumbest things I've seen you post. The fact
that you cannot understand OSX has nothing whatsoever to do with
Microsoft's 95% marketshare. 99% of all the Windows computer users in
the world have never even seen a Mac, so how could any difficulty in
learning it be the reason for M$' monopoly? Most people don't know
whether Mac is easier/better or not. Your reasoning makes no sense.

> On the other hand almost all Mac users are
> > forced to use Windows at some point. We CHOSE Mac over Windows simply
> > because it IS better and is demonstrably better to anyone who takes the
> > time to let it work its magic. You didn't allow that and you are
> > clueless because of it. It's fine, nobody cares, but your constant
> > anti-Mac ravings on this NG ring pretty hollow because of your self
> > admitted lack of credibility.

> >> Not equal or even close, i mean
> >> OSX better read minds and respond to brainwave patterns. There is NO
> >> reason
> >> for anyone to switch EVER.
> >
> > How would you know? You don't even know how to operate OSX and have
> > admitted as much.
>
> But I've tried for days, weeks, and months.

Your inability to learn OSX is YOUR PROBLEM and not universal. You can't
operate a Mac and it disqualifies you from an opinion. Your like someone
who cannot drive being asked to test cars. YOU AREN'T QUALIFIED TO HAVE
AN OPINION IF YOU CANNOT OPERATE THE APPARATUS. Its that simple.

> On several levels of Apple
> hardware. It's completely non-intuitive and impossible to figure out.

It isn't. It's very easy. Much easier than Windows. If you knew both
platforms, you'd realize how ridiculous you look with this attitude. It
took me a long time to learn Windows, and even though I can use it, I
have to admit that some things like networking still throw me because
They're so counter-intuitive, but, today, I can use a Windows computer
as well as the vast majority of Windows users out there because I kept
at it and stopped insisting that it work like a Mac. When I did that, I
got somewhere. Windows is not the mystery to me that it was a year ago.
It's almost laughingly inferior to OSX, but its no mystery.


> If I'm simply to stupid to figure OSX out but XP is still "learnable" by
> someone as dimwitted as me.. Again... Apple loses.

I don't think you're dimwitted, but I do think that you are stubborn and
your stubbornness is making learning OSX a whole lot harder than it
needs to be. But your wrong about Apple losing. The fact that Brian
Pratt cannot use a Mac is no sweat off of the brow of any computer user
who CAN use a Mac - and that's virtually 100% of anybody who actually
tries. Nor is it any problem for Apple, who sells all the Macs that they
can make and whose market share and reputation for making fine computers
is growing by the day.

> >> It's a choice that's as completely lost on me
> >> and incomprehensible as Timberwoof making love to other men. I just don't
> >> get it and find it really disturbing.
> >
> > You should be disturbed. MILLIONS of computer users world-wide DO get it
> > and find the Mac a better solution. That you don't reflects directly on
> > you, Brian, not Apple, not OSX, and not the millions of computer users
> > who find their Macs to be the best computers money can buy.
>
> But BILLIONS more don't get it.

You don't know that and cannot, in truth say it, unless you know for a
fact that those BILLIONS have actually tried a Mac and found it wanting.
You continue to propogate the myth that the billions of people worldwide
who use Windows PCs actually CHOSE those PCs over a Mac, when in
reality, the VAST majority have never seen, let alone used one. I don't
know about where you work, but where most people work, no IT person
comes up to them on their first day and says: "Which platform would you
prefer on your desk, a Mac or a PC?" For at least 99% of all the office
workers in the world, the computer on their desk is a Windows PC without
even so much as a 'by your leave.'


> 99% in fact. The most successful person in
> the world, Bill Gates, doesn't get it.

Actually he does "get it" he just can't duplicate it. He even insisted
that Windows 95 be exactly like the Mac, but for various reasons, his
programers were unable to comply, so Windows ended up being a
hodge-podge of disparate GUI ideas. Some borrowed from Apple and some
borrowed from other experiments in GUI design - most of them,
unfortunately, second-rate.

> There are
> millions of muslims that DO get why people strap C4 on their chest and blue
> up women and children who are in line to get diapers. It doesn't
> make what they do any more rational or reasonable.

What does that have to do with computers. Face it, Brian, you are too
stubborn to learn OSX and it's not the OSes fault. It YOU, pure and
simple.

> >> Would I feel differently about it if I was using it to edit photos or do
> >> coupon layouts or whatever the hell the Macs are suppossed to do so well?
> >
> > No. Because you are a computer bigot. You decided long before you ever
> > tried a Mac that "Macs suck." You said it enough times right here. That
> > this result was a self-fulfilling prophecy surprises no one, least of
> > all, you.
>
> No you are a mind reader?

I don't have to be. Your attitude is apparent from what you write.

> >> Maybe but unlikely as I'm not doing anything so drastic. I take out the
> >> red-eye. All this is coming from someone that is forced to use computers
> >> 40-80hrs a week to make some money and cares about technology and the Mac
> >> still offers me no benefits, only drawbacks. It will be even worse for
> >> the
> >> casaul computer user.
> >
> > That's why computer experts the world over - even those who supposedly
> > test products and write for Windows-centric publications, unanimously
> > recommend the Mac. Why, just this week, InfoWorld (about as Win-centric
> > a publication as one can get) voted Mac OSX and Mac OSX Server as the
> > best Operating Systems of 2005 as did PC Magazine and almost all other
> > PC publications. Are they all wrong or are you?
>
> I also read magazine reviews that states BMW's rock because they go fast and
> are feature-filled. They consistently rate
> BMW's highly. However they fail to mention that BMW's have the worst record
> in the auto-industry for having massive
> mechanical failures. I depend on nobody to recommend me anything. I try it
> for myself.

Well, that might have some relevance if you said that even the Corvette
magazines or magazines devoted to Mercedes all said that BMW is better
than the cars they champion, but otherwise, its pretty irrelevant. See,
these are PC and Windows centric pubs that are awarding OSX these kudos,
not just generic personal computer magazines.

> > Rule of thumb, Brian: when everybody but you starts to look wrong, then
> > its time to re-examine your own biases.
>
> only 1% look wrong.

> > But use Windows in good health, I certainly don't want to convince you
> > to use something that you don't like. Almost everybody has to use
> > Windows so I guess its inevitable that somebody would have to actually
> > LIKE it!
> >
> > Just stop making yourself look ridiculous with your idiotic Mac-bashing
> > here.
>
> I feel bilked by the Jihad and Apple.

The "Jihad" as you call it, is solely a product of your imagination


> What was I thinking pulling out my
> wallet in that Apple store! Damn you Eminem!!! DAMN YOU!!!!! BLACK EYED PEAS!!!!!

I don't know whatb you were thinking - if anything. Now that you have
completely convinced yourself that you were right about Macs all along
(wow, whatta surprise), you can move on, can't you? You'll never have to
deal with Macs or even think about them again. And with, as you contend,
Apple's "shrinking computer sales", Macs will be history before long,
right? Then you can relax your sphinctor.

--
George Graves
.