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Buckets of Intellectual A$$ GR@V33  Comments  |
Charter Member Blog Tools Are you ingesting what I'm spewing?
Latest Blog Entries by blankfist 
Blog Archive for blankfist
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Is it a common problem- a known issue? Technology fails no matter who produces it. Your firmware may have been hit by stray cosmic ray, no telling.
If you make an assertion you should demonstrate it with a preponderance of evidence where possible. You kind of did that with the firmware story (although I'm not sure any rational person would agree that because you had one iPod go wonky on you that Steve Jobs has raped you in the mouth...but whatever). It would have helped this point to have at least one additional story about how an iMac failed you, how your Nano konked out, or how a MacBook Pro had a bunch of dead pixels. You see? Once you establish a pattern of similar experiences, then your claim gains weight.
The customer service complaint wasn't backed up by any story. All you say there is that "as you will notice if you ever buy one of their products, is terrible with not only customer service..." Well, you've got to demonstrate that, m'boy. How is their customer service bad?
A point about structure: your second and third paragraphs basically say the same thing, containing the same points, and one lessens the impact of the other. Each paragraph should argue a single, unique element of the argument. Well-constructed arguments are very economical with their word usage and they rarely repeat themselves other than to sum up.
To sum up: have bucketloads of evidence, back up each assertion presented, and be sure each element of your argument gets its own paragraph.
Here endeth the lesson.
The fifth generation iPods have been out for a while, and mine has been sitting in a drawer for a long time because it is simply a POS. I just recently dusted it off and tried to upgrade the firmware to 1.3 thinking maybe they shook the kinks out of the update, but of course it ruined my iPod for good. It was only a matter of time before I stabbed my knife blade through the screen.
Maybe I shouldn't post an anti-Apple post when I'm drinking sangria. Or maybe Apple can suck my ass. Also, you can read my earlier post against Mobile Me if you want to see the beginnings of my public outrage against Apple. There, too, the army of Dag was there to defend Apple's honor.
If I was going to fault Apple for something, it would be the outrageous expense of its hardware and peripherals.
Sounds like stupid user error to me.
I use both XP and a Mac on a daily basis- I'm at least 50% more productive and less frustrated on my Mac.
Anyway, I totally agree they overprice their computer/laptop line tremendously although frankly the iPod line, particularly the 5G and down hard disk models are a great piece of hardware and having tried various other digital audio players, I think they're one of the best in sound quality. I also dislike their style and simplicity over functionality and customisation attitude although there's obviously a huge demographic this appeal to. Still, the fact that iPods are now filled with bloatware that practically no one uses, while they can't seem to integrate a decent audio equaliser into it it sad. Not to mention scroll wheels and touch-keyboards for all their sleekness will never be as easy to use as tactile keys.
Haven't dealt with their customer service, but I recall a mate of mine in high school managed to have his iPod replaced because he claimed it scratched too easily.
So anyway, I called customer "service" to get it fixed, and they tell me that it's out of the warranty period. WTF? I just bought it. Well, apparently vendors are supposed to pull units off the shelf that are a certain age and send them back, so apple automatically assumed this one was too old to be covered. Well fuck you, apple. I just didn't care enough to follow through with it because it worked fine in my car, which is really the only reason I got it.
On my MBP, I do most of my work as a programmer on the XP partition. I'm sorry, but there are a number of things you can do on a PC operating system you simply cannot do easily on the Mac OS. Even basic shit like... for instance, on a PC open a txt document and past in a YouTube embed code. Now save that txt document as an html file. Now open it in a browser. Alas, the video appears!
Now do the same thing on Mac. WTF!
And it's the things that don't happen:
No stupid search dog.
Are you sure you want to access the Internet?
Paint
auto-selecting an entire word when I just want a couple of letters
Virus scans
Windows networking hangups
"helpful" copy and paste windowlets that appear every time you Ctrl-C and just. won't. go. away. No matter how many times you turn them off.
>> ^budzos:
Dag, are you fucking kidding me? Can you please give a brief description of what types of tasks you perform that are 50% more efficient on a Mac? It's a goddamn operating system, I don't see how Photoshop, Flash, 3D work, etc. is any more productive under one O/S versus the other.
It's a heap of little things that all add up. Navigating files, app switching, pdf viewing, file finding, etc.
Apparently Dag's job consists of looking at shit on his computer. Never in there did I hear anything career specific.
No decent terminal program
Reliance on Dos windows
Non-compliant Internet Explorer
Shitty wireless networking
"Windows Genuine Advantage" hassles, even when you are legit.
DLLs.
The registry
I could go on ...
Windows Media Player uber marketing suckage start page.
"Customized" Vista installs from Dell, HP et al that add layers of cruft to things like networking and photo management.
Outlook's (and the chopped down Vista Mail) continued refusal to play nice with HTML mail
iPods are made in China, you know. They're probably built using child-slave labor, or worse -- with a government subsidy!
You guys can keep sucking the Microsoft teat - I realize that Apple is not much better from a corporate responsibility standpoint- but at least they put some thought into how humans use software.
One last thing.
[edit] Like I said before, both have their problems. I suppose if I had to pick between iPod and any other music device, the iPod would be the only choice, really. It just ticks me off when you control the production of all Apple products (unlike MS) and, in my experience, there are more technical issues than necessary.
Also, when I launch Apple QuickTime I get adverts. That is if I didn't directly double-click on a mov file. In fact, Apple QT has been showing adverts since version 4 or 5, right? Still, QT is a pretty dope player, or at least used to be.
"Oh noes, Windows Media Player* shows me ads when I start it up the first time... NOW I'LL NEVER MAKE THAT DEADLINE!! Quick fire up the MacBook!"
Hhaha, fanboy.
*Windows Media Player can be configured as you like, including not showing you ads when you start up.
I will now run and hide.
^ God knows 100% compliant web rendering helps productivity!
Legions of web developers pulling their hair out over crazy IE6 layout hacks would agree with you completely.
And as for the "Windows for Dummies" snark- I see you have adopted the Microsoft mantra- "let's treat users as idiots, they'll come around to our way eventually".
Bow to your god, windows boy:
I'm not a Windows boy, I just call bullshit on either side saying their platform is better. You still haven't said anything that I see validating the claim that *using* (read: NOT "devloping for") Windows would slow you down significantly vs. Mac.
The "Windows for Dummies" comment reflects the fact that the majority of Windows niggles you listed seem to be based on Windows programs' default settings not being exactly to your liking.
Again, I am NOT a Windows/MS proponent. I'm here on the truthy middle ground where people use what works for them. As a web designer/games guy I have no problems using Windows or Mac... historically I have owned PC hardware and software and so the legacy sustains itself. I just get extremely annoyed when people ask me "Why don't you use a Mac?"-- and the implication is that I'm not professional or successful because I'm using boring ol' business PCs to perform the magic of web design. People who ask this type of question never know what the fuck they're talking about, and are clearly just regurgitating the message Apple's marketing department has successfully indoctrinated them with.
Just stop spreading the BS that Mac is inherently more productive, and we're cool.
As part of my work, I also move around to lots of different workstations in different locations that are configured with "default" settings for both Mac and Windows. Everytime I sit down at a new Windows box, I spend 20-30 minutes configuring it to work the way it should work out of the box.
With the strange Macs, I sit down and start working.
Mac vs PC for Me?
PC:
Pros
* WAY cheaper hardware, seriously. My house was robbed recently, and my laptop stolen. This was a 3 years old Dell Inspiron that was about 2Grand (AUS) at the time of purchase. To replace that with a Dell Inspiron that's way better specced now...? $AU745 To replace with an Apple with a similar size screen (I don't want anything less than 14" it gets used as a DVD player for the kids in the car when we go on holidays)? $2,700! Seriously insane! The cheapest laptop they offer AT ALL? $1600, with a 13" screen... Holy crud. You can argue all you like about build quality and included features etc. etc. But if you don't offer some damn sort of entry level computers, then you've lost me I'm afraid.
* Games. I like to play PC Games, playing through Bioshock was blissful. I hardly ever get to these day (4 kids under 6 will do that to you), but I like to buy a game every six months or so and get some playing in now and again... and I'm afraid the PC has the Mac beat in every possible way here.
* I actually really like Windows Media Player. I didn't for ages. Up until, erm, I think it was version 10, I was a staunch Winamp user. But now, WMP is great. And I have no idea what you're talking about with ads in it, because I never see any, it opens in my library. But then I guess I never use online music stores as I'm old fashioned and actually like to get a physical CD for my music.
* It's what I'm used to... I've been using PCs since DOS, so I'm kinda comfortable with them, and I have no real issue with them or Windows. Is it a crap reason to stick with an operating system? Maybe... but it's a reason.
* Even moreso... It's what the Wife is used to: She really doesn't want to learn some other operating system. And she uses all the pcs in this house, so that's a serious consideration.
Cons
* Lack of a unix based terminal... yup, agree there. When you're doing web based development, and the things you're doing are deployed on Linux boxes, it would be really nice to be able to have a local setup that mirrors that. Can't really on a Windows box (and no, Cygwin doesn't count).
* Windows Movie Maker/ Windows DVD Maker: When I first got Vista I got really excited about Windows DVD Maker because the look and feel of the menus it can create and the way it all seems to fit together looks superb. After having it now for a year and a half or so, I think I have successfully burnt ONE DVD using it. ONE. And it's not like it tells you beforehand that it can't handle whatever video format you've given it or whatever, it quite happily previews and goes ahead and spends an hour preparing the video etc. only to die at 99% with a cryptic message. UTTER SHIT. And Movie Maker? Urgh, doesn't really output into any format I really want. I have used it, I have made some nice movies with it, but it's not fun to use at all. For my DVD creation needs I now use DVD Flick (Open source), and I have yet to hit any video format it can't handle... see MS, it's not that hard.
APPLE:
Pros
* Built on BSD: Having a real terminal, and real linux/unix operating system under the hood is great for anyone doing dev work... very nice.
* iLife: As much as I don't like iTunes (see below), from what I've played with in iMovie and iDVD, I really like them, very nice to use. Would love to be able to play with them, and it most of the reason I would like to give owning a Mac a go.
Cons
* Cost: Insane... mentioned above... unavoidable.
* The strip thing: Sorry, don't like that thing along the bottom... heaps of icons with only a tiny little triangle to let you know which ones are currently running, and which aren't. Not intuitive to me at all... but that might just be me.
* Lack of games... again, mentioned above.
* The incredibly annoying advertising: Seriously, this is enough to make me not want one. The arrogant, bullshit of 'Windows always crash' and 'Macs never fail' is SUCH SHIT. I can't remember the last time I had a windows box crash, and I use them ALL day most days. Whereas the last time I was using a Mac at work (OSX, but a fews years back) I had it crash with the delightful bomb thing...
* During that same time I was using the Mac I wanted to eject the DVD I had in it... I looked and looked for an eject button, and could not find it. Could find no logical way to do so... ended up dragging it onto the rubbish bin to eject it, which to me seemed like an insanely loopy way to get a disc out of a drive. I'm sure there are simpler ways, but I found it baffling that here I was, using the 'so simple' OS and could not for the life of me work out how to GET A DISC OUT OF THE MACHINE.
* I despise iTunes and Quicktime. The interface to iTunes, to my eye, is ugly as sin, and quicktime on the PC (can't speak for OSX obviously, but if you want to win people over, don't release shit software on other systems) is a horrendous piece of software that irks the absolute hell out of me... plus until recently had the gall to try and charge you money just to be able to watch movies full screen. I wouldn't have it installed on my pc at all if it wasn't for apple.com/trailers.
* Hardware upgrades: Sort of linked to the price thing, but different in that you can't throw any old video card or whatever else you want in the machine, because you're limited to what Apple offer you in their infinite wisdom.
Neither here nor there
* Physical design: People rant and rave about how beautiful Apples are... and to some degree they are very nice to look at, but you're kinda stuck with that and nothing else. PCs have some pretty sexy desktops and laptops now, in a form for pretty much everyone.
It is obviously personal, and for people like budzos to attack dag for dag finding Macs to be more productive for him is insane. If HE finds it more efficient, then that's friggen great! I really would love to give a Mac a chance, but that entry price is just insanely high, so I'm afraid, unless work switches to Mac (very much a Dell shop), it's not going to happen.
Like I said it wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't regularly get insinuations from ignorant marketing victims about this very issue. I tend to deal mostly with marketing department people who have very little technical knowledge. Or, creative people with very little computer knowledge, who do stuff like create bitmap graphics in Illustrator so that every file is 500MB, and then they think it's simpler to courier shit around or have to meet up to exchange files instead of taking the time to sign up for any of a dozen different large file transfer services.
Last example is a partner on a 3D visualization product. This guy doesn't know the difference between modelling and rendering, but he felt very comfortable telling me that, rather than upgrading my 3D package to one that could make use of my multiple cores, I should probably just upgrade to a Mac, because they're faster, more reliable, and that's what real creative professionals use. He then went on to wave his hands for five minutes without actually saying anything technical or even coherent, just a whole lot of "I've been doing this a long time and I see a lot of Macs around" fucking assblastery that I get literally about once per month. This is someone I work with, who speaks to our clients, who is integrated into my workflow, etc.. so his fucking ignorance is my pain in the ass in many ways.
This is nothing more than stupid tribalism. I challenge any of you to trade your Windows pc for somebody elses mac for 1 month. I am almost positive both people will adapt, find some things they like about their new machine and change their previous ideas.