I have income based on Windows applications I created. For me, the move would be a disaster since my user base has no Macs.
Maybe next year with the Intel triple-OS booting Macintoshes?
Bob
The Mac
or
The Mac user circumambulation and psychology in modern marketing practices.
(An exhausted by-stander?s diatribe)
What can you say of a modern company whose business philosophy and marketing strategy continues to be based on elitism, cultism and mythic legends? This company is Apple a company only able to function efficiently under the helm of the man who inspires and encourages such noble and snobbish cultism. This ingenious marketing strategy seems to maintain the company afloat and functioning fairly well, but always stuck on a ?fixed plateau.?
Here we are it?s been eons since a computer with the first graphical user interface was researched and put out on the market. This computer was named the ?Xerox Star? and it was put out by a company named Xerox in 1980. Here we are with Mac-O-Philes still claiming and spreading the myths that Apple created and materialized the concept of the GUI, and that it is the Best GUI, and that it is the only GUI that should be used. Why is such a person so voluntarily blind to historical facts and blind to the diverse modes of computing out there?
The answer lies in the ingenious ways in which Apple has trained and massaged its small market share of users to see themselves as unique and elite computer users. They use slogans such as ?Think Different? or ?Everything is easier on the Mac,? etc., and a well honed computing culture of arrogance, ignorance and derisiveness for this purpose. The majority of Apple vocal Sheep Heads army is teenagers who become Apple-indoctrinated as soon as they acquire their first Mac. They have become an industry of self-propagating cult based on pseudo history. They have their own battle cries: ?Get a Mac, already? or ?Windows Sucks? etc. This inculcated habit of thinking is carried forward from teenage Mac inductees to professional Mac users and on to Mac Magazine writers. You have to give credit to this phenomenal marketing device invented by Steve Jobs. His shadow over Apple better not dim. Couple this with the fact that Apple, like Microsoft and other similar companies have no culture of good ethical business practice in their field and you will see a more realistic picture of Apple. Notice how Apple treats its own resellers, for example. It is dog-eat-dog out there so spare me the Mac-O-Phile whines and the Apple protest that it is a victim. Please!!! Save that for the clueless Mac aficionados.
The other big problem for Mac-O-Philes is this thing called ?Microsoft?s Windows.?
It has borrowed many little ideas from the Mac and called some of them innovations within Windows. Well, isn?t that the same thing that Apple has been doing since its inception with other companies? original technologies? That company, Microsoft, is much better at bringing personal computing and its functional ideas to the masses than is Apple. The Apple minion needs a philosophy in order to account for and cover the fact that they have been incompetent in bringing easier personal computing to the masses. This, even though they?ve had an easy to use computer system all these years and were out there ahead of Microsoft.
Not only is Apple a master of the hype it is also a master of grabbing at new burgeoning computer technologies and rushing them out first so as to maintain the mantle of innovator: The move into SGI terrain, the Itune interface, the Ipod and on and on up and down the line. This is most easily done by Apple because their market share is so small and their ware is still maily aimed at personal and home creativity computing and a tiny few commercial modes of computing. Because of this they have bombed out several times. I remember a big one: the ripped-off ?Apple Newton?? In fact, they bombed out with their first PC which they called the ?Lisa.?
Apple has borrowed, grabbed or stolen many ideas from others and the central idea which props up the Mac philosophy, if you can call it that, is the Mac GUI. This central idea Steve Jobs and his group acquired in the most surreptitious un-business like manner-mainly by spying on the Xerox Palo Alto research lab and its people and siphoning out some of that creativity. In another word, it was a stolen idea. Sure, Mac enthusiasts will give you all sorts of logical explanations to prove otherwise. Such as that Apple hired some of Xerox?s people or that Apple bought ideas from Xerox, or that Apple invented something a little different than Xerox such as the moving windows, etc., etc., etc., etc., ? Apple was really forced by Xerox to pay for what it was taking. The point is that Apple and its minion claim that they invented the concept of the GUI as having inherent and potential general use and that is-how we say in America, ?unadulterated historical crocodile dung.? Historical credit should go to the source that originated these concepts as having inherent and potential general use. They were lucky that the industry had no organized trademark and patent infringement legal mechanism then. The Mac aficionados only listen to directives from Apple; they will go to great length to reject anything else that does not prop up their mythic visions.
Again, here we are again with the Mac OS/X and still the naive, brain-washed Mac-O-Philes can?t seem to see through their mythic shades to notice that in so many ways the Mac OS/X is a well done rehash of the classic NeXT Step/OpenStep OS. This is not bad at all because it was the first major sign that the original inefficient Mac OS was being given and efficiency enema-in other words, being subtly discarded. Yet, the Mac-O-Philes in his head is still stuck in prayers and in adoration of the earlier Apple ideas and mantras. Do not expect Apple to make that clear to them. One is inclined to think that these aficionados don?t even have the power to question what they are fed by the Apple hype machine. Well, a marketing strategy based on cultism is no different than any other type of cult.
Right now, there are Mac aficionados on diverse forums challenging hackers to come up with viruse and Trojan codes which can infiltrate OS/X ?how typical, how arrogant, how ignorant. The last time I checked, all modern computer software was engineered using zeroes and ones. Yes, easily tweak-able zeroes and ones. Why should the Zeroes and ones running through Apple machines? vain be different? Just hope that hackers don?t become maliciously fond of the Mac as they have done with Unix and Windows. These are the same people that derided the x86 chip platform even though it consistently out performed their x64 chip platform. On what ground did they do that? Get this, they did it on the ground that it was ugly. This is not romantism, but cultism. It is their duty to continuously find all kinds of faults with Windows from the way its folder system is organized to the way it looks to the way it tastes, etc. This excessive preoccupation with the form of something taking place in the rigid digital damain is sometimes hilarious.
Why if the Mac OS is the perfect, easiest, most beautiful OS to use has not the public being drawn to it? Well, the Mac-O-Philes have a silly answer to everything, including that central question. They will tell you that it is the Cadillac of computers and that it is not for everyone. Wait a minute, do not they chant that it is the ultimate GUI and platform and that everyone must be tied to it in order to be performing ?real? personal computing. Is not their battle cry ?Get a Mac.?? This, no doubt is a very laughable and contradictory argument, but the Mac aficionado feeds off this stuff.
They always exaggerate the most minutiae of differences between the two platforms because they think in terms of platform schools such as in chess or classical music. How silly this is considering that all modern computing platforms are architecture-d on the paradigm and ideas of a stored program (i.e. The work of John Von Neumann). Technology is solely based on science, yet the Mac-O-Philes want you to think of their cultish angst as art. Sort of reminds me of the extreme audio philes that need power line conditioners in order to appreciate their music. Oh, if they only listened to the music.
The Mac users were the last computer users to discover the full power of multitasking, a really important water mark in personal computing. They had been hampered by a weak computing platform. In fact after years of seeing how a cheaper Windows PC ran rings around a triply-priced, beautiful Mac machine, and after having to resort to putting two processors inside their beautiful machines in order to equal the power of such Windows PC?s, Apple has come around to jettisoning the outdated functions of the Mac GUI and cooing up to Intel. Yes, what took so long, Perhaps, arrogance?
Yes, they are borrowing again. They borrowed ideas from the Unix family of OS?s and borrowed the furnace(Intel) technologies which has kept Windows PC running all these years. So, like in astrology, Mac aficionados are still whining about something that does not exist anymore. Their beloved Mac platform has been ingeniously pulled from under their feet and replaced with a more modern Unix /Intel derivation. Don?t tell a Mac-O-Phile these things; he is like a horse with blinders whose perceptions of modern personal computing only filters down from and through the Apple hype maze. Apple will stay the way it is with the same miniscule market share because of its stultifying business philosophy and the ways they market their ware and the way they let patchwork innovations take place within a very tightly closed business model of an integrated software/hardware producer. This no doubt makes the Mac easier to use than a large, sprawling, code engine such as Windows and less susceptible to outside technical influences as is Windows. No doubt, that so far it also makes the Mac more secure than a Windows PC. We all know the price for this. Many people simply rather let technology competition manifest itself inside the box rather than have a one-size-fits-all digital box. Integration does not always equal excellence. Windows is made to address all possible types of code arrangements thrown at it-even bad code. And despite Mr. Job?s attempt at pushing it pass that, the Mac remains a friendly platform for, creative home, computing. This is not bad at all, but the Mac-O-Philes are restless and they are not satisfied with just that. They always confuse implementing existing technology first with putting out the best technology.
Why talk so much about the Mac computer user? Well, they claim that they have found computing ?Holy Grail? and on that basis alone they draw attention. There are so many other operating systems out there with diverse ways of performing diverse functions on them, but the Mac aficionado only sees Mac/Windows. How can you be so block-headed as to think that everything should be done only on the personal productivity platform of the Mac. And since Mac/Windows is their complete computing universe, maybe the Mac can not be the Mac without Windows. About the only thing that can still be said about what remains of the Mac is that it is still a fairly easy system to use. That is all. What can you say about Windows? Well, the rest of the world is using it without suffering any hardship such as dropping dead or the sky falling on these users. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the drama! You can take a sheep to the river shore but you can not force it to drink. Indeed, ?A Brain is a Terrible Think to Waist.?

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