8/5/2005
A Grain of Salt?
James R. Stoup rants on Apple Matters about why his posts are so differently recieved in different communities and the stigma attached to being a Mac user.
Of course, there is the additional stigma of being a “Mac User”. I have seen it many times online and encountered it aplenty at my job. People think that because you use a Mac you must be working on a “Fisher Price Computer”. Thus you don’t really know how a “real” computer works. Using a Mac means you don’t have any choices in software and of course whatever you run it on is going to be quite expensive.
Hey dude, I just switched to Mac because Windows boxes are FisherPrice. I always had a high opinion of Apple as quality hardware and a nice looking interface for creative types. It wasn’t until I started reading about the BSD internals of OS X did I see any application for me. Being a sysadmin, I spend most of my time on the command line. With OS X I don’t have to fake it anymore like I did with Windows/Cygwin and all the hacked bash utilities I had collected. I was also worried about the access to software that you feel you have when you follow 95% of the other computer users. In the first four months I have found every piece of software I knew I would need and many that I didn’t (but which have become indespensible).
You get taken seriously by taking yourself seriously and not worrying about everybody else. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I don’t think there is a mountain of ignorance when it comes to outsiders opinions on Apple, its a natural response to zealotry.
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