Why I can’t quite go Mac
I do have a Mac Mini, in London. I think I’m going to leave it there, though. The mouse crashes almost every time I use the machine, which means I have to do a hard reset, which means I lose all of my work every single time it happens. Consequently, I use it as seldom as possible.
But my aversion to Apple products is about more than the stupid mouse crashing constantly (the fix for which, btw, is to open up the machine and add more memory, which is notoriously difficult to do with the Mac Mini). I try to put it into words for people and fail miserably.
So I’m glad to have a few links to point to people who have done a damn fine job of it lately - all of whom are big-time Mac customers.
Apple ought to feel they have an option to either: 1. Live up to the promise that their products “just work” or 2. Stop making the promise. I hope they choose option 1. And ideally they’d stop making the promise too, because there’s always Murphy’s Law to keep you on your toes.
Anil Dash (writing a post entitled Smug Ugly):
To be honest, there’s really only room for mocking everybody else if you’re absolutely flawless. And even then, it’s pretty bad taste. I’ve seen exactly what it looks like firsthand to see people take cheap shots and make snide comments about their nominal competitors, and it invariably makes the complainer look worse than the ostensible target. When the company you’re taking a shot at is Microsoft, that’s saying a lot.
Robert Scoble on the brand promise of Apple, the first two points of which are:
1. If your machine behaves badly it’s your fault.
2. Any idiot can use an Apple machine (that’s what they tell you before you buy one) but if your machine crashes then you must be a “genius” to fix it (they have bars at stores now where you can “borrow” a genius, but only after waiting in line — my son twice has been turned away from genius bars because they were too busy and was told to “come back tomorrow at 10 a.m.”). Oh, and if you are having problems at 10 p.m., and dare tell people on your blog about your problems you’ll get tons of abuse back “how DARE you be an Apple user and not know you needed to flash your PRAM.” Translation: any idiot can use a Mac, but not really.
By the way, I also parted with a significant chunk of change for a now-discontinued Apple iSight webcam (which I had to buy on Fifth Avenue in NYC, as they stopped being sold in Europe months ago), specifically to videoconference with one particular, important Mac user in my life. When I was in London last week, we tried to do our usual thing…only to find that, after having installed Leopard on their machine, this person could not even get iChat to load.
“Just work,” my ass.
NB A friend of mine (who can out himself if he wants) works in tech support at a good-sized university and reports that the vast majority of problems they are asked to fix these days are those with Apple machines.
Filed under: Life
What the heck is a “mouse crash”? I’ve been using a Mac for 20 years, and that’s a new one on me.
I think it’s a karma thing. You Windows folk have made the leap, but have not embraced the Mac mindset. When training students on Macs for digital video, I first have to tell the Windows users to *stop thinking*. You’ve all been trained to do things the most complex way possible, rather than what just makes sense.
Macs have their issues, but let’s be serious here. A little bit of Googling will solve most of your software issues and tell you how to efficiently handle hardware issues. If my 76-year-old uncle, who bought a Mac a year go as his *first* computer ever, can do it, certainly you can!
No computer is perfect. My company runs 26 Macs. If I had problems like you report, I too would be upset. But, my experience is just the opposite. I have only had one Mac in the past 5 years that failed to work after an OS update… that’s pretty solid performance in my book. As for adding the extra memory, you can quickly sell the box for good value to anyone who is less bothered by using a putty knife and a small screwdriver. It is not that difficult to install memory in a Mac Mini. Videos on the web show you step by step how to.
Marek: Thank you for proving the point that Dave, Scoble, Anil and I are all trying to make. I could not have asked for a more illustrative response than yours.
Dave: So the answer to a machine that crashes constantly is to open it up and upgrade it to a level where it can operate with some semblance of reliability, or sell it? Doesn’t sound like technology that “just works” to me.
I’m doing something I don’t think I’ve done here before: I’m closing the comments to a post. There are some thoughtful ones being submitted here, but there are also some very unhinged, nasty remarks being made. I’m not willing to spend time sifting through them. If you wish to comment, feel free to do so on your own blog. My apologies to those who have constructive, insult-free comments to make.
Next time, I’ll just write about something less contentious, like abortion or religion.