Page on down on this post at Chaos Manor (View) for the rest of the comments excerpted below:
I am beginning to hate Macs. I cannot empty the trash. I get a message saying that “Send to” is blocked. To empty everything in the trash including locked items press the option key while selecting Empty Trash. Needless to say I have pressed the option key until I am blue in the face. It won’t empty the trash…
…NOW I CANNOT MOVE SOME OF THE ITEMS from the trash to the foo folder. I do not have sufficient privileges!!! The MAC is protecting me from deleting old Windows backup files. I don’t have sufficient privileges. This may be the stupidest operating system yet with the possible exception of Vista.
Ye gods!!!
After consulting with 6 Unix gurus, active Mac users, he finally ended up with…
Plugging back in the external hard drive I was informed that it is unreadable, and disk utility opened. It offers to reformat…
…Macs are great if you’re me, with access to lots of advisors. I am not so sure about Aunt Minnie.
Macs are “intuitive” and “easy to use” if you already think like an Apple programmer (and sometimes that’s not even sufficient *heh*). If not, they can be terribly frustrating machines, largely because with a Mac it’s “The Apple way or the highway, bud,” and that’s that.
Once again, may I offer PCBSD, which has essentially the same (BSD) Unix underpinnings as Mac OSX without the quirky Mac straightjacket?
At least it’s not Mac OSX…
*heh*
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I like my Mac and I am in no way a computer guru. I just think it works without all the issues of windows.
There are lots of things I need to figure out but I will get there.
Of course it works, “without all the issues of windows.” It has its own issues, as Dr. Pournelle discovered this week with his snazzy new iMac. For some people, that means that, since they don’t run into the same issues they used to on their Windoze machines, the Mac is “better,” when all it really is is different, as this video demonstrates:
Crash Different
Please note the tag: the guy produced the “Crash Different” video… on a Mac.
😉
Oh, and while I use Windoze computers (among comps with other OSes), I’m no Windoze/Me$$y$oft apologist. I have some serious issues with both Me$$y$oft and Windoze (although I’ll allow that, generally, Win2KPro is a fine OS and in may ways, IMO, superior to XP and certainly Vista and MUCH easier to do serious computing and tweaking in than the OSX straightjacket). I happen to very, very much like the newest iterations of Ubuntu and PCBSD (which is like getting the strengths of OSX without having to put up with the Apple straightjacket). PCBSD, for example, while relying–more directly–on the same Unix underpinnings that OSX does, would NEVER evidence the issues that Dr. Pournelle had to deal with this week.
OSX is definitely Just Fine for the 5% or so of the computing population that seems to prefer it. Happy for them (and you), but preferring it because it doesn’t have “all the issues of windows” is disingenuous. It does share some similar issues and has its own quirky set of issues to boot. Are OSX issues as serious and/or troubling as “all the issues of windows”? Depends on where you sit and what you’re trying to do.
After your recent diatribes against “real” -puters, this is appropriate. It comes to me from another guru, the -puter tech at a “local” high $ Private School. He does things with MACs that I never completely understand. BUT, I do understand some of his demonstrations at SMUG meetings.
[BTW: “‘real’ -puters is a reference to MACs I heard from Tom Clancy 10 ± years ago. ]
Using a MAC is somewhat reminiscent of the oil filter ads: “Pay me now; or, pay me later!”
Saturday’s New York Times article under Personal Business highlights problems with PCs. Check out the paragraphs highlighted (**). Another reason to buy Mac.
http://tinyurl.com/3bkrnn
———–
Sending An SOS For A PC Exorcist
At high noon on a recent ! Monday, I leaped up from my desk vowing to commit the most sensational attack of revenge in the history of the personal computer industry. Just 72 hours earlier, I had taken delivery on a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop loaded with Microsoft Windows Vista. It was already on the blink. I couldn’t open a Word document. I couldn’t run a! Google search. I couldn’t even send e-mail. I vowed to shave Michael Delland Bill Gates with a broken beer bottle.
Thankfully, I heard tires crunching on my gravel driveway. I opened the door of my home office in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and I saw John Charde, 47, the trim, balding proprietor of Computer Professionals, a technical support services firm based in nearby Wainscott. He climbed out of his taxicab-yellow S.U.V. and declared, “I’m here to get out the evil spirits.”
John marched into my office and hunkered over my brand-new Dell. I quickly confessed that when it came to computers, I fell into that vast gray area between being a moron and a complete idiot. I told him that I was on a frantic executive pursuit for a competent local computer guru, and that he was my last shot before I broke that beer bottle.
John nodded sympathetically. “Unfortunately, computers have become more than just machines nowadays,” he said. “When your computer doesn’t work, it’s a major crisis in your life.”
I watched hopefully as John fiddled with the laptop. But after half an hour, he seemed to be almost as frustrated as I was. He asked if I had done anything unusual to the machine since taking it out of the box. I said that another local technician had transferred the files in my five-year-old Toshiba laptop into the Dell. I had subsequently received a message to subscribe to the same Symantec Norton Anti-Virus protection program I’d had on the Toshiba.
John guessed that the problems might have been caused by resubscribing to the antivirus program. He told me he needed to take the computer to his shop to exorcise the evil spirits. I would have to go back to my worn-out old Toshiba, which had a nasty tendency to overheat and shut down without warning.
I now felt like my existential alter ego Sisyphus: every time I pushed a high-tech ro! ck up a hill, it came crashing back down upon me. In the event, I determined to perform some due diligence on the personal computer support services industry by relying on telephone contacts rather than online searches.
One of my first calls was to a longtime industry analyst, Tim Bajarian of Creative Strategies in California. Having consulted for Dell, Microsoft,I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Apple, Mr. Bajarian immediately appreciated my plight. “You are not alone,” he said. “Most normal laypeople would do what you did.”
Mr. Bajarian noted that the major computer makers spend untold billions of dollars a year on technical support services for their customers. Although there is no way to systematically track independent service providers, he estimated that private companies and individuals like John Charde generated $300 million in annual revenue. But he added that there had recently been a shift from such mom-and-pop shops to online service providers like support.com.
“Some fixes can funnel into the system even if your computer is not working, as long it’s turned on and you give the I.P. address,” Mr. Bajarian said, referring to the Internet Protocol address. “Yes, there are issues of trust because you temporarily give online service provi! ders control of your computer. But they’re bonded, and they don’t want to get a reputation for compromising the security of their customers’ computers.”
Last year, Dell changed its marketing tactics after the return of its founder, Michael Dell, from self-imposed retirement. Instead of relying exclusively on a direct-sales model, which allows businesses and consumers to buy directly from the company, Dell also sells products through retail chains like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Best Buy has Geek Squads that offer tec! hnical support.
Since I had ordered my Dell over the phone, I tried to seek technical support the same way. The Dell answering menu kept directing me to seek help online. After nearly an hour, I finally contacted a human, but there was an infuriating language barrier. It sounded as if the customer representative was repeatedly asking if I’d pressed the “cat slap button.” Then I realized she was referring to the “caps lock” button. I asked where she was. “In the Philippines,” she replied.
** I called John C. Dvorak, a prominent columnist for PC Magazine and a podcaster on the Podshow network. “I advise everybody to buy a Macintosh because Apple products are the easiest to use,” he said. “If you own a PC, you have to find a local nerd, a kid, maybe a relative. Every family has one unless they’ve just moved here from a foreign country. That’s the only solution.” **
Paradoxically, what had moved me to try John Charde, along with the enthusiastic recommendation of a trusted mutual! friend, was the fact that he is an adult and a former newspaper reporter. Like Bill Gates, he is also a college dropout. He started tinkering with computers during the green-screen era of the 1990s, and went on to teach basic computer literacy courses. His many satisfied local customers range from midsize insurance companies to self-employed people like me. Perhaps not incidentally, he insists on being referred to as a “computer technician” rather than a geek or a nerd.
“A geek is someone who bites the head off a chicken,” he notes. “A nerd is a socially inept person with faulty eyewear.”
** John and his two-man staff spent an entire week working on my Dell. “You fell prey to a cutting-edge disaster by subscribing to Norton Anti-Virus twice,” he informed me over the phone near week’s end. “That caused the computer to spit up a general error message. We all scratched our heads and glared threateningly at the machine for hours! . Then we figured out that instead of two or three potenti al remedies, there were about 25. We decided it was time to cut our losses, and start from scratch.” **
John ultimately had to remove the data on the hard drive, wipe it clean, and then reinstall all the data and Vista. The total cost of these surgical procedures was ** about $800, over half of what I had originally paid for the Dell. ** But I was so happy to hear the crunch of S.U.V. tires on my driveway when John returned with my newly repaired machine, I told him I didn’t begrudge paying the tab.
John claimed he begrudged having to bill me so much. “We would have made a lot less money off you if you’d come to us and asked what to buy before you decided on the Dell Inspiron 1720,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of new operating systems like Microsoft Windows Vista because you get software bloat. They do some remarkable things.! But they also have too many processes going on at the same time, and they often make needless and confusing changes in the way their features are presented.”
In retrospect, John advised, I should have bought a cheaper, simpler computer. “The Microsoft Windows XP you have in your old Toshiba laptop is a much better-known operating system that’s much easier for us to fix,” he said.
At that point, I felt like using that broken beer bottle on my own cheeks instead of on Michael Dell and Bill Gates. But John nipped my self-destructive thoughts in the bud by handing me a more familiar productivity tool that I could use the next time my laptop broke down. It was a ballpoint pen stenciled with his company motto, “Technology. It almost works.”
E-mail: pursuits@nytimes.com
Gee, Hugh, I generally expect comments you make to be closer to on-topic. *heh*
1.) You knew better than to say it, didn’t you?
diatribe, n. A bitter, abusive denunciation
Nothing I have ever written pointing out the Mac world’s feet of clay can even remotely be called a diatribe. Simple facts. Plain speech. Even ridiculing Macrodistic cultic worship of Apple products, but “diatribes”? Not once.
🙂
2. Nothing you submitted here in any way addressed any of my recent pokes at Apple. Not even close. Oh, the secondhand John Dvorak comment does in some (non-substantive) way address my assertion that “Macs are “intuitive” and “easy to use” if you already think like an Apple programmer” but… if you just once view the video I embedded, you’ll learn that the idea that Macs are “easier to use” in general is just hooey. Yes, that was so once, back in the days when folks who could add past the numbers of fingers and toes they had used DOS based computers (cos that OS did take a little thought) and the rest of the population definitely found Macs easier to use, but it’s just not so any more. Heck, my 85-year-old dad (who never reads a thing unless forced to–manuals? Instructions? Notachance) taught himself to use his old Win95 computer and then his (unfortunate purchase) Windows Muppet Edition computer, and is now talking about scrubbing that puppy and installing WinXP.
And am I at all concerned that he’ll have a hard time of it? Nope. Cos it’s virttually dummy-proof.
Sure, I’d not recommend XP. Heck, I’m almost 100% sure he’d be better off finding a copy of Win2K to install than XP, and a HECK of a lot better off to install PCBSD or Ubuntu, because they’re even easier to install and use than Win2K or XP. But even my dad, the proverbial “Aunt Tilly” type of computer user (for example: has no idea what the difference is between his hard drive and his memory and doesn’t care–just wants to check his email and print out information for his Sunday School department) will have no problems doing the upgrade, any more than he’s had any difficulty teaching himself to use his Windoze computers on his own. For him, a Mac would simply be excess $$ for the simple tasks he wants to do. Heck, he’d be fine to stay with the crappy Windows Muppet Edition he has, were it not for the fact that an NT-based Windows will handle his memory better and not have the quirky crap WinMe does.
As to the main content of the article you cite, so? Have you EVER seen me say something positive about Windows Vista? Windows Vista is WinMe for the 21st Century. Crap. On a stick.
Sorry, Hugh, clean miss with this comment. Better luck next time.
good grief..I can barely fathom what I got..imagine learnin a whole new OS..no thankeeeeeeeees! ha 🙂
Angel,
You might be surprised how easy such OSes as PCBSD and the Ubuntu distro of Linux are to “learn” since, after all, it’s all still just point n click stuff. Sure, if you’re an Internet Exploder user, you might have to switch to a more standards-compliant browser such as Opera (or the slightly less standards-compliant Firefox–*heh*), but you oughta do that anyway, just for your sanity’s sake.
😉
Some apps might be different, although that’s not that much of an issue for me, apart from my fav Windows graphics file viewer, Irfanview, which doesn’t have a ‘nix variant, since I use mostly cross-platform softwares like Opera and Open Office. Still, many Windows apps can be run on a ‘nix platform under WINE (ask your fav techie to install WINE and the appropriate Windows apps–I usually demo WINE by installing Internet Exploder in a ‘nix environment for skeptics–*heh*).
Alas! My fav music-related app (Encore music transcription software) doesn’t run under WINE *sigh*, but the super cool music/sound file app, Audacity, is cross-platform.
All-in-all, it’s easy to discover just how simple a switch to a ‘nix platform is for many Windows users: just download and burn an Ubuntu iso (follow the instructions) or just request a FREE CD. Pop it in your machine and run it as a “Live” CD–running Ybuntu off the CD without installing it on your machine. It’ll be much slower than an installed version (loading apps directly from the CD, etc.), but will show you just how easy it is to make such a switch. Heck, it comes with Firefox preinstalled.