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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Apple rant

John C. Dvorak: E-Mac, i-Mac, No Mac. This is so poor I just had to link to it. John claims that the Mac is on it’s last legs and deserves to be put down, which is a complete contradiction to almost verything I’ve read about Macs in the past siz months. I’ve never had a Mac and I’ve had few chances to use one, but I would jump at the chance to own one at the moment. Why? Simple, OS X. Apple have taken a truly world class operating system (FreeBSD) and added a truly world class GUI—a combination that I don’t think is matched anywhere else in the computing world. They’re innovating like never before—AirPort and the i-series of software are great examples. John completely fails to back up his viewpoint at any point in his article—in fact the worst he does is to criticise Apple management of running Apple “like a tire company”.

I’ve probably fallen for this deliberate troll hook, line and sinker, but it really annoys me when respected columnists come out with this kind of unsubstantiated claptrap. Especially when they accompany it with such fallacies as I’m not writing this column as a Mac basher to get attention, although plenty of people will accuse me of doing that.

Related reading: Slashdot discussion on John’s column, Apple’s 10 reasons to switch to a Mac, Scott Johnson on how impressed he was with his partner’s new iBook.

Posted 20th June 2002 at 2:02 pm

This is Apple rant by Simon Willison, posted on 20th June 2002.

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2 comments

  1. They are respected because they don't like the crap that you want to hear from them. Apple is not innovating any better than other companies. They are in fact worse than many others, like Microsoft or IBM. Microsoft is winning because they are the real innovators. When people make purchasing decisions, they evaluate their decisions and in most of the cases they come up with windows decision. My windows laptop can do much better than Apple's laptops. The parts are in fact more or less the same, except Apple has this proprietary OS and proprietary hardware design. So you can't do much about them and have to spend huges amount of money. You pay more for the support also, which you need a lot cause Apple doesn't care about backward compatibility much. With Windows you don't have kernel panics for example and you can still run your old programs easily. I am also sick of people believing in what they read on the web and they think that is the truth. Most of the pro-mac stuff is there because many of those people have the free time to write about it, which shows that they are not much productive.

    Serge - 29th January 2004 23:42 - #

  2. When people make purchasing decisions, they evaluate their decisions and in most of the cases they come up with windows decision.

    The reason for this has little to do with the relative qualities of Mac OS vs. Windows, and everything to do with quantities of available software. When people ask me for recommendations on what computer to buy and I recommend a Mac, their answer is usually "Oh, but I have program XYZ that I need to run, and it doesn't have a Mac version."

    ... Apple has this proprietary OS and proprietary hardware design.

    Proprietary... "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Mirriam-Webster defines proprietary as "something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker". Both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows are proprietary, although Apple's OS is less so because its core (Darwin) is open-source. The only truly non-proprietary operating systems are open-source ones such as Linux or FreeBSD.

    The charge of proprietary hardware design, on the other hand, has some validity; or it used to, at least. What made the original IBM PC win out over the Mac back in 1984 was that PC prices were a lot lower due to extensive competition in the "PC clone" market. Apple's decision to keep Mac hardware proprietary in 1984 hurt their position, because lots of people opted for PC's running MS-DOS instead of Macs, despite the fact that the Mac OS was a lot friendlier to use than the DOS command-line interface. Thus, since most people were using PC's, most software was developed for the PC, and the spiral of PC market dominance (which continues to this day) was started.

    ... Apple doesn't care about backward compatibility much.

    I must disagree. If Apply didn't care about backward compatibility, they wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of including "Classic" (i.e., OS 9) in OS X.

    With Windows you don't have kernel panics for example ...

    Have you never heard of the Blue Screen of Death. That is the Windows kernel throwing up its hands and giving up. Same thing as a kernel panic, just a different name.

    ... and you can still run your old programs easily.

    True on Windows, also true on Macs. Unless you were expecting your old Windows programs to run on a Mac, which can't be done. Except that it can, via SoftPC or Virtual PC. But there is no such equivalent program for Windows. So if you need to run only Windows software, then by all means, buy a PC. If you need to run only Mac software, then buy a Mac. But if you need to run both Windows and Mac software, then you need to buy a Mac -- it can run your Windows software via Virtual PC, but your Windows machine simply cannot run any of your Mac software. Period.

    Most of the pro-mac stuff is there because many of those people have the free time to write about it, which shows that they are not much productive.

    The exact same premise (that pro-mac people have free time) could also be used to argue that Mac users are more productive than Windows users, thus getting the same amount of work done in less time, and leading to their having time to write articles on the Web. How you interpret things is all a matter of what your prejudices were before you read them.

    Robin Munn - 6th February 2004 20:03 - #

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