Apple Ahkbar!: November 2007 Archives
Looks like a new MacBook Pro has left it's birthing center in China and is speeding it's way across the Pacific to its new, adopted parent (me):
I'm probably going to run the risk of being misunderstood with this post, but I've been getting annoyed lately at people who think they know what they're talking about but who, in fact, don't have a well-rounded understanding of their sheer ignorance.
You've heard the phrase "it takes all kinds"? No, it doesn't. There just are.
I've always been fascinated by computer games. I remember playing Keystone Kapers on my cousin's Atari, I had an original Nintendo (my mom still has it), and I've been playing console and computer games since my Apple IIc days (with the green-tinted monitor, no less).
But Gamers sometimes make me want to smack them. Especially when they rant on about the only computer platform they've ever had any exposure to (Windows) and how Macs are for snobs and zealots.
I get irritated because they've only ever used a computer for fun. Computer makers design these weird-looking enclosures for them so these guys can have bright, shiny things on their computers that make them feel all high-techy and stuff. But they don't depend on a computer for productivity. They can afford to put up with idiosyncrasies in the operating system and software that actually slow you down and let you down. But some of us actually have to get stuff done on a computer.
Their knowledge and understanding of the depth and breadth of what can be done on a computer is fairly superficial. I'm not saying that Mac users aren't susceptible to the same dogmatic views on computers and that there aren't Mac users that don't really understand the inner workings of the computer they use to get stuff done, but if you take a random sample of gamers and compare them to a random sample of Mac users, you'll find that gamers tend to be myopic about their technology and Mac users actually understand the fundamentals of why they chose that platform. Gamers adamantly stick to what they know and deride anything else. They make fun of other technologies to which they have had no exposure.
I've used most of the major operating systems and I work all day within the confines of the computer world. I depend on my computer to do actual work and it's not an exaggeration to say that I know of what I speak when I espouse an opinion about it. Others, with louder and more dogmatic opinions also espouse their opinion, but it becomes immediately apparent that the more dogmatic the opinion, the less well-informed it is.
With this new release of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, Apple has exposed itself to criticism for their unfounded anti-Windows attitudes. There are a number of issues to be fixed in OS X 10.5 that should have been caught before releasing it into the wild. One of the show-stoppers for developers like myself is the delaying of Java 1.6 on Leopard. But even then, it's still the best operating system on the planet and I get more work done on my Mac than I do in Windows or on my Linux workstation. I'm getting ready to upgrade my PowerBook G4 to a new MacBook Pro when Java 1.6 gets released and Apple has had a chance to release a few updates to 10.5 to fix some of the more outstanding issues.
If all you want to do is goof off and play games, then by all means, buy a crappy laptop at half the price (you get what you pay for) and laugh all the way to the service center about how much money you saved on your shiny toy. Just keep in mind that some of us have actual work to do. I don't want to brand all gamers as second-class computer citizens, but, at the very least, get a little more broadly informed about what's happening in the larger (and arguably, more important) "real world" of computing before you draw your ignorance in such sharp relief.
