Regardless of how Apple corporate wants to portray its products, the Mac isn't a machine for the masses any more than red wine is the preferred beverage at baseball games. To be honest, the masses don't have the capability to appreciate the elegance and depth of this platform.
In reality, the Mac is a computer for developers, geeks, power users, risk takers, visionaries, lunatics, scientists, musicians, photographers, educators, and entrepreneurs. When you consider that half of the PC world is still running Windows 95 and 98, you understand why Mac OS X is often overlooked. Many of these people think that an operating system is some type of medical procedure.
From Mac OS X Dev Center:
Developer Notes from WWDC 2003 and
programming with ODBC.
Comments
Many people use Macs, like schoolchildren, teachers, business men, my mom. It's n ot just for revolutionaries anymore.
And besides, the masses aren't revolutionaries, and wouldn't it be cool if there was solidarity among revolutionaries, instead of bickering over what good a Mac is, versus the utility of a PC?
Sheesh.
Posted by: pinche | June 24, 2003 4:42 PM
I watched a bit of the Panther preview today. The new left column in each Finder window seems to replace having folders in the toolbar. I don't yet see how moving this horizontal bar into a vertical configuration is a user-centric revolution, but seeing it in action is convincing -- it is clearly good design.
Posted by: sudama | June 24, 2003 4:50 PM
this article is total commodity fetishist bollocks.
steve jobs's cv:
(link)
Posted by: gwen | June 24, 2003 5:49 PM
I'll start using Safari when it can do keyword searches.
Posted by: nedlog | June 25, 2003 10:51 AM
i have been an end-user trying to figure out how to do things with computers for many years, and in that time my experience with mac systems experts has been far more positive than my experience with pc experts. the former always acted as if they were happy to share the knowledge they had with a beginner, whereas the pc experts always acted irritated, disgusted, pissed off, or too bored/busy/important to care. there have been one or two notable exceptions, but in the main this has been my experience. i've never met a mac IT/IS person, pro or otherwise, who made me sorry i asked a question. i think that goes a long way toward explaining why a market still exists for that particular line of products, even if in the end it's all a bunch of space junk.
Posted by: r@d@r | June 25, 2003 12:38 PM