Survey: Mac owners are smug...and whiten their teeth

Preston Gralla is gross:

He foregoes tooth-brushing, drives gas-guzzlers, drinks Dunkin Donuts coffee, and scarfs down preservative-laden fat bombs. That's AWESOME!

One More Note: Gralla Perpetuates His Own Stereotype

"But the survey does show one thing that all PC users know: Mac users at times consider them gauche, uninformed, and clueless."

What bothers me most about this piece is that Gralla (representing Computerworld) once again paints with a sickeningly-broad brush stroke. I have never, and I mean NEVER, heard a Mac user state or infer that a PC user was "gauche or clueless."

Uninformed? Yes. Yes, in the course of some knock-down drag-out fights with my resident "Mac guy" years ago he called me uninformed.

In my case, it was a valid arguement. Over the span of more than 8 years he tried to get me to just try the Mac. I don't even know why I resisted so much other than the fact that I had to be a know-it-all and my years of PC expertise felt threatened by the notion that I'd need to learn a new platform about which I knew precious little.

Then I finally mustered up the courage to put my hands to the keyboard and actually work with the system. OS/X is elegant in a way Vista only imitates, now years after OS/X's original release. OS/X is fast (on the same hardware) in a way Vista just can't touch. OS/X's built-in tools are innovative (consider Time Machine) in a way Microsoft with all it's billions just doesn't know how to attain. OS/X is astonishingly reliable, not once issuing me a system-freezing kernel panic in the same span of time where my PC running Vista blue screened more than a half-dozen.

Was I an uninformed PC user? Yes. I didn't know what I was missing until I dared to try it. Now that I know what I was missing I wonder why I was so afraid.

Considering the Mac isn't like saying, "Have you ever considered heroin? You really need to try some horse before you know how good it is to stay sober." No, I know the dangers of heroin and I don't need to try it to know why I steer clear.

There is no reason today NOT to at least put hands to keyboard and try the Mac. It costs nothing to do so and it might just be an eye-opening experience.

To NOT put hands to keyboard and actually work with a Mac long enough to see the real parallels between the two OSs for a while... That is the epitome of being uninformed. Gralla strikes me as the guy who does not know nearly enough about that to which he objects so strongly.

income

The study needs to correct for income.

Smug or Informed?

When I walk into the Apple store I instantly feel transported into some strange alternate reality. I am not the young, hip, urban artist with tattoos who shops at Abercrombie who is the alleged archetype of Mac-dom. I am a bald, struggling-with-his-weight, mid-lifer who was a CIO for a long, long time running a heterogeneous environment of (mostly) PCs and some Macs. I get strange looks as I stand in line at the Genius Bar to get this hardware annoyance or that repaired. I stick out like a sore thumb because I dress and look "normal." I shop at Kohls and never pay retail. I don't sling my Mac into a messenger bag when I head out of the house nor do I much care for Alicia Keys.

So why do I like the Mac so much if I don't fit the demographic? Am I really that smug? Do I tooth whiten? Do I drink Starbucks?

If smug means that I have, after a lifetime of using first DOS-based and then Windows-based systems, chosen to work with a Mac as my primary platform because it is cleaner, more reliable, and faster on identical equipment, then yes, I suppose I am smug.

Yes, I am now whitening my teeth. So sue me. I got tired of looking in the mirror at the accumulated stains of too many cola drinks consumed on far too many late-night Windows-server-based nightmares.

No, I do not drink Starbucks. I hate coffee. I'm an avid half-n-half Coke/Diet Coke drinker. My wife, on the other hand, is a devoted consumer of Dunkin Donuts coffee. We buy it in bulk from the local Costco. (Whoops, I guess that also makes me even more of an elitist. I need to shop at Sam's Club to look less smug.)

Oh yes, although I don't drive a hybrid, I DID buy a Toyota Matrix in 2006. I traded in my Nissan X-Terra because I had been preaching energy conservation to my three kids and finally realized that I needed to get serious about putting my money where my mouth is. I took an immediate 50% jump in gas mileage up to almost 32mpg from a woeful 16mpg. I did so exactly two weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit. Gas prices went through the roof and I suddenly looked like a freaking genius. Every time I pull up to the pump and see the guy in the SUV next to me drop $100 on a tank I laugh. When he complains, I laugh harder. Smug or wise? I'll let you decide. They say insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different outcome.

I use Windows because for some things it's the only game in town. Most of my machines, for business and cost reasons, are based on some variant of Windows. But once I finally put my fingers to the Mac a few years ago the logic made complete sense. Speed, elegance, simplicity and Unix-style reliability. If that makes me smug and condescending, then pass me a Starbucks.

This may sound simplistic, but...

...that's probably because most Mac users have been PC users, and now most of them are happy with what they have. That simple. I have yet to hear of anyone I know get a Mac and wished they had not. They got the better product, so of course they're happier with it.

I'm a PC....

Once upon a time, as a PC user I actually envied Macs and their cachet, until I began working in an office with a Mac user, who began singing the praises of their darling Macs and told me how hard and stupid it was to use a Windows machine. Funny, it was about that time that I read about a survey that showed that first-time users really prefer a Windows box to a Mac box, but that was back then and now I digres...

Anyway, this young man's fanaticism drove me into the opposite camp. Suddenly I became a staunch Windows advocate and wanted nothing to do with a Mac. I suppose there was also that incident where another in the same office spent forty-five hysterical minutes trying to make a column in an article line up on a Mac and making our lives miserable in the process--he didn't know about proportional spacing and the use of tabs, but then neither did I, but again I digres...

In the end, I lost my religion and found out I didn't really care. Being the tolerant liberal that I am (I am actually fairly conservative politically, but once again I digres...) I was ready to let Mac users go their ways if they would let me go mine...which they hardly ever did, but alas, I digres one more time...

But then I found my current position where I am required to write code for both Macs and PCs, and suddenly I found out that using Macs really wasn't all that much easier, especially for someone who has to write code for a Mac. Sure, they have that nifty trash can dohickey (but then Windows has that Recycle Bin thingie), and users can do some really neat stuff with Applescript, once one spends a great deal of time learning the ins and outs of the language (but then I did some fairly clever stuff with batch files and VBA), and there are the nice security features, that are only laudable because they have not been really challenged. After six years on the job, I have rediscovered the basics of my religion. Macs are simplistic, trading in complexity for a common groove which it then shoves all users into, and are as hard to use as Windows boxes for anything really interesting to do, and Windows still has the better suite of tools for writing code, no matter what Mister Jobs wants to claim. After six years, I'll work on my Mac when I have to, but my favorite platform was and remains a Windows box. You can have my PC when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers...

And I digres no longer...

It's not that we look down our noses...

I've been using Macs at home since the early '80s and PC's at work for the same number of years. Okay, decades. What I saw and learned, especially early on, was that different types of thinkers gravitated toward one platform or the other. In fact, I used to win bets that I could tell if an anonymous IM-er was on a Mac or a PC, within two messages. But that's for another post...
IN GENERAL (and in my own humble opinion), those who were on Macs tended to be more open-minded and while "non-conformist" is too broad and strong a term, they did tend not to feel a need to conform to what "most other people" did, or thought was right. They were more likely to try two different things, computers in this context, then choose the one that made more sense for them, intelligent enough to trust their own judgement and not much caring what anyone else thought. Most of the early PC devotees used "the numbers" of Windows users, both personal and business, to bolster their arguments that their choice was the "right" one. Few would even TOUCH a Mac, and yet their criticism of all things Apple was taunted loudly from their side of the playground. Where MOST of the kids hung out. Safety in numbers, you know. And so the sides were formed.
To this day, I have NO problem with those who have tried both PCs and Macs, and still prefer their PC. And they can give real reasons why. I respect that. But it's really funny how that courtesy seldom works both ways. So yeah, maybe I still chuckle at the Mac vs PC ads, and un-mute when those commercials come on. But it's not because I look down my nose at PC users. Maybe it's because it's funny to see so many are still there, fighting the good fight, wanting the numbers to make them be "right". But oh, the ones I've known over the years who finally gave a Mac an honest try...and have never looked back. And that makes me feel happy, for them. Not smug. Now I'm off to whiten my teeth.

Mac owners are smug...and whiten their teeth

As a first time Mac owner I can proudly state that, yes, I am both smug and very Proud and pleased to own a Mac! After years and years of having my privacy invaded, along with other problems; I decided to purchase a Mac. And like other people who moved from PCs to Mac's, the overall concensus is, my opinion included, that we never "looked back". I DO NOT miss the infections, the blue screens of death, the constant installation of the XP Service Pack 2 back into my computer.....but mostly.....I DO NOT miss the constant invasion of my privacy and the intrusion of pornography!

Consider me a "mac newbie." I will NEVER look back to PCs with anything having the Microsoft OS System again!!

The part about whitening teeth and starbucks is wrong! I am a sensodyne user and like my Folger's Gourmet Blend. It tastes as good as Starbucks without the high price tag attacked to it!

A smug/obnoxious...

A smug/obnoxious CEO, who makes smug/obnoxious commercials, for smug/obnoxious computer buyers.

No thanks...