The editors of ResExcellence.com, a popular Macintosh website and longtime Mac enthusiasts, have switched to Linux. "I've been making my living as Mac-specific developer for several years now... I was a true Mac die-hard," stated Bryan, who also runs a Mac software company, on his blog, "but the Macintosh community, with its bad attitudes and diva-esque nature, rained on my parade. Sure there were other reasons why I switched. But that was the tipping point."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-10-12
"Do you realize how insane that is?" [to get embittered toward your OS because of others (the community].
Not really. Its to do with the interaction between Apple marketing and the community. Apple deliberately doesn't sell an OS, but whole computer systems. It deliberately develops and markets these on the basis of lifestyle. You are invited not to buy a computer, but to participate in the Mac experience.
Now, what exactly is that experience? There are obviously masses of perfectly reasonable people using Macs. But there is also a large and vocal minority who echo the marketing line, but in an exaggerated and obsessive form. And who show strong signs of cult member behaviour, including misreprestation of facts like price, market share, performance. Personal abuse of anyone not participating in the cult. A reaction to any less than positive publications about Apple which is kneejerk and fanatical. (For a classic example of this last see the reactions to Herb Greenberg's blog on cbsmarketwatch). Truly unpleasant social attitudes - one thinks particularly of the snobbery and class prejudice which accompanies the endless comparisons to high end consumer goods.
If as a company you induldge in this sort of marketing and encourage your lunatic fringe buyers in this sort of behaviour, you must expect people to make not so much an OS choice as a lifestyle choice, and to decide that the Mac lifestyle has too much weirdness in it for them. You have made the cultish behaviour an essential part of the product purchasing decision. It is also to be expected that the extreme behaviour will be directed at other participants. As in other areas of life, battles within a cult are far more vicious than those between the cult and other religions. This is what Res Excellence seems to have encountered.
What's happened is, Apple has actually encouraged large sections of the population to be pushed into an active dislike for the whole Mac phenomenon by its most fanatical adherents. Alas, this is not an original observation. A couple of years ago there was a lively correspondence on the Mac boards about the dangers of Mac Evangelism turning people off the platform. Things have not improved since. More of us however have decided, most silently, that this is not for us any more.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-06-19
Anyone who is embittered toward his/her operating system because of what other people say needs to get an appt. with a counselor asap.
Erm, sounded more like he is embittered with the community.
Are you part of that community by any chance, trying to twist the argument, so that it makes you look in some way superior...?