Angry Robot

Apple, Love It Or Leave It

Rants of Mac defectors like this get a lot of attention. For the sake of argument, let me point out that this one is basically gibberish.

So we begin by citing Apple PR as an example of propaganda:

“Megahertz alone is a poor indicator of real-world system performance, particularly when comparing different overall system architectures,” Apple says in its latest product literature for the dual-processor G4 Powermac.

Which we go on to refute on the basis of, I guess, first hand experience. Fair enough.

the Mac is still slower … Apple has, for some time, managed to pull the hood over the eyes of its users, but it can no longer afford to lob the megahertz myth at the public when you can buy a 3 Ghz Pentium 4-based Dell PC for the same price as a 1 Ghz iMac. Sorry Apple, but the megahertz myth is a myth.

Well, the key part of Apple’s above ‘propaganda’ is particularly when comparing different overall system architectures. That means that a 1 GHz G4 is faster than a 1.5 GHz Pentium despite what the numbers appear to say. They’re different chips, pal. But yes, Macs lose actual benchmark tests in most pro graphics application use now (Photoshop, After Effects). Is that your everyday user? Hell no. So the question of slow is really “slow for what”? I hope I am not stating the obvious by pointing out that most of those 3 gigahertzes Mr. Tournemille is salivating over are put to little use when emailing, surfing the web, and, er, writing. In fact, my 667 mHz G4 opens apps faster than the 1.7 GHz P4 shitbox I use at work. That’s my real-world experience against that of Mr. Tournemille, so the question is: what kind of Mac is he using? I read a little further: he’s using an iMac DV+. Dude. That’s a 450 mHz G3, released in July 2000. He’s running OS X on it? It’s pre-OS X Public Beta – damn straight it’s slow. So he needs a new computer, that’s for sure. Why not a new Mac?

Problem is, Apple has utterly failed to make significant headway into corporate America and as a result users are opting to buy a computer that runs the same operating system as their computer at work. Worst still, many websites, including the popular finance site Morningstar.ca, career site Flipdog.com, electronics maker JVC.ca, or the Canadian news site globeandmail.com, seem to cater only to Windows users.

Okay, reason number one is basically “people are used to Windows.” That’s fine, but obviously it doesn’t speak to the quality of either system, nor does it seem to apply to Mr. Tournemille, who’s already identified himself as a ten-year Mac user. So the next point: websites don’t work on Macs. Read: websites don’t work on his browser. And sweet baby Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin with this. I checked those sites, they work fine on IE5.. Which itself is about three years old… Is he using Netscape 4? Well the solution to this is get a better browser. I go to the globe site all the time in Camino or Safari, and it even works in IE, and obviously it would work in a remotely recent version of Netscape. But don’t throw your fridge out because your milk’s expired. Replace the milk.

Anything else? “Microsoft has ended development of IE”, good riddance and don’t anyone lose sleep over this. We’re all set with about four or five usable, standards-compliant browsers in OS X. But others are shutting Macs out: “Many online services are following suit, such as the recently announced Music Now service by Full Audio. Mac users simply aren’t invited to the party.” Well, I’d mention I’ve never even heard of that and a quick Googling pulled up nothing, but the real point is: has he not heard of the iTunes Music Store? The thing that has everyone in a tizzy, has users and musicians and record execs alike all holding hands and singing its praises? The thing that’s only available for Macs right now?

And that’s it for his reasons. Aw, man. I rest my case.