November 30, 2006
"I used to be bi-curious, but now I've just gone all the way to becoming 'bi.'"
Says Glenn Reynolds. I approve! (And despite my long experience, I have no idea what to do about that problem. It never works that way for me.)
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27 comments:
I've been bi for years: PC at work, MAC at home. I prefer MA, but have no choice at work.
I think more of us should speak up and come out of the closet.
I've always had a Mac and never had anything else, even when they made a huge push at work to purge all the Macs and everyone else caved in, even when they tried to give me a new computer (which would, of course, have been obsolete 2 years later).
I'm such a Mac person that I don't even know what the second button on a 2-button mouse does.
Instapundit may have figured it out by now, but if not, here's the quickie response I got from husband, as far as one thing to look at as a possibility. Instapundit might or might not need to take up the issue with his server person, depending on where the problem is (his blog theme code? an html page, or an element of moveable type? Key question: Does Instapundit maintain his own html page?):
It appears that this setting has to be configured in the HTML page JavaScript. Most of the references I have found indicate that the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor needs "safari_warning: false" set in the script initialization. Here's one explanation: http://www.movalog.com/archives/code-snippets/wysiwyg-comments
If you find it truly annoying and cannot resolve the problem, there is always Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com). I tend to use it more than Safari, although I like certain Safari features, because it works the same on my "Bi" platforms (Linux and Mac OS X).
I (reader_iam) e-mailed directly, but honestly, I'm pretty sure an e-mail from me is just so much flotsam and jetsam in a sea of detritus. Maybe you could forward?
****
I'm bi, too, though in a different config than my dear husband: Mac and PC.
Hmmmm ... does that make us polygamous? In a group marriage? Just plain weird? Irretrievably decadent?
And what does that mean for the future of civilization???
(So far, our 6-year-old is strictly Mac. One Must Protect The Children.)
Heh.
By "PC," I mean Windows. Of course, both are PC's.
I prefer the Mac for most things, though. It pays to be flexible, though, at least in my world.
I think most Mac users are bi, just because so many work environments are PC. I started with a 512K Mac in 1984, the year of the great anti-IBM ad, and have been there ever since.
I was talking with a PC fan the other day. He was amazed that Excel and Word started as Mac applications, and were ported over to Windows when Microsoft decided to push that OS. We are lucky there still is a Mac Office group over there!
Hoo boy! Is this post a cue for the Mac haters to come out of the woodwork or what?
Let's have another kerfluffle! Maybe someone should coin a term of abuse for Mac enthusiasts, and we could have a nice fight over words.
You may remember Mac "evangalists?" That described people (mostly in the '90's) who were intent on spreading the "good news" about Macintosh computers. Perhaps we could borrow from the "Christianist" teapot tempest, and use something like...oh, I dunno, "Macocist."
Of course that's only my lame beginning. I'm sure you Mac haters out there have better ideas.
Also, don't forget to insult Althouse for using a Mac while you're at it. There must be something about the right-left button business that is highly symbolic in a political/sexual sort of way, no?
'Course, my husband--though he dislikes it--is actually "tri," given his advanced technology architecture work at a historically well-known technology company. Here, he's speaking personally.
Which basically means that he maintains certain affairs on the side!
Messy, modern life. Messy.
lol
I switched to the Mac not long ago, but I need both Windows and Linux at work, and I still need Windows at home (see below). So I run both on the Mac inside virtual machines.
I guess that makes me a "tri". (Reminds me of the joke: "I'm a trysexual... I'll try anything!")
There is one reason I can't ditch Windows at home completely: Quicken. Quicken for Mac, frankly, sucks wind---and the only thing worse is the data conversion process. So Quicken remains the one home application I'm still running in Windows...
I dunno what you'd call me, I use PCs exclusively but I hate Windows with the white heat of a thousand suns.
Technically, I really like the PC hardware, but can't stand the crap Micro$oft puts out. I sarted out on minis/mainframes, and used DOS for a long time, which I liked. Then OS/2 came out and it ran circles around Windows 3.x. I didn't even know this "Windows" thing existed really, until I was forced to use it once. I remember thinking "Is this some kind of joke?"
But then, I thought Macs were a joke for a long time, too.
My last two attempts at purchasing a new machine I started out trying to justify getting a Mac, since Windows has just gotten dumber and dumber over time -- it's clear by now that Micro$oft simply cannot produce an acceptable OS -- but the trouble and expense of getting all new applications and porting all of my files over, etc., pretty much killed that idea.
*sigh*vkiof
John Jenkins: Given your dislike of GUI's, you might appreciate this graphics-rich blog by a Canadian wingnut who administers her hand-coded site via a dial-up connection from a 386 running Linux. Talk about self-sufficiency.
Re: the rabid Mac/Windows arguments...
...I actually don't happen to think that the Mac OS is particularly easy to use compared to Windows. I quite like Windows, for what it is; it has served me very well in business and technical arenas; and I have far more respect than disdain for Microsoft. I still don't think I've mastered the Mac OS as well.
What tips the scales for the Mac OS is that it combines a relatively good GUI with the power of Unix/Linux under the hood. I use plenty of GUI applications; unlike Mr. Jenkins I'm glad to have them. ("vi" rules!) But I couldn't work without at least some command-line hacking.
Of course, I'm speaking of Mac OS X. I would never have even considered switching before OS X came out.
I'm such a Mac person that I don't even know what the second button on a 2-button mouse does.
Such a Mac Diva!
but there was a predecessor (the name of which I can't remember) on DOS machines.
Yeah, there was Multiplan for DOS before there was Excel for Mac, but Excel was really a new program, and was then ported from the Mac to Windows. (There's still apparently code in Excel that uses Pascal threads, from back when serious programming for the Mac was "of course" in Pascal.)
There are a couple of brief allusions to it - but shouldn't the linux distros get a little more play? I mean they deserve at least as much love and respect as the two mainstream orientations...
I use redhat's fedora core 4, dual boot with windows on my laptop. windows (and mac i presume) still have exclusive support for certain software (flash plugins for example) that linux doesn't.
linux is definitely the way I swing though.
I think most Mac users are bi, just because so many work environments are PC. I think JohnF is right; we have to be more flexible. When PC users have to cope with a Mac they get flustered, for no good reason.
Some of our composition students take their final exams on computers. To accomodate them all in one exam period, I have to borrow lab space from other departments. This semester I had to get space in Education's Mac lab. Panic has ensued. Jeez! All they have to do is open Microsoft Word and type. It's going to look really, really familiar, since Microsoft keeps striving to make its OS look like Mac's.
Darn! Just not much passion in the old Mac/PC debate any more. People would rather fight about the Iraq war and the Christian religion than really important things like operating systems.
mcg is on to something. It's very useful to have a command-line environment right there on your trendy Apple. I started using Unix in college, and it's great fun to have a bit of the 1970's in my laptop all these years later. Of course I'm not using a Tektronix monitor and don't have a Teletype machine for a printer, so it's just not possible to relive one's youth. Ah, but how I miss the smell of hot oil and ozone!
I can write shell scripts for my Mac, however. Takes me back, although we didn't have bash in those days. BTW, here's a fun little book for those who would like to get started doing some interesting things in their command-line environment.
Oh, and Steven, don't mention Pascal! I'm having serious flashbacks!
I'm a windows/linux user. Haven't even touched a mac in years. Which is not to say I've never been tempted -- the new Macbooks and iMacs are appealing designs.
The main thing that stops me is the relative monopoly that Apple has in the Mac ecosystem. I'd be more likely to try Mac osX if I could buy a boxed copy to use on my own machine, rather than being forced to buy their really expensive hardware.
"I'm such a Mac person that I don't even know what the second button on a 2-button mouse does."
Cheers to that. It's a blessing. :)
I was at Motorola when Jobs came back and shut down the Mac clone business, of which Motorola was the biggest player. So, the company that had carried Apple since its start, even getting into bed with IBM for Apple's sake (for what became the PowerPC), got shafted for a couple of hundred million dollars. Oh, and IBM ended up with most of Apple's processor business.
So, Motorola and I switched to Windows, and I haven't looked back since. I should note that the Mac I had at the time (a late 1990s laptop) crashed a lot more than my Windows machines ever did (but I managed to avoid Win 95 and 98, jumping from 3.11 to NT 4.0, 2K, etc.)
Of a little interest, I was one of the attys. on the AIM (Apple, IBM, and Moto) team, and the joint meetings were always interesting. IBM had gone to "casual", which meant polo shirts and kackies. Apple guys would show up with their collarless shirts and slacks, and we showed up in navy pin-striped suits. It was weird that the three corporate environments were so different that you could tell at a glance which company someone worked for. I have to say though that at least pre-Jobs-returned, Apple was a lot easier to work with than IBM.
Then there are the Mac mice with no buttons. It's funny to watch a PC person try to deal with the machine that is just too elegant for them.
I can't let this one pass:
Try and consider: the reason the majority of computers on corporate networks are PC’s running Windows is that they are easier to support, deploy, configure, and upgrade with new software than Macs are. There is no conspiracy to keep people from using them. They are just not made for wide corporate use.
Uh, no, no and no.
I've supported both on very large, Fortune 500 company networks. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses in a large environment.
As a Mac guy through and through, though agnostic on which platform is "best" for any given person ... in the enterprise environment, Apple's biggest strength is the ease of upgrades, for OS and other software packages. Apple's biggest weakness is lack of transparency and attention to the needs of enterprise clients.
And if you're a home user and want a Mac -- I think it's just as serviceable as Windows, if not moreso (virus and spyware being the obvious strengths, as well as the "i" suite of apps).
I wish wish wish that Apple would just go ahead and port the dumb thing (OS-X) to regular Intel that you could self-install on your PC. Then I'd happily partition the ol' drive and start migrating over the course of a few months.
I'd be more likely to try Mac osX if I could buy a boxed copy to use on my own machine, rather than being forced to buy their really expensive hardware.
I have heard rumors on and off that Mac will eventually do just this... stop making computers and just sell their OS, and concentrate on ipods and the like. I hope they don't because their machines are so attractive!
*Ann, a two-button mouse really is convenient, and Apple even makes em now. I only mention this because I resisted myself for a long time--but it's really useful for a lot of things...
Apple sells hardware.
I'd be shocked if they would ever make the OS a standalone product you can install on any old PC out there. They make their money on hardware.
Besides, it would be harder for the "elegant" experience (code word for "Apple approves one kind of hardware so that it 'just works'") to be, well, "elegant" if Apple had to account for an almost infinite number of different hardware devices (hard drives, network/wireless cards, video cards, etc).
It's so seamless for a reason.
Apple's biggest weakness is lack of transparency and attention to the needs of enterprise clients
As someone involved in software development, I'd like to add that another big weakness of the Mac is that Microsoft is very developer-oriented, while Apple treats third-party developers like shit. Developing for the Mac is an *enormous* headache for such a tiny market share. That's the big reason why the Mac has traditionally had such a poor selection of software offerings.
And pr9000's right -- Apple relies on its strangehold on hardware in order to maintain OS stability. There are quite literally more possible PC configurations than there are stars in the night sky, which means that odds are that any given particular configuration didn't see much testing. Small wonder that Windows has more holes in it.
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