Macbook not pro question... 1509

Have any of you noticed that this atbreastude is not really a product of the Apple-Mac advocates who post here? What I have noticed is that most of this "Mac fanatic" folklore that flies around here is started by the Windows advocates and Wintrolls themselves. They will take a general statement that one Mac advocate here might make and reiterate it as something that all Mac users fervently believe - like a religion. Once its been repeated here several times (usually in derision by Windows advocates and trolls), it becomes simply a fact buttumed by all Win-advocates that whatever the folklore, its an atbreastude universally shared by all Mac users. We are not a monolithic force. We share one trait. That trait is that we use and advocate Macintosh. Beyond that, we have different reasons for prefering the Mac, we have different reasons for not liking Windows. We are not all alike, nor do we share the same beliefs like some religious cult.

Fact is, most of us are like Alan Baker. We're Mac fans, sure. But we all know that Apple is far from perfect and most of have said so at some point. Take me for instance. I don't like Steve Jobs even though I realize that he is, probably, very good for the Mac. I don't particularaly like Apple and their policies. When the Mac clones came out in the mid-eighties, I bought not one, but two Power Computing machines. I thought that they were better machines than Apple's offerings at the time and I certainly thought their customer service was way better than anything I've ever experienced from Apple before or since and I bought them because they were a chance to get away from Apple's shennanigans while remaining a Mac user. Well, Jobs' return and the subsequent killing of the clone agreements brought me back into Apple's fold, but I must say that my second Power Computing machine was the best Mac I had ever owned up to that point. Reliable and rugged I thought it was just dandy. Modern Macs are fine too, My dual PPC tower is gorgeously made and trouble free. OSX is a rock. more than 6 years without a single crash, freeze, or lernel panic. Very impressive.

However, Apple continues to do things with which I don't wholeheartedly agree. I'm not 4-square behind the move to Intel, although I understand fully why they made that move and realize that it was probably good for Apple in the long run. I still like the old OS' GUI more than I like OSX's, but OSX's GUI is still lightyears ahead of anything Microsoft has ever come up with, so I can't complain too much. I think that the MacBook pros are too expensive by at least $1K and I think that Apple is making a mistake by "helping" Mac users dual boot to Windows with Boot Camp.

I would also likely change to Windows if I thought that Windows were a decent OS. But since I find it poorly designed, ugly, confusing, and arcane, and since what I've seen of Vista shows that it addresses none of the things that I find terrible about Windows in general, that's not likely to happen. I hate windows the way it is and as I've said before, I'd likely quit using a computer altogether rather than face the prospect of having to make my living with one of them as Windows is now consbreastuted.

I'm sure that each of us "Maccies" could write similar mini-computer "biographies" that express as many different reasons for being Mac fans rather than Windows fans as there are people expressing them. We are a far from monolithic group and when you treat us as one, you are doing everyone a misservice and you are constructing a fictional "Mac Fanatic" which, simply, does not exist.

-- George Graves The health of our society is a direct result of the men and women we choose to admire.