I know seven Mac users. Three of them (all women) are indeed Birkenstock-wearing, granola-munching, died-in-the-wool liberals. The other four (two guys, two gals) are solid conservatives. Regardless, none of them define themselves by their computer system...which is really refreshing because I’d have to go medieval on their butts and reformat their systems with OpenBSD if they did. ;-)
The key difference I’ve found is that Mac users really don’t know much about Computers. They don’t know how they work and they don’t care and of course that is fine but you can’t expect to have a technical conversation with them which is much like having a political conversation with them because once you get past the gui of pretty pictures they get lost.
..which is really refreshing because I’d have to go medieval on their butts and reformat their systems with OpenBSD if they did. ;-)”
ROTFLMPO~!
Most of the liberal ladies I know have old, crappy Windows PCs. Machines like this need frequent "de-chicking", so these are my best customers.
My Wife is a MAC user and while she is more liberal politically than I, she wouldn’t be caught dead watching them sell Birkenstocks on QVC, and she is a hot redhead. We “adopted 3 IMacs for various applications at the House and the Lake, and I can sign on DIAL UP faster than this HP Piece of **** can boot up. This machine runs XP and not very well!
Next box is a souped up Mac.
I now own a Macbook Pro after having left the Mac community in 1995 or so. During the late 90’s, there was nothing about the Mac that really moved me to own one, much less program one professionally.
From about 1986 to 1995, I not only used Macs, I wrote software for them, either on the Mac or on cisco routers (I used to do AppleTalk in IOS). And gawd almighty, were some of the people within the Mac community difficult to suffer.
The most fun I had when going to Macworld, or the Developer’s Conference was outing myself as a conservative/libertarian, pro-RKBA, pro-gun, pro-property, etc. And then when challenged by the typical smug elitists, taking down their arguments with a crushing wave of facts, as politely as possible.
Mind you, these folks often *had* to ask me questions, as I was a font of information often not available elsewhere on AppleTalk and all things networking on the Mac.
BTW - I like OpenBSD. A really solid implementation of BSD.
The reason I came back to the Mac? IMO, OS X has reached a point of maturity where it suits me and Vista has reached a point where it does not. I refuse to put up with the DRM crap now festooned upon Vista, (I still run WinXP on PeeCee’s), and OS X has a BSD-like infrastructure under it, much better IMO than Linux as a Unix target, and the GUI on top of OS X is far superior to anything in the “free”/”open” software world.
Add in VMWare+WinXP and as far as I’m concerned, an Intel Mac is now the perfect machine for a retired s/w guy like moi, who wants this crap to “just work” because in my ripe old age, I really don’t give a rat’s rear end about all the arcane BS that gets all the young punks in their 20’s all turgid.
I’m tool old and too tired to get a stiffy over which OS I used. Just can’t muster enough passion to give a darn any more. I’ve got only so many years left on this rock and I’ve got to use my time more wisely.