Tiger's Out This Week. No Bull.

Newsweek ^ | 04/25/2006 | Steven Levy

[r5boston]

It's Steve Jobs's plan to make this the Week of the Tiger. But Bill Gates and his minions at Microsoft are crying bull—specifically, a Longhorn steer. Despite the zoological bent, this dust-up is not about animals, but operating systems; Apple and Microsoft just happen to have named each of their major system upgrades after beasts of the realm. This Monday, Bill shows off the future of Windows, a.k.a. Longhorn, at a developers' conference. The oohs and aahs may be tempered by the fact that the hundreds of millions of Windows users won't get their hands on it until holiday season, 2006. (Unless it's even later.) On Friday, Jobs proudly presents the latest Macintosh OS X upgrade, named after that big striped cat that he always seems to have by the tail. When can the 25 million Mac users get their hands on Tiger? This year. This month. That day. Growwwl.

That's a big point for Apple in the latest matchup in high tech's equivalent to the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Both companies seem to understand what's really necessary and really cool for the next stop in desktop computing: support for the powerful new generation of 64-bit chips that are coming online; search capabilities built in, so you can mine your own documents as smoothly as Google scans the Web; a suite of persistent, constantly updated tiny applications that keep track of stuff like weather and stock quotes. A way to take advantage of the hot RSS technology that lets you "subscribe" to Web sites instead of visiting them every day or two. And a sleek appearance that relegates the traditional file-and-folder metaphor to the antique shop. Both new systems go a long ways toward making that big step.

[HAL9000]

But "HAL9000WASHERE" doesn't give you that little charge you get from tweaking people, does it?

There you go again. Windows is an operating system, not a person or people.

[general_re]

If you feel that the run-together-word "lowqualitycrap" is insulting to YOU, personally, then you have the problem, not Hal9000, who was merely expressing an opinion that is debatable.

The place to express opinions is in the posts, where they may be discussed and debated, not in the keywords. I guess that's not going to be addressed, though. Regardless, if the intent was benign, why choose something like that, that is guaranteed to get a rise out of people? Because it's intended to get a rise out of people, of course.

Let's try a little experiment, shall we? Why don't you print out a piece of paper that says "Low quality crap", and run off a few hundred copies. Then, take your little papers to the mall or the supermarket or wherever, and start putting them on the windshields of cars, where the owners can see you doing it. See if they all go along with this explanation that they really shouldn't be offended, because, after all, you're talking about the car. How do you imagine that will go? Me, I suspect it won't go very well for you. You seem pretty confident that your compelling explanation will carry the day, though, so let's put it to the test. Be sure to give me a heads-up, though - I'll want to be there with my video camera when you do.

And where have I (or any Mac user) advocated that absurdity?

My point is that what motivates you may very well motivate others as well. Since you seemed to acknowledge that there is misinformation all around earlier, one would hope we might build on that by not accepting misinformation from anyone, even those folks with whom we happen to agree.

ALL of these examples are personal assaults on the inegrity, sanity, and morality of a group of people who have merely chosen a different computer than you.

Than me? No, not me. Anyway, you have decided that you have been insulted. Good for you. I suspect others, who had the bad luck to choose a different computer than you, also feel insulted. Frankly, I don't particularly care about any presumed "qualitative difference", because I'm not interested in keeping score on alleged grievances, holding on to slights and using them to justify bad behavior. You are responsible for your own actions, not anyone else, and insofar as this appears to me to be leading towards that classic "he made me hit him!" argument, I'm not interested. Your mother didn't buy it, and neither do I. When the pro-MS forces hold themselves out to be innocent of anything and everything, I'll say the same to them, but in the mean time, you're up to bat.

[general_re]

See my previous post and hit the mall, Hal. Put your money where your mouth is.

[HAL9000]

See my previous post and hit the mall, Hal.

Hit the mall... Poison the well... You insulted Windows.... etc...

Issues!

[general_re]

Yeah, I figured you wouldn't be interested in putting your song-and-dance to the test. What a surprise.

[HAL9000]

Yeah, I figured you wouldn't be interested in putting your song-and-dance to the test. What a surprise.

You want me to go to the mall and put flyers on cars? That's trespassing. It's illegal - and irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Here is a better test. Go find someone who owns a Chevy truck with this bumper sticker attached -

- and tell them that his sticker is a personal insult to all Ford trucks, and that you blame him for all of those stickers everywhere - except for the ones that you put on trucks yourself in order to poison the well. Then wait for the men in the white coats who will help you get to a safe place.

[Caipirabob]

So, they don't realize that it is just an operating system, not a way of life (or is it?)

Wait until you've been signing on to FreeRepublic as long as some of us have. : )

[general_re]

Putting flyers on car windows is trespassing? LOL. Any old excuse will do, won't it? Oh, mighty keyboard warrior, you're just not in much of a hurry to actually put your BS rationalization to the test, I see. Guess I don't blame you...

[softwarecreator]

I dunno, seems to me that people come here (freep) because they believe in personal freedoms, yet they tell you how stupid you are for exercising that freedom of choice. Why should I care if you use a Mac or Windows?

[softwarecreator]

Wait until you've been signing on to FreeRepublic as long as some of us have

Yeah, I'm beginning to see that.

[CheneyChick]

Ping to a fun thread! LOL

Cheers, CC :)

[tiamat]

What does it matter what OS someone uses?

You like yours, I like mine.. I don't slam PC users.

(And yes, I use a Mac)

Can't we find more important stuff to fight about?

[zeugma]

Thanks for taking the time to crunch the numbers on this. Interesting indeed, and pretty much what I've noticed on various threads over years past.

Linux users should probably get tossed into the mix as well. I know for a fact that I'm guilty of drive-by gloating on windows virus/worm/security defect posts. :-) Many of us heavy Linux users are more favorable towards Macs since it went Unix under the hood with OSX. That's true in my case.

Btw: Do you really make swords?

[general_re]

What does it matter what OS someone uses?

It doesn't matter a whit. Not a single bit. You're happy with what you've got, and who am I to question that? Why should you care what I think? Why should I care what you think? The only point I wanted to make here is that everybody (generically speaking, not necessarily meaning you in particular), IMO, is partly responsible for the way these threads go. I haven't got a clue why saying that should be so controversial, but there it is. The tone and lack of civility on the evolution threads is due to both evolutionists and and creationists. The tone on the drug threads is due to both pro-legalization and anti-legalization posters. The tone on the Civil War threads is due to both the unionists and neo-confederates (who will likely both object to those labels, but whatever). I doubt anyone who hasn't picked a side on those topics would seriously disagree with that, but somehow, here, it's a cause for massive complaint.

[tiamat]

You're not wrong.

I do agree, that with some people, there seems to be an almost religious fervor over OS choice.

And Mac users DO tend to be smeared with the "Only gays and Libs use Apple machines" tag.

[general_re]

And Mac users DO tend to be smeared with the "Only gays and Libs use Apple machines" tag.

Which, IMO, shouldn't be done. If you all were libs, presumably you wouldn't be here, and I kind of doubt that you're all gay. Or even mostly gay. ;)

I'm sure those posts get kind of tiresome after a while. But what I'd like to say is that elevating the tone comes about when everyone agrees to elevate the tone. If Bush2000 or whoever the "gay Mac" poster is (I forget) had come forth to claim that they hadn't done anything wrong, that it was them being unilaterally victimized, I'd be saying the same thing to them. I suppose there are plenty of people who will totally disbelieve that, but that's where I'm coming from.

[tiamat]

Oh hey.

You and I don't have a problem as far as I am concerned.

And I agree: it generally only gets nasty when all parties participate.

I generally leave when it starts to get like that.

[tiamat]

And no, not Gay!

LOL!

;-)

[general_re]

Like my mom always said after separating me and my brother (again), "it takes two to tango" ;)

[zeugma]

Your comments about hardware recognition are spot on. I purchased a drawing tablet for my oldest daughters a couple of years ago. I was running RedHat 9 on my desktop, and figured I'd have to spend some time tweaking to get it to work properly. When I plugged it in though, it started working before I even realized it. I was trying to surf to a website to find out more information, when my mouse started jumping about because my daugher was playing with her tablet! I thought that was pretty slick, and from talking to Macmoonies, is pretty much what they expect out of their computers. (This is not a bad thing. The computer should work for =you= not the other way around.) I think Penguins can learn a bit from Macheads in the UI department.