Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
That irksome Mac moment
Now, we all love Apple and our Macs. However, we've all had that one irksome Mac moment during which we wanted to tilt our heads back and shout, "Nooooo!" Vader-style. Mine happened earlier this week, when I realized exactly why the majority of people don't use Macs.I was at my day job (tech support drone) when I got a call from a coworker making a presentation at a remote location. He was having trouble with the "Powerpoint box" (according to my IT Decoder Ring, this means "projector") because it was "...for PCs, not Macs. In fact, they're all PC here, so I can't use my iBook for my presentation!" I assured him that the Powerpoint box would in fact work with his iBook, once I drove over there and delivered a Mini-DVI to VGA adapter.
So I did, and everything was fine by the time I left. However, I saw a room full of maybe 35 people have their suspicions confirmed by the whole ordeal: "Macs don't work with anything." There was the presenter, going on and on about how he had to nix his slideshow because his Mac couldn't work with their system. Never mind that I showed up and proved him wrong, for I was the "computer guy," and I know how to beat those useless Macs into submission. No mere mortal could possibly have set that up.
So, TUAWers, what was your irksome Mac moment? We all have one. Do share.
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Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Bassdust said 6:50AM on 9-08-2006
Having to send emails with attachments to people with AOL accounts from Mail.app.
PDFs and multiple files just don't want to get read by AOL mail.
"I can't see the attchment, just a funny symbol, it must be because you are using macs."
No, it is because the AOL software is a waste of code.
These days, although apparently you could zip multiple files to get AOL mail to read the mime, I don't think I could trust an AOL user to be able to unzip it at the other end.
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ML said 6:38AM on 9-08-2006
There is a teacher at my school that is a Windows geek and I remeber one lesson when I was using my mac I couldn't get it to work with the wireless becasue they put in a system that relies on the active directory (I did get it working about four minutes later), he would go on about how macs aren't compatible with anything and that they need constan upkeep. The next day he was giving a presentation to the year on his tablet and it blue screened the moment he tried to use the stylus! Realy a moment of mac glory, not mac sadness.
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Hawk said 7:04AM on 9-08-2006
My mom has one of those little Sandisk Sansa MP3 players. She bought it because it was the only one to take batteries, and she uses it on vacation .... where there is no electricity guaranteed. No iPod for her.
Well, I figured I'd show her how nice iTunes was, since she uses Windows Media to interface with it on her PC, and that plainly sucks. No Mac-centrism - Windows Media Player confused both of us and I used to use it!
I knew that iTunes supports some MP3 players, or at least used to - my Creative Labs Nomad worked fine under it. So, I plugged it in, and..... a big fat nothing. No Mac drivers of any kind. It didn't even load up as a mass storage device like it did on her PC.
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Pascoe said 7:08AM on 9-09-2006
Yust like number 17 says, start mercury meesenger if you want video chat than change back to adium, not the best solution but maybye the only! And mercury meesenger support those stupied new flash animation in MSN and handwriten thing and much more...(apple should advertise for mercury meesenger!!!!)
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gm said 7:51AM on 9-08-2006
I work for a very large government agency that spends huge sums of money protecting against and dealing with viruses, spyware/malware, etc. in our Windows environment. However, we do not allow Linux or Mac OS X platforms on our network due to "security concerns". *sigh*
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josh said 5:15PM on 9-08-2006
OH and another thing.
you can webcam-chat on mac.
3rd party program similar to adium, think it's called meteora?
allows for webcam chat. :)
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Hawk said 7:07AM on 9-08-2006
by the way, the actual article's a bad example. a lot of very small laptops use strange video connectors, and the user simply didn't have one. not a Mac problem at all.
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arkowi said 7:27AM on 9-08-2006
T-diddy,
Where do you go to school?
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Brian Little said 8:28AM on 9-08-2006
"11. "Sorry, I can't video chat with you on MSN because I have a Mac."
Totally agreed ;_;
Posted at 9:40PM on Sep 7th 2006 by Tourian 0 stars"
So turn it around.
"I'm sorry...you can video chat with me on iChat A/V becuase you only have MSN and Windows."
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Carlos Fonseca said 7:47AM on 9-08-2006
I hated when I went to see some friends at a students residential and when I plugged the ethernet cable on my powerbook, I saw lot's of computers and I used to go one by one to see what they have sharing and I hated to connect to each sharing folder and each one of them appearing on finder and then having to eject all of them (it's very usefull for working on some of them, but to browse is awfull), and some I coudn't even login! And sometimes the mac just crash.
But I loved to plug the cable and activate the internet sharing over airport with a couple of clicks and it was DONE, while the peecee guys took a lot longer to do it, bridging networks and stuff! :P
This guys also liked to play arround with exposé and dashboard just for fun and they liked it :D
On the projector matter, I had a teacher with a PB and he used to teach on a room with a lousy projector and he couldn't use it without some kind of video signal amplifier, and a Fujitsu-Siemens peecee worked fine...
Another thing even more anoing is when your MSN contacts send you customized emoticons and Adium didn't recognized then and the text associated with also didn't say anything to you... so your just... "errr is that a smile? what is it?" BAH (gaim @ Ubuntu actually recognized them)
Next year I'm going back to mac computers again! Oh I miss it so much!!!
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Stuart said 8:05AM on 9-08-2006
"Sorry, I can't video chat with you on MSN because I have a Mac."
It's so embarrassing every time I have to say it."
Since when can't you video chat with MSN users... doesn't aMSN allow for this?
----
I believe it does, go take a look: http://amsn.sourceforge.net/
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Hervé Sainct said 8:07AM on 9-08-2006
My best mac moment was somewhere last week when reviewing a test of Parallels: by the end the guy said "and thus I could get my precious Filezilla to work on the mac", because visibly he couldn't imagine something better on a mac.
Having used Filezilla on a PC vs CyberDuck and RBrowser on a mac that really was funny...
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Alex T. said 8:31AM on 9-08-2006
Jeez, I had the exact same thing happen at a presentation I went to. The guy pulled out a Powerbook and couldn't connect it to the projector since it has a DCI port and the projector was only VGA. The tech guys were confused, and one of them kept calling it "the Apple connector". People got irritated, and I even heard a guy behind me explain to a newcomer that they couldn't get the presentation working "because it's got a Mac connector, not a normal one".
The guy finally found his DVI-VGA adapter, and the show started, but the damage had been done!
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TriangleJuice said 8:32AM on 9-08-2006
Since when is the topic "what Macs can't do" instead of "what PCs can't do"? To give just a brief overview:
- on-the-fly anti-aliasing (especially useful in browsers)
- instant searching (Spotlight): no matter if it lacks speed on older machines, it's still a trillion times faster than Windows search.
- having a default browser that actually understands correct HTML/XHTML, and NOT: having a default browser that displays almost every site in a correct way, since most sites don't yet follow the W3C standards.
- security - enough said.
- a series of useful bundled apps that don't require activation - in my opinion Apple should also bundle a free version of iWork with their OS to give this argument a bit more legs.
- errors that make sence (NOT: "error x67cxz08: undefined").
- organising the whole operating system in a way that it is logical.
- this list is not complete...
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Zeke said 8:36AM on 9-08-2006
I think its the practical things that far outweigh things like not being able to video chat on MSN. Things like that awesome CMD+CTRL+D dictionary pop up. That is so innovative a 5 year old would have thought it up... and thats why I love my mac =) PS Ive given presentations to people with my macbook and the only problem I have is the fact that people cant get their eyes off the awesome glowing apple logo on my sweet sexy looking hardware (pay attention to the powerpoint!!!)
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J.T. Mill said 8:43AM on 9-08-2006
My moment is kind of me feeling sorry for PC users. Every once in a while my friends will ask me something along the lines of: "Do you know any programs that let you do multi user video chats? AIM, MSN, and Yahoo can only do one on one chats." I feel so bad telling them that there's nothing like that on the PC, and yet it comes with every Mac in the form of iChat.
I also agree with you and can't stand the "I hate Macs just because" argument. Honestly, the only point I'm hearing people come up with against Macs now a days are Video Games and Price, both of which are no longer true.
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Carlos Fonseca said 8:48AM on 9-08-2006
@ Zeke
I did that! Since I don't have a mac anymore (but i'm buying a macbook probably next year) I used to stare at my teacher's PowerBook and later MacBook Pro 8O eheh
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Skippi said 9:11AM on 9-08-2006
From a non-English native person Macs are giving me irksome moments all the time. Everytime you move documents with accented characters, you pray for them no the get screwed up, reading anything sent from Windows in my language (Slovak) requires extra actions to dig out text in eligible form. I cannot use a single Pages/Keynote template because fonts they use just don't support Central-European characters. The one and ONLY font Office for Mac allows me to use is Times New Roman - yes, a $500 dolar package and you can use it with one single font, and if you try to switch to a different font, it just reverts you back to Times. And the only support information you get is: "Yes, we know, that's just the way it is."
Don't try to kid me with automatic internet connection, beamers reading your VGA signals after plugging in - PCs have this functionality for couple years now too, and nothing will stop stupid users from rebooting their laptops instead of hitting a button or running network wizards instead of just plugging the cable in or activating wireless.
Macs are lovely toys and I love them - and I wish I could use them in my daily life. One day, maybe. I hope so.
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John Russell said 5:30PM on 9-08-2006
"Sorry, I can't video chat with you on MSN because I have a Mac."
Here's what I would say, "Sorry, I can't video chat with you on MSN because Micro$oft is the devil and wants to eat my soul."
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Tournevis said 9:52AM on 9-08-2006
I usually have the reverse problem, in that on PC only projectors, my Mac is the only computer that works at all and I have to loan my Mac to all the other presenters.
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