The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

I actually read the article and contemplated burning my British passport from the shame of being associated with that drivel. Until I looked up and saw it was from the Guardian, that is.

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Think Simon Arch has fallen for a deliberate wind-up. It's the Guardian guy's style for everything.

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Charlie Brooke is normally quite funny. His Screenwipe series is at least, but it's a series poking fun at how TV works. However; because he's very much part of that system, you can imagine he comes into contact with a lot of Mac users, and ones from "TV" who probably give Mac users a bad name. It's important not to confuse who uses Macs with the computer itself.

As for his mouse button thing, he clearly was using a notebook Mac and confused trackpad with mouse, no excuse for that.

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@Nik: "It's the Guardian guy's style for everything."

Could be. Wouldn't be the first time.

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Windows users NEVER bash Macs? Where have YOU been hiding out? Go read that Guardian article for a start. Maybe you're new to computing, but from 1984 to 2008 all it's been from PC people is non-stop carping about how horrible Macs are.

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+1, Simon.
And can we find an automated way of suppressing comments from people who spell Mac in all captials? Thanks!

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How odd, then, that you-- a PC user who doesn't even know enough about Macs to know that "MAC" is a cosmetics company and "Mac" is a computer-- would come to "The Unofficial Apple Weblog" which is a blog dedicated to Macs and Mac users, and proceed to flame its readers.

By the way, the whole "let's pick on Erica Sadun because she's a girl on a tech blog" thing is getting really old, really fast. It shows that you're not only a troll and a Apple-hater, but quite possibly a misogynist that is threatened by a woman making a pretty good geek joke and being in a position that you very obviously envy.

Good day, sir.

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Surprise surprise, the MAC.. sorry Mac community is picking on the PC guy. Well at least you all proved my point. I however will take the high road and not bash Macs. As I said I believe they have their good points, just like PCs do. We all use what we use due to personal preferences or work related matters.

@ZeroCorpse
My point with regards to Erica has nothing to do with her gender. The point I was trying to make was that if someone would go to that length to create something that serves no useful purpose than to mock PCs, then clearly they must have some hatred towards PCs. If you're wondering what I am doing on the TUAW blog, well I own an iPhone so please don't mouth off like you know me when you clearly don't. The majority here are probably one sided. My ownership of the iPhone at least shows I don't hate Apple. If Apple create something that I like and needed, then i'll be happy to purchase it. While I don't own a Mac, I wont be bashing Mac users for their choice. You my good sir, should learn to calm down!

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Actually, you came to an apple blog saying how apple users were smug jerks and how the PC community is better then that and would never make unfair conparasons (which is obviously not true). Hipocracy proves no points.

I myself am a pc tech person who uses macs and linux on the side to develop my support skills (plus I prefer macs for standard web due much in part to adium x). Sure the apple commercials go a bit overboard sometimes, but they're just jokes. You don't have to be a smug hating jerk to make a joke. The joke you're complaing about was atleast once made by microsoft itself! (well sysinternals before microsoft obtained them, but microsoft is still classy enough to put the joke on their website).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/miscellaneous/bluescreen.mspx

I deal with fanboys on every techblog I subscribe to, Its not just mac users, or pc users, its just idiots... watch yourself before you become the things you hate.

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Don't hate us because we are right!

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Now, that's not true... I was a Mac hater for years, and I switched! To be fair, I was hating Macs in the System 7 days, and using them in academic settings where they weren't taken care of, but really now, Systems 7-9 sucked.

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Confession time:
My name is ZeroCorpse, and I was once a Mac hater.

I bashed Macs much like you see the other PC Weenies doing here and on Engadget. I used the old canards like "Macs can only us a one-button mouse" and "you can't upgrade a Mac" as my basis for arguments. I was a PC technician. I built PCs, repaired PCs, and did troubleshooting for Windows, and I was surrounded by other Mac bashers who supported my hatred for the Mac.

I believed Apple made computers for stupid people. I believed that they were overpriced and underpowered. I fell into ALL the stereotypes and believed all the lies, and in that time I never used a single Mac. I just *knew* I hated them.

I had my hatred confirmed when I sold computers for a while and found that the Performas we also sold were kind of crappy and that System 7 was pretty bland compared to the current Windows offering. We also sold the Power Computing Mac clones, and I hated those!

I didn't know that this was the dark time for Apple, and that the Performas and Mac clones were the worst things offered by Apple in many, many years. We didn't sell PowerBooks. iMac wasn't out yet, either.

A few years later, I lived with someone for a while and they only had a Mac (forget what it was-- Some all-in-one Performa-like thing). I got a lot of work done on that computer. . . And it made me a little less biased.

In the early part of the 21st century, I was looking for a cheap laptop computer and found a clamshell iBook on eBay. It came with OS X installed.

WOW. What a difference! Using OS X, in comparison to using Windows XP, was like night and day! I was instantly impressed with OS X's ease of use, and the fact that I wasn't tweaking IRQs, messing with the registry, or doing ANYTHING to make things work properly. They just worked like they were supposed to!

I also found out that most of the things I believed were false. I COULD plug in any USB mouse and use as many buttons as I desired! I COULD upgrade all the things I needed, like RAM, hard drive, optical drive, printer, scanner, and so on-- And it was easier to do in OS X than it was in Windows! Most of the time, USB or Firewire devices didn't even need drivers installed to work on my Mac!

So, after trying to push my desktop PC a little longer (for gaming), and suffering a mainboard meltdown during an upgrade, I decided to go Mac. I took out a loan and bought my first new computer ever (I usually built them myself); A 2004 iMac with the lamp-neck and 20" screen.

I was happy. I was so wrong, and sure enough I haven't looked back since then. I switched the other computer in the household for an older-model CRT iMac. I upgraded my own laptop several times, through clamshell iBook to snow iBook to 17" PowerBook, and now a SR MacBook.

I've had the Mac mini (which served me very well for two years) and the 24" aluminum iMac. I've bought a LOT of computers from Apple and Apple resellers.

And I've done this based on the initial loan. I haven't spent much more when I upgraded because my computers continue to have high resale values. I sold my PowerBook with a faulty display for 3/4 what I paid for it, and was able to get a Mac mini, Studio display, and external hard drive with the proceeds. You couldn't do that with a Toshiba Satellite-- It would sell for less than half what you paid for it if the screen didn't work.

I hated Apple and the Mac. I preached against it to people on the sales floor, and I fought in blogs to defend the PC's honor. Yet now, I despise the Windows world. I use Windows XP, but only for occasional gaming when it's not on the Mac. I wouldn't bother using XP as my primary OS, though. It's too much of a pain to bother.

Even simple things, like the fact that I don't have to call Apple and beg them to activate my operating system every time I install it or change my hardware, makes OS X a better place to be.

It's that sort of thing that turns a Mac hater into a Mac lover. It happens all the time. You just need to be exposed to the Mac for a decent amount of time-- and not be a rabid "every FPS counts" gamer geek-- to see the merits of switching.

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