Hateration?
You have us searching on the label Hateration?
Is that even a word?
New slang, Jesse. Coined by R&B singer Mary J. Blige from her jam “Family Affair”.
She made up the word, but it has entered the slang lexicon.
Basically means irrational, green-eyed dislike for an opponent. i.e. “Bill O'Reilly's got mad hateration for Olbermann.”
I love the word. Don't be a hater, dog! 
i am about to join the ranks of makkin'. i found out that my very favorite studio in the whole wide world has gone all mackified.
where they go, i must follow.
drool on your red monster dude. drool.
Okay.
I bow to your vocabulary. Bring it.
My favorite iteration of the new “hate” slang is when someone's really goin' off in a jealous manner.
They are said to be drinking massive quantities of “Haterade”.
“Somebody's chuggin' from the two-liter bottle of Haterade!”
Oh, you can take the boy outta the 'hood, but...
Microsoft Vista is the best thing that ever happened to Apple Computer.
LM, I'm a white girl from the 'burbs and even I've heard of haterade.
P.S. I love your red G3 turned into a G4. I think that's the same model as mine (BF gifted it to me after his daughter finished school) and I still use it in all its OS 9 glory.
Like I said in the previous Mac vs PC thread being a gamer a PC is really the way to go, especially the high end flight sims. Jane's F-15, WWII Fighters, and USAF come to mind, all of which are superbly flight modeled, and accurately detailed in cockpit layout. Now I know I am a dinosaur still playing flight sims, but who the hell cares I love them.
Jeez LoLo - all that Apple stuff - that is just s-i-c-k. Ya know what... those pics remind me of a closet I have in my crib filled with golf gear... and...stuff...
Lord Jeebus He'p Me!!!!!
Actually I agree with LM.
Apple (the company) has basically become a computer oriented version of pre-Fiorina HP, a purveyor of rather proprietary unix-flavored boxen with a reputation for reliability. If you can get what you want and like a single source get them they'll serve you well. I've always built from the ground up, and have finally gone pure Ubuntu (with a Automatix2 injection of course) at home. In my work I need to work with Linux and Python and have to do a lot of interfacing.
As for the iPods, I consider them overrated in comparison to their cost and not as functional as my trusty PDAs or gameboys for media playback. Having a locket of 4 mb SD cards battery pack and a PDA that plays anything is a heavenly thing during holiday travel. I also prefer resilience over fashion with things that have to travel with me.
But the cool and the hype does really turn me off. The I'm a PC I'm a Mac ads in particular tic me off. ('though I love Sir Mix a Lot's lyric "I'm not PC baby, I'm a Mack!") Largely due to the false dichotomies and the exclusive cool.
There's two types of cool in my book, inclusive cool and exclusive cool.
Inclusive cool is intrinsic, and makes one aspire to emulate or partake of it. The best inclusive cool gets better as more people adopt or partake of it. People demo it friends (and even interested strangers) in the hopes that it turns them on. Intrinsic cool is also classic, never completely becoming mundane even under continuous exposure or universal adoption. When I meet a fellow otaku and we go over favorite anime (you haven't seen Eva? You gotta see Eva? You haven't seen ROD, let me loan you a copy!).
Exclusive cool is generally a arbitrary construct which is deliberately ephemeral. It derives it's power from dividing the world into the elect and the plebes. It literally excludes. While it depends on peer pressure for adoption, widespread adoption is lethal to it. Which is why it is so ephemeral. (yellow socks are so last week!). This is symbiotic with hype in that both are seated in insecurity.
Exclusive coolness is a zero sum game, my coolness is dependent on your lack. Intrinsic coolness is a non-zero sum game, it's even cooler for me if you get it too.
Now, what gets my goat, is that while Apple products do have a lot of inclusive cool as LM communicates in his posting, they are sold based on a insufferable dose of exclusive cool. The Mac guy is hyper trendy and depends on the misfortunes and dweebishness of the PC guy.
Walking to work today, I realized that the counterexample of this is Nintendo. A company which has taken its lumps in the past, but is presently kicking ass in the console and portable fields. Like Apple they've got a reputation for reliable equipment, good industrial design and proprietary components. They've gotten to their present dominance by ziging when their competitors zag. But unlike apple there is no cult of personality, and much less hype than the other players in the field. Unlike Apple, the press was hardly adulatory of the DS or Wii with most articles predicting that they'd be utterly pwnd by their competitors. But both products have done remarkably well largely from their simplicity and innovation.
Cat owners, dog owners! People like what they like and will continue to like what they like. Me, I use a PC (stable as any Mac I've used in the past), 'cos I build computer models......... when I have time (for obscure PC-only military games.......... even making a little money at it now).
OK,
I don't chime in often, but I want to put two cents in on the Mac/PC controversy.
Of course, to do that, I have to go get in the WayBack Machine, and let Sherman set the dial to May of 1983, just after I'd finished freshman year of college.
And, before I press the WHAM-BAM button to send us there, I have to freeze the situation, clone Sherman and Peabody, and the damn WayBack gizmo and set it to even farther back, to like 19---ummmm,59? 60? when my dad got out of the navy and went to work for Big Blue.
He worked for 10 years or so, and then, in the late 60s, swithced from a hardware guy to a software guy, on the ubiquitous 360 systems that were everywhere - GODDAMN EVERYWHERE - in any mid to large business. He was of the opinion that S/W was where you had to be; hardware, as he said, was just hardware. It was getting faster and better, but, as he said, more
throw-away. Being a hardware engineer was just the equivalent of swapping out parts and sending the dead ones back to the shop.
Software, of course, was no picnic, as I well remember, being seven years old and trying to "help" him at the kitchen table, where he'd try to expalin that A + B = 21. Trust me, until you've mastered fractions, you probably ain't getting different number bases.
But, enough of that. Let's get back to the first iteration of Sherman and Mr. Peabody.
So, after my freshman year, my parents are insistent that I get a job, rather than lounge for the summer. My uncle, who worked at Motorola, offered to help, and I worked for 3 months in the board fab engineering department being, let's face it, a gofer, as I was too green to be of any goddamn use overall. If I remember, I measured torque on chip placement machines or something.
Of course, being Motorola, home of the fabulous 68000 chip, we had 2 Lisas sitting in a cubicle for the staff, and I wrote all my reports, coupled with drawings, using LisaWrite and LisaPaint.
Contrast this to getting back home and working on the original IBM PC (circa Charlie the Tramp version) because IBM gave employees a sweet discount at the time, just to move things along. I must've spent hours with that machine, learning PC-DOS and IBM's BASIC and a little assembler over that summer. But, I never wrote reports, drew diagrams, etc., because that's
not what that machine was for. It was for programming, dammit!
Continuing on, after sophomore year, my uncle recommended me for another summer intern project and this year, instead of Lisas, we had Macs. Original, 128k, 400 k floppy drive, no hard drive Macs. As much as I loved the Lisa, this was love at first sight. I used all of my money saved
from the summer to buy one to go back to school, much to Dads chagrin, who wanted to push me towards a PC or possibly a PCjr. God rest your soul, Dad, but you were wrong, wrong, wrong.
Got bored with 128k, so I pulled out the motherboard and unsoldered the RAM chips and replaced them with a whopping 512k, making a Fat Mac before the times, but soon fell back into school and couldn't keep up. After graduation, I went back to Macs, and bought a IIci right after they came
out, but used it mostly for gaming (hey, it was a home machine!). A-and, the ex, not in any way computer literate, wrote her Master's thesis on it with no help.
Finally went to work for a big software company in the Pacific Northwest which made both PC and Mac software, but got tired of the rainy weather and came back to AZ, settling in the northern part this time to avoid the big crowds of PHX and Tucson.
Got a job in the real world and soon learned that what you want is not what you'll use to get the job done, generally, especially if'n you're a greenhorn in the organization and have to work within prior constraints. For example I might want a Lamborghini to drive to the grocery store, but a Geo Metro gets you there, and a Subaru works just as well too.
So, now, I manage a WAN with a couple of hundred machines, and guess what? They're PCs, not Macs, even given my fondness for the Macintosh look and feel (and yes, they stole from PARC, and MS later stole from them - I remember calling friends to congratulate them on Windows 95, telling them that they had finally caught up to the 1984 Mac interface). After all, if I had unlimited funding, I might let Macs do it all, but I don't, although MS has gotten better at charity over the years.
But I think (and hope) I've gotten beyond the machine fandom. Yes, Windows lagged for years behind the simplicity of the Mac; however, doing some things on a PC were far easier for years - try finding all the text only files on a IIci versus a PC of the time. Of course, then remember
that a Mac didn't force you to conform to file naming characteristics from the get-go. So, it's really a matter of how you, as a person, mold to the machine.
Probably, as the years have gone by, I've gotten a little more rigid (hey, it's age) and appreciate the "conforming rigidity" of how a PC operating system lays things out. That said, I hadn't touched a Mac for 11 years until 3 weeks ago, when a co-worker asked me to attach their Powerbook to our network. Took all of about 5 minutes, even though I left the Mac world in 1991. So, there's something to be said for that.
As for the personalities, they're all dicks, but I don't mean that in a too insulting way. It's a fact of the business. Back in 1990, Bill had to tell everyone that, tough shit, I know you're a hotshit developer in the DOS world, but we're going Windows, and you can either ride our wave or
get left behind. This isn't any different than Apple's 5-book set of Developers Guidelines from '85 or so, where they "told" everyone how they had to write programs for the Mac (jeez, do I still have those books on my shelves? Kee-rist!) to make everything user friendly (dammit!) or get left behind.
Now, just because it's that way in the business world, doesn't mean I'm working that way, which is probably why I'm where I'm at today, working in the public sector. I've still got sore remembrances of working with folks who were too much into either bandwagon that they sacrificed too much of
themselves (I think), but that's a lot of water under the bridge nowadays.
Anyway, starting to ramble here, but I guess I can see the best of both sides, as well as the worst, and put the tools to the task as need be. After all, it's what I'm doing with those tools that is my goal; given the too close similarities, at this point, I'm more interested in accomplishing my tasks than on picking the most exact tool to use to accomplish them.
SteveK,
Hello again.
Now, what gets my goat, is that while Apple products do have a lot of inclusive cool as LM communicates in his posting, they are sold based on a insufferable dose of exclusive cool. The Mac guy is hyper trendy and depends on the misfortunes and dweebishness of the PC guy.
The inclusive-/exclusive-cool distinction is interesting, and I agree Apple plays them both.
What I don't get is how strong the hatred is for the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials. When I see other forms of loathing, I can sometimes look inside myself and admit, you know, I've reacted that way to things before, I don't like it, but I can see where this is coming from. But these are freakin' goofy TV commercials. Not even the Dell guy was hated as bitterly as Justin Long's character.
A guy at work who I respect very much absolutely despises the Mac guy, finds him smarmy and condescending. I wish some part of me could see where this comes from, so I could empathize at some level, but I just don't. Condescension means pretending not to think you're superior to someone. The Mac guy doesn't *care* about bragging or comparing himself to the PC guy. It's the PC guy who has a problem. That's the dynamic these ads depend on.
Now I can *sort of* see being pissed that the PC guy is such a dope (albeit a lovable one; another key to these ads is that the PC guy is actually the one we're supposed to like). I can see a PC fan saying "Hey, the PC guy misrepresents me; I'm much smarter than that, and I can do all the same cool things the Mac guy does." But the Mac guy? He's friendly but bland, basically a straight man. Hyper trendy? He's a polite kid in a button-down shirt. He could have been transplanted into a commercial from ten or twenty years ago without seeming out of place.
Unlike Apple, the press was hardly adulatory of the DS or Wii with most articles predicting that they'd be utterly pwnd by their competitors.
Apple gets a lot of good press now, but as I'm sure you recall, the press was hardly adulatory of the original fruity iMacs ("No floppy? Apple is doomed!") or the iPod ("No one will buy it at that price. Apple is doomed!").
Weird, did my comment get eaten?
There's a guy out there who steampunks computers - turns them into faux Victorian-era masterpieces of handcarved wood and brass keys. He displayed a laptop that he'd converted, and it was an astounding work of art. Not cheap, but something for the Ultimate Wish List.
If you come out of the advertising/marketing world, you naturally have an Apple preference. If you come out of accounting or most other business functions, you have a Windows worldview. It used to matter but it doesn't anymore... what cracks me up are those more interested in the "tool" than the "trade" or product. It is a meaningless argument as there are many ways to get into heaven.
In the past, the very recent past, like yesterday, I would have to say that I am not really jealous of LM's abilities, after all, I can cook up a storm, my writing has been excellent for at least 45 years, I've done some screenwriting and so on. Now I admit that I admire the busybox chops, LM, in fact, yes, I am jealous. I had that same keystroke ripoff moment three years ago, but I am in a very remote locale and can't seem to get much traction with the education I need to decrease my pathetic ignorance.
PLEASE LM, do you have any texts or on-line sites that can get one started in your exalted direction?
I see the I'm a Mac/I'm a PC much differently.
First off, from a tech standpoint the PC guy is a straw-man if not totally unfair. For example, the ad where the mac is able to talk to the cute Japanese girl but not the PC. I've never run into a Mac only camera but I've run into a lot of cameras that have windows only management software (although they can be reverse engineered).
From a psychological standpoint the PC guy is a loser salaryman, fat in an ill-fitting suit. Of particular note the suit is a obviously a dress code requirement, obviously not something he wants to wear. His appeal is that he is shlemiel, fated to be a loser but handling it with equanimity.
The Mac on the other hand is dressed in a very ephemeral fashion victim get up (trust me, in 5 years he's going to look like Vanilla Ice). He comes off as a too hip trustafarian, a schmuck.
The suit vs. hoodie bit is particularly telling. If I show up to a meeting or a trade show in a suit, even an ill fitting one, it shows that I'm putting in an effort to play along and show respect. If I show up in a hoodie and jeans , it means I don't give a damn about your conventions, and I'm betting you need me more than I need you.
In essence it's like pitting James Bond against a single one of the faceless minions and not the main villain. Bond gets away with his insufferably cool shite because he's up against a villain with nearly equal levels of cool and arrogance. Set him up against an average guy who's just trying to do his job and he comes off as a giant prick.
The most amazing thing about The Woz was that, after all his success, he went back to UC Berkeley under a pseudonym and finished his engineering degree! He didn't have to. He just wanted to.
“First off, from a tech standpoint the PC guy is a straw-man if not totally unfair. For example, the ad where the mac is able to talk to the cute Japanese girl but not the PC. I've never run into a Mac only camera but I've run into a lot of cameras that have windows only management software (although they can be reverse engineered).”
There are no Mac only cameras. You plug a camera into an OSX Mac and iPhoto launches and you're immediately able to work with and manage your photos without having to load special software that may or may not be compatible with your version of Windows.
The issue with Windows oftentimes isn't the OS itself—it's the clunky, bloated code written into it and retained over the various iterations over the years. By itself, it can be a relatively stable OS. But all of that over-idiot-proofed old code often creates a land mine-like operating system. Because that OS is so reliant on third party software for enabling peripherals and extras, that aftermarket software can many times have a conflict with some little bit of old source code, or conflict with another piece of third party software (most often drivers) that is already installed.
The Apple commercial with the Japanese camera lady spoke to the immediate connection/recognition/workability between the Mac and the camera. As a graphics/AV professional, I see this every day. Somebody's snapped stuff with any digital camera they have, they bring it to me. I hook it up to the USB port, iPhoto launches, I can see, edit and instantly download the images in seconds.
Same with video. Plug the camera into the FireWire port and I can immediately download digital video into iMovie or FCP. No dealing with drivers or installing this, which may conflict with or disable that.
Those commercials really seem to rub Windows folk the wrong way. I see hopeless dweebs running Macs, and grungy Trustafarians running twinkling-lighted Windows laptops all over the place. I think the ads represent the shorthand version of what the two platforms primary uses are.
Windows = Business/Corporate
Macs = Artsy professionals/Creatives
It relies on stock visual archetypes to put it across, but hey, people make their own choices, and a computer commercial isn't going to change the way people dress or present themselves. Folks who use Macs in the corporate setting are not gonna start dressing like Kurt Cobain for the inter-departmental status meetings, and the IT guys who wear the grungies they do because of teh dirty work they have to contend with aren't gonna start dolling up like Scott McLellan.
Those commercials annoy because of how they needle the establishment. Windows is still a 90% market share behemoth. Why would this needling matter to the folks in Redmond and those who push the OS so heavily?
Because in their clunky establishment mode they are ripe for ridicule and nobody likes being an easy target. Plus, they make themselves look stupid with their down-the-nose scoffing at areas where they've shit the bed in marketing new products. Take a look at how stupidly condescending the prancing, sweating Steve Ballmer (of Microsoft) is in this clip:
Laughing, mocking, dismissive and straw man mounting—was the iPhone marketed as a business directed device? And then he tries to gas the interviewer with a hard sell on the “white elephant” Zune?
I remember standing at the window at J&R, one of NY's largest electronic stores when they'd just put their big Zune window display up during the debut week. I'm standing there next to a couple of women and one of 'em says “It looks like a piece of wood you use to balance a wobbly table.”
Her friend says, “Oh my God, you're right!”
A guy standing thee with us says flatly. “Meat loaf.”
“It looks like a hunk of lunchroom meatloaf.”
I walked away saying to myself. “This IS FUCKED.”
Then I heard about that freaky “three days and poof!” DRM they foisted on the shared music. One partial play counted as an entire play. Two left, buddy. And with the way people use their music players, repeating, interrupting play due to other things you might be doing, shuffle play, I mean...damn! And Ballmer goes on about how great the thing is, anyway...like some sniggering bot? It's no wonder that the Zune has managed to snap up all of the market share abandoned by iRiver and Rio's walking away from tthe large capacity market—about 10%.
The following from the latest issue of GQ made me laugh when I read it, and then kind of sad:
“I (the interviewer) repositioned myself so that the conference table wasn't blocking my view and I could make some eye contact. In his (Bill Gates) hand resting on his lap was one of the new Zunes. He was casually fiddling with the interface and did so during most of the interview, occasionally staring at the ceiling and generally checked out and in his own world. He looked the way I did at every single meeting I have ever attended.”
“I'll spare you the pretty dull conversation we had about digital music, though he said some loopy stuff like “The Zune is a huge contribution to the field, and every year you're going to see this thing move forward and do more magical things. We think that's great for consumers.”
He also pooh-poohed the iPod: “In no sense was Apple the first company to do hard disk in a box with music playback. We were already doing a bunch of music type software—that was not an interesting milestone.”
Bill...NOBODY SAID APPLE WAS THE FIRST TO DO THAT, PARTICULARLY APPLE! What in the fuck is with that straw-man defensiveness?! That's the shit that gets lampooned in the commercials—that whole “fuck fun—we don't have time for that” attitude. He and his people spend years crafting an “iPod killer”, it fails and then he bitches about the whole endeavor not being a priority anyway. Why waste your time if it doesn't matter?
That condescension is what makes Windows and its backers so ripe for derision in the ads. Apple says “We're gonna work the fuck outta the market you choose to ignore, and call attention to your neglect.” It's a potent zinger, and why the ads sting so much.
Jobs isn't innocent with his passive-aggressive marketing of “cool” either, but Goddamn—Microsoft isn't the little victim of “Big, Bad Apple” here. They're the mega-giant of computing and software. It's just frustrating to people I guess, seeing the monstrous, all-powerful 58,000 ton, multi-cannoned battleship sometimes be outmaneuvered by a darting speedboat chucking grenades.
LM:
Seriously, every OS after XP pops up a litany of options when a USB storage device is plugged.
On the ad interpretations, I'd mark it down to a matter of perception and mixed messages.
I'm in the R&D field where poloshirts and chinos are the defacto dress code most of the time. But our idols are Einstein and Feynman, with the implication that casual dress frees up time to think and work. Suits are ok for meetings and presentations since they are a prescribed interface for business and government, and getting a suit right is an art that can be mastered and perfected, something a geek appreciates. A fashion victim (hip and trendy) has a problem since following ephemeral trends slavishly is regarded as wasted resources. This is exacerbated by the tendency of those so attired to spout ill considered buzzwords and what's "hot" talk.
The other grating part of the narrative in the ads is that the cool guy is humiliating the loser with an explicit "I'm better than you are and always will be". You know which side of that experience geeks identify with.
Now, displaying mastery of an art is admirable, but humility in doing so with the opportunity for the other party to save face is the proper path. The message shouldn't be you're stupid and doing it wrong. The message should be here's a way you can do it better.
Strangely enough, even mediocre ads can do this well. Consider the "has this ever happened to you" type ads. The person featured first struggles with the existing way of doing things , but then the same person with the new product experiences an improvement and is converted. Old humiliations are overcome and both the product and the person are elevated.
RC:
Here are the main sources I learned from. These were invaluable to me and links from within them led me to all manner of resources where by osmosis, the knowledge took:
Low End Mac
This spot really has a LOT of helpful troubleshooting articles and is updated three to four times weekly. They have specs and profiles of every Mac, a RAM finder that helps you comparison shop memory and links to sites that sell upgrades and parts.
XLR8 Your Mac
Their articles are great and their upgrade database with user comments describing the how-tos and what happened after their mechanical tweaks and upgrades is invaluable.
Apple Discussions
This resource within the Apple online site is a wonder. Join up and if you have a question—mechanical or software, people with experience—fellow users—will reply and help you. Plus, it has a dynamic search function that allows you to search by topic or question, and you can often find the answer (odds are, it's already been given to someone else) to your dilemmas that way.
And to all, here's a site: MacMod
that'll help even the most skittish modder into the world of case mods. Beautiful stuff, indeed.
SteveK,
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I can't say I understand much better, but maybe a little, which is better than nothing.
First off, from a tech standpoint the PC guy is a straw-man if not totally unfair.
As I said, I can understand a PC fan feeling misrepresented. This is the part I can understand.
Of particular note the suit is a obviously a dress code requirement, obviously not something he wants to wear.
I don't get this at all. As portrayed, the PC guy obviously *likes* being corporate. He tries to describe his summer vacation with a pie chart. In a flashback, the boy version of the PC guy whips out a calculator to compute how much time he's just wasted talking to the frivolous Mac guy. I don't see how it could be any clearer that the PC guy feels comfortable in a suit, and in fact might be uncomfortable out of it.
The suit vs. hoodie bit is particularly telling. If I show up to a meeting or a trade show in a suit, even an ill fitting one, it shows that I'm putting in an effort to play along and show respect. If I show up in a hoodie and jeans , it means I don't give a damn about your conventions, and I'm betting you need me more than I need you.
With all due respect to your elevated sense of professionalism, what the heck does this have to do with the ad?
LowerManhattanite:
Those commercials really seem to rub Windows folk the wrong way. [...] Plus, they make themselves look stupid with their down-the-nose scoffing at areas where they've shit the bed in marketing new products.
For all their talk of Apple elitism, Windows folk have been dissing Macs as junk for years and years. I guess some people can dish it out but can't take it.
By the way, I too bow in awe of your Mac repair skills. I have no hardware aptitude whatsoever. I have a collection of Macs too, but they're not all working -- my Pismo and one TiBook are dead, and parts of my iLamp don't work. There's an electronics recycling thing in Brooklyn this weekend, and I was thinking of finally hauling some stuff down there, including the dead laptops. If you want the laptops for parts, feel free to contact me (I'm assuming you can see my email address; if not, let me know here).
The recycling thing is here:
http://www.lesecologycenter.org/
...les_frames.html
snoozer:
I wish I could easily access LM's classic comment on dressing well he's much more eloquent on the subject than I am. But when you want to wear a suit you wear it well. Even a less than perfect suit can be worn well if worn with pride. On the other hand a good suit can be worn poorly. The CTO of a company i used to work for bought all his suits from Rodeo Drive with custom tailoring. But he always looked like a derelict in JC Penny polyester because he took no care in wearing it. When you want to wear a suit it shows especially if it is a good suit. While I seldom wear suits, when I do, wearing them well greatly enhances my confidence. It's a "tea ceremony" an exercise in doing things as perfectly as possible.
When I do wear a suit for business I wear it to indicate that I am willing to respect the norms established in a meeting. It's a simple concession to formality which gives me leeway over things that actually matter.
Now I've known people who do meetings in t-shirts and jeans when the rest of the participants are in suits. It's a form of disrespect which is an explicit statement "I'm so important, you have to put up with this". Not only does this handicap the person doing this, but soon enough the big guys figure out an alternative to "putting up with this".
Now if the PC guy was a PHB in an Armani suit this might just work. Bringing down a pompous ass is always good drama. Kicking a salaryman when he's already under you is pathetic. But something the cool but insecure do.
Saturday, I finally watched Tampopo. Arguably the best scene in it was the business dinner at a french restaurant in which the junior salaryman is put through severe abuse. But when the meal is ordered all the senior members punt on the order, but he precisely orders the best possible meal.
I actually hate microsoft with much more venom than Apple but the ads have me rooting for the PC.
*sniff* Right now I'm trying to get a new (or "new") computer, as my lovely G4 500Mhz dual processor bit the dust back in September (Dante, my friend/computer geek, initially thought it was the hard drive, but apparently it's actually the power supply, which is all but impossible to fix), and have been relying on borrowing cups of Internet from friends & my wonderful roommate ever since. I may possibly be in a position to get a new computer in a few weeks, so I went browing at Best Buy & the Apple store...and the problem is that the new Macs just don't feel like, well, [i]computers[/i], damn it! The new iMac is just a big flat screen (and where the hell is the disk drive, damn it? I hate just blindly shoving disks in holes & praying they come back), and the Mini Mac seems so insubstantial...not like my beloved G4, or even my brother's original tangerine iBook or my iMac (Bondi Blue, you betcha). Since I'm trying to ramp up my photography hobby/wannabe business, I need something that can handle that, and I love Macs anyway, not to mention the whole cool factor...but how am I going to get a good one that actually feels like a computer? (And no, I won't be able to afford the Mac Pro, no matter what.) Help?... *looks pitiful*
Oh, and I live in the Boston area, FWIW, so if anyone has a good machine/knows how to get one...
monopole,
Don't get me wrong, I personally used to enjoy wearing a well-fitted suit, especially with a nice tie and shined shoes. I used to wear them often on consulting gigs, and while some of my coworkers considered it a burden, we all understood the need in that context.
That said, I personally wouldn't make a blanket statement about wearing t-shirts and jeans to a meeting with suits. I think it depends on the type of meeting, the culture of the organization, and the roles of the participants. Maybe I'm just a hippie at some level, but when I see a person in a t-shirt and jeans I don't automatically feel like I'm "putting up with something." (If they're late, have bad hygiene, or act rudely, that's a different story.) I also understand that I may have to go to meetings with people who *do* react that way, so I exercise judgment according to context.
Anyway, I think you may have missed the point of my question, which was not whether suits are sometimes appropriate attire and hoodies sometimes aren't (the answer is obvious), but what on earth that has to do with the Apple commercials. It's not like any of them take place in a boardroom. In fact, the Mac guy *does* put on a suit in one commercial -- the one where he says Macs can do business stuff too.
Kicking a salaryman when he's already under you is pathetic.
I really don't get this. What do you mean by "under"? How is the PC guy "under" the Mac guy? Who is kicking the PC guy? Have you even watched the commercials? Point me to one moment in one ad where the Mac guy kicks the PC guy. Here's a link for your convenience; just tell me which part of which ad you mean: http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/.
One thing I've noticed is how freaked out people are by how "cool" the Mac guy is. I really have to wonder about that. I mean, as a short, flabby, homely middle-aged guy, I'm hardly one of the "cool kids" myself, and to me the Mac guy seems pretty ordinary.
P.S. I avoided reading the paragraph where you mention a scene in Tampopo. A friend *just* told me the other day it's a great movie, and I didn't want to read a potential spoiler.
OK, for my sins, I have both a mac and a PC on my desk at work, because the client-side people think my PC work looks like mac work and secretly they crave that.
All the same, I can make a mac jump and wail and jump up from its knees and throw off its cape, and on a PC I'm pretty much John Tesh, because I'm convinced that unless you're one of the elder gods, the best you can be on a PC is John Tesh.
Doesn't mean that flocks of suburban old folks won't buy your album and kvell over it. You still have to look in the mirror and face John Tesh.
Also, what's with the PC people and the mouse? They have to write code to get a freaking trademark symbol and they don't rise up and storm the castle with torches demanding shift-command-option-freaking-C? It's called a keyboard command. Clutch the extra hour a day to your bosom and thank me later.
Quels maroons.
Sorry, sore subject.
snoozer:
Okay, one more time.
This is straight out of Velben, the leisure class always uses signals to indicate that they don't have to work. When the proles were out in the field all day, the leisure class made sure to be pale as death. When the industrial revolution moved the proles inside the leisure class suddenly got tans. When the proles were starving the leisure class gained a few pounds. When the proles got fat on bad food and less exercise, the leisure class got rail thin.
So how do you establish leisure class status now. Trendy clothing shows you have the means to change your entire wardrobe on a regular basis. Scruffy enough trendy clothing and bit of facial hair shows you have no dress code and don't work in an office. Contacts or good vision signals money and the lack of continuous close work. While an executive in business might be able to pull this off, a prole in the trenches can't do so easily. Look at the Mac guy or Steve Jobs. And toss in alpha male body language.
On the other hand how do you signal a business prole. Bad, dated suit indicating that a dress code is required, the prole can't afford a top of the line suit everyday, and can't change out his wardrobe regularly. Pale, glasses and fat indicate long hours and sedentary work. Consider Dilbert with the trademark curl of his tie. And the perfect example the PC Guy. And toss in Beta male body language.
Now this isn't the sigmata of an executive, PHB or even a upper middle manager. They've got better suits and glasses less hair and alpha male body language. Think Rumsfield.
The PC guy isn't an executive, he has no trappings of power or dominance.
So we have a clearly identified member of the leisure class not only putting a prole in his place but shoving him down a few notches. And it should leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Consider if the genders were changed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x...h?
v=x7PhJp3ciRQ
Same tactics (and largely true on Wii PS3 distinctions) but again very cruel.
And if you don't think dressing down doesn't send a clear message:
http://www.bobcesca.com/images/c...heney-
parka.jpg
SteveK,
Consider if the genders were changed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x...h?
v=x7PhJp3ciRQ
Same tactics (and largely true on Wii PS3 distinctions) but again very cruel.
The Mac guy does not behave remotely like the Wii chick, whom I find more annoying than anything -- she's too vapid and self-absorbed to be cruel. Show me one moment in one ad where the Mac guy does the equivalent (even to a lesser degree) of fondling himself for the camera, which is what the Wii chick spends the *entire* time doing. And the Wii chick never even looks at the PS3 woman, much less treat her as a friend.
I find it really strange that you have such moral outrage over the Mac guy's "cruelty" to the PC guy. Yes, the Apple ads use humor at a competitor's expense, but egregiously cruel? To me that is a real, real stretch, but it's clear you and I have a major disconnect. Perhaps you should start a PETA for victims of advertising humor.
And if you don't think dressing down doesn't send a clear message:
Once again you respond to something I did not say, and even *said* I didn't say, which indicates I'm wasting my time trying to understand you.
It's very nice to bring up Veblen, Einstein, and Feynman, and I'm sure you're very noble, but I think Feynman would have responded to what a person actually wrote.
And by the way, regarding wardrobe, I look at the Mac guy and I see a creative professional -- you know, someone who works for a living as much as a middle manager does. As you may know, creative professionals make up a significant demographic for Macs, just as corporate types do for PCs. Just putting that out there as an alternate interpretation.
In case you are checking back, LM, Sire, I got the sites you dropped into your reply. Extreme "Mucho Thankyous" as they say in my remote little town, a new Spanglishism seemingly invented this past summer.
Lowendmac.com alone will keep me busy for a very long time. Now to find the funds for the Mac.
I just hate the mac os and the design aesthetic apple is so proud of, which seems like a tedious rehash of Japanese designs from ten years ago. Asimo, anyone? I don't like that it is a closed product until recently, when it became a pc with mac flavoring added, in that you can't replace components like power supplies and graphics cards.
I think the Mac guy in the commercial is kind of a goober while the PC guy reminds me of older people working beyond their comfort zone on any technology. Windows does have keyboard shortcuts as well as cheat sheets that underline the letters and key combinations you must use to achieve them, and like internet comments many people create them unintentionally thanks to automatic correction routines designed for whiney incompetents who won't learn.
Merry Christmas!
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