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As a teenager, I subscribed to MacAddict from 1997-2001. It was very exciting to watch the company transform over this time. Alas, since then my relationship

As a teenager, I subscribed to MacAddict from 1997-2001. It was very exciting to watch the company transform over this time. Alas, since then my relationship to Apple has evolved dramatically, to the point of more or less despising the company and its manipulations. I am grateful for this journey. It has given me a sharp sense (distaste) for manipulative marketing tactics and branding in general. When my hard drive crashed badly in 2010, I quit for good, jumping over to Ubuntu full time. (More recently I installed Arch, which makes me excited about computers again!) Anyway, It's completely frustrating to me even my most financially disabled friends will, to this day, look to spend $1200 as much on a Mac laptop or an iPhone when they could get an equally powerful, used machine for $150. A close friend of mine just spent $300 on a used G5 iMac from 2006... I told him not to but he didn't listen. He has had to learn the hard way that the computer is slow, won't accept updates, won't run any new software or drivers, etc. because Apple's branding black magic is that powerful, that it could completely trump the well reasoned advice of someone knowledgable about the subject that you've known for years.

Retra 10y ago
Why do you think it's Mac branding that makes your friends not heed your advice instead of the expectations that you would ask of them more effort than they are willing to expend? Most people are not willing to explore a lifestyle change when purchasing a computer. It's not unlike the idea they won't learn to sew to save money on clothes, or learn to change their own oil to save car maintenance fees. Was your advice an offer of convenience for them, or an offer of lifestyle conformity?
- macawfish 10y ago
  Well, in the case of my friend who bought the iMac for $300, my advice was "don't buy that computer its not worth $300”. It was solid advice. He just hadn't gotten over the beautiful allure of the thing to see through to its desperate software and hardware situation. The expectation of effortlessness is all tied up in the marketing. The marketing promises a kind of magic, which I feel is bullshit, a fantasy world where you don't have to think about the clothes, they just appear on your shelf, when in reality, they're actually made by a person, whether that person is your Amish grandmother, a friend, a kid in an Indonesian factory, or you yourself. And someone is going to have to wash them when they're dirty, and fix them when they have holes or do the work of recycling them... Computers require effort and attention and energy to maintain no matter what, even Macs (especially macs...). If not up front, then somewhere down the line. It's fascinating to live in a time when it's arguably easier to install Linux on a given computer than Mac OS or even Windows. This is new. My advice to people is that learning some user friendly Linux is a good investment of technical energy. It's like buying a used car instead of a brand new one. You could spend $10000 rebuilding that used car before you made a dent in the cost of a new one. For a lot of people, the time it takes to keep a used car working well is worth the trade-off.. BTW, I've had a lot of success hooking people up with old (2011) i5 Thinkpads running Linux and/or Windows. They run great and people really like them. Mine has 16GB of ram in it goes real smooth. I use lots of tabs. Too many tabs. And Bitwig. Bitwig works great on an old thinkpad with Arch!
jsmthrowaway 10y ago
> more or less despising the company and its manipulations I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.) My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you. Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market). Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred. (Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)
- woot123 10y ago
  Sorry, "not buying products" and otherwise being silent doesn't cut it. There are (were[1]) whole magazine categories that test and criticize consumer products. [1] In Germany at least some of those magazines were quite good. Haven't read any recently though.
gurkendoktor 10y ago
> A close friend of mine just spent $300 on a used G5 iMac from 2006... I told him not to but he didn't listen. He has had to learn the hard way that the computer is slow, won't accept updates, won't run any new software or drivers Ubuntu Mate 16.04 works on PowerPC Macs, and will keep the machine alive for a few years if need be. It's much slower than OS X 10.5.8, though, at least on my iMac G4.

Retra 10y ago

Why do you think it's Mac branding that makes your friends not heed your advice instead of the expectations that you would ask of them more effort than they are willing to expend? Most people are not willing to explore a lifestyle change when purchasing a computer. It's not unlike the idea they won't learn to sew to save money on clothes, or learn to change their own oil to save car maintenance fees. Was your advice an offer of convenience for them, or an offer of lifestyle conformity?

macawfish 10y ago
Well, in the case of my friend who bought the iMac for $300, my advice was "don't buy that computer its not worth $300”. It was solid advice. He just hadn't gotten over the beautiful allure of the thing to see through to its desperate software and hardware situation. The expectation of effortlessness is all tied up in the marketing. The marketing promises a kind of magic, which I feel is bullshit, a fantasy world where you don't have to think about the clothes, they just appear on your shelf, when in reality, they're actually made by a person, whether that person is your Amish grandmother, a friend, a kid in an Indonesian factory, or you yourself. And someone is going to have to wash them when they're dirty, and fix them when they have holes or do the work of recycling them... Computers require effort and attention and energy to maintain no matter what, even Macs (especially macs...). If not up front, then somewhere down the line. It's fascinating to live in a time when it's arguably easier to install Linux on a given computer than Mac OS or even Windows. This is new. My advice to people is that learning some user friendly Linux is a good investment of technical energy. It's like buying a used car instead of a brand new one. You could spend $10000 rebuilding that used car before you made a dent in the cost of a new one. For a lot of people, the time it takes to keep a used car working well is worth the trade-off.. BTW, I've had a lot of success hooking people up with old (2011) i5 Thinkpads running Linux and/or Windows. They run great and people really like them. Mine has 16GB of ram in it goes real smooth. I use lots of tabs. Too many tabs. And Bitwig. Bitwig works great on an old thinkpad with Arch!

jsmthrowaway 10y ago

> more or less despising the company and its manipulations I will never understand why perfectly normal human beings do this, whether it be against Apple or Google. I have an Apple sticker on my car because I'm proud of where I work. On four separate occasions now Google fans have come up to me after I've parked and tried to convert me to an Android fan or make fun of me for being an "Apple fan," assuming the sticker represents my status as a demagogue for one side. (One guy asked me if I felt inferior for not having root on my phone and I had to resist answering the question honestly, but it would have been really fun and confusing for him.) My own family gets sheepish and embarrassed when they buy an Android phone because their partisan friends have trained them to think that I'd react explosively to this grievous slight instead of the truth, which is that people should buy what works for them and it's not really any of my business. I don't actively sway people toward Apple products or discourage them from buying what they want. Sometimes a Mac is the answer, and sometimes it isn't. Their purchasing choice has arguably no effect on me personally, and this applies to other things too, like cars. As you're discovering, in general, people don't listen anyway and instead quietly form a negative opinion of you. Speaking personally, there are things I dislike and like from Apple and there are things I dislike and like from Google. I simply cannot connect with the mindset of red vs. blue, us vs. them, vim-vs-emacs, all-or-nothing that people get frothed up like this about. It's your prerogative to despise Apple and I'm fully supportive of your decision to do so. I'm just saying it strikes me as weird to invest part of your humanity in despising an inanimate entity that creates products as opposed to just not buying the products. I'd say this about people who despise Google, too, and I'm only using that example because it seems like the war of our time (and because you probably carry an Android device, given the market). Am I the only one who feels like it's just not worth it to hate a company? I don't even hate Comcast, and they've given me plenty of reasons. I don't even hate patent trolls; they've identified a strategy that is legal and shitty and exploit it. That's capitalism. Maybe it's just me and, before you think it's partisan, I felt like this before ever being personally vested. I've just got far better things into which to invest my hatred. (Only my personal opinion, speaking for me alone.)

woot123 10y ago
Sorry, "not buying products" and otherwise being silent doesn't cut it. There are (were[1]) whole magazine categories that test and criticize consumer products. [1] In Germany at least some of those magazines were quite good. Haven't read any recently though.

gurkendoktor 10y ago

> A close friend of mine just spent $300 on a used G5 iMac from 2006... I told him not to but he didn't listen. He has had to learn the hard way that the computer is slow, won't accept updates, won't run any new software or drivers Ubuntu Mate 16.04 works on PowerPC Macs, and will keep the machine alive for a few years if need be. It's much slower than OS X 10.5.8, though, at least on my iMac G4.