When did Apple Become Uncool?

snowden said:
Go read this thread, we are not talking about the iPhone vs. the iPad. I think you may just be one of the 25% of the population that is mentally retarded. Even in your own post, which I quoted, you talk about the PC and someone, somehow installing Adobe Acrobat 3 on their machine. You failed, deal with it.
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You quoted Trepidati0n regarding his post to TexUs. The three of us were not talking about grandmothers and computers. We were talking about why grandmothers are better off with iPad instead of an iPhone.

Trepidati0n's grandmother reference had nothing to do with the PC vs Apple. No reason to get all hostile, jeez.
 
snowden said:
My 92 year old grandmother uses her PC just fine. She's online with google talk right now and if she needs help I don't have to drive 45 minutes there and back, I just use this magic PC thingy called remote desktop. I do it every two weeks and make sure her computer stays nice and clean.

Plus all her great-grandchildren come over and play, "The Pony Game", and "The Barbie Game", etc... My Aunt who takes care of her can load up all her software and work from there (she is a professor at the University of Utah). Everyone in my massive family knows how to use the computer. It would also be very difficult for her to hold one of those ghastly, egg-shaped, polished-smooth IPads since she has just suffered her 3rd stroke.

And my grandma has been using PC's for years and years. It has a keyboard.. a mouse.. god, it has a million more things then the IPad. And I put it together for $380 complete!
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Yes, the old "a PC isn't something older people can use easily" argument is one I haven't seen in years and years, probably because there is little difference in the degree of difficulty between Windows and OS X these days--and this has been the case for a long time. Fact is that if a screen full of program icons and folders is going to confuse someone, it doesn't really matter at all whether you're talking about OS X or about every version of Windows since XP, at least. But this does remind me of an old story that never gets old in the telling just because it makes so much sense...

Years ago it is said, an aging grandmother had been using a DOS computer to run the handful of programs she needed to run each day, a word processor, primarily. She'd turn the machine on, watch it boot to the A>, and type in the name of the program she wanted to run, like "mywordprocessor.exe," for instance. And away she'd go...

Her grandchildren reportedly thought she would benefit greatly from a "much easier to use" Mac, and so they bought one for her and went to a lot of trouble setting it up and tutoring her on operating it, assuring her the entire time about how much "easier to use" the Mac was going to be than the old DOS standby she'd been used to for years. The older lady wanted nothing so much except to please her grandchildren and graciously accepted their gift. Two weeks later...

Granny calls the grandchildren back up and begs them to take back her Mac and restore her older DOS machine to her. They come over, baffled, and ask her what the problem might be, and she informs them that she has no idea what all the screen icons and folders are supposed to do or supposed to mean, and that she's taken the time to try and study the manuals--but still doesn't understand any of it. Reportedly, she said:

"I'd just wait for the prompt and type in the name of the program I wanted to run, and that is a whole lot simpler for me than all of these screen icons which just make no sense to me at all--and why do I need a mouse when I have a keyboard?" Regretfully, her grandchildren removed the Mac and left her happy with what she was used to and what she understood. For her, the Mac was far too complicated to use compared to the old DOS box she'd used for years.

Good story, I think...;) It illustrates well a particular moral: "ease of use" is not a commodity, but is in the eye of the beholder--always. Likewise, this particular granny would have been just as confused by a Windows box and for the same reasons.

For some really weird reason I have never been able to divine, Mac proponents, even though they can appreciate the very niche status of the Mac in terms of world-wide market share, always prefer to think that the Mac gives them an advantage in "ease of use." And now we see that mythology spun yet again to cover a new Apple device, the iPad. Of course, such notions are bunk, and all we have to do to realize it is to recount the tale of the DOS-loving Granny...;)
 
Oldie but a goodie...
mac_upgrade-1.jpg
 
As any old skool Amiga user would tell you: they were never cool. Singltasking POS joke machines.
 
ianken said:
As any old skool Amiga user would tell you: they were never cool. Singltasking POS joke machines.
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Ah, the Amiga...over a span of 8 years I used nothing but, and owned at least one of every Amiga ever made, except for the A1000. I still own an A4000....:D Haven't used it in years, though. Those were the days in some respects!
 
Dang, I miss my Amiga 500 with the 50MB SCSI drive and 3MB of ram. That think worked great with AmigaOS 2.04 and all the games I had with it.
 
Quoll said:
It lost its coolness for me when it popped up in every classroom. As much as I loved Oregon Trail I couldn't stand having to use macs.
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HAHAHA

Same here, though by the time I hit High School we had Dells, with Counter-Strike installed on them. School (well, computer lab) sponsored game days.
 
Sadly this thread shows me that we're a bit disconnected from the rest of the world.

First off: I don't really like Apple. I don't hate them, but I certainly don't like them as a company. But the sad fact of the matter is Apple is cool to the mainstream and general populous. Think of how many Macbook and Macbook Pros you see in movies, how late night television host talk about the iPhone, how everyone and their mother wants either and iPhone, iPad, or iMac. The mainstream (MTV, movies, news, high school kids) do believe Apple to be "cool"....thankfully though, even the people at large are beginning to smell how Apples shit does, in fact, stink, and hopefully will soon figure out the difference between "cool" and "box of shiny shit".
 
WaltC said:
"I'd just wait for the prompt and type in the name of the program I wanted to run, and that is a whole lot simpler for me than all of these screen icons which just make no sense to me at all--and why do I need a mouse when I have a keyboard?" Regretfully, her grandchildren removed the Mac and left her happy with what she was used to and what she understood. For her, the Mac was far too complicated to use compared to the old DOS box she'd used for years.

Good story, I think...;) It illustrates well a particular moral: "ease of use" is not a commodity, but is in the eye of the beholder--always. Likewise, this particular granny would have been just as confused by a Windows box and for the same reasons.

For some really weird reason I have never been able to divine, Mac proponents, even though they can appreciate the very niche status of the Mac in terms of world-wide market share, always prefer to think that the Mac gives them an advantage in "ease of use." And now we see that mythology spun yet again to cover a new Apple device, the iPad. Of course, such notions are bunk, and all we have to do to realize it is to recount the tale of the DOS-loving Granny...;)
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My Grandfather was the same way when we was alive. He worked in DOS, Wordperfect 5, dbase, etc just fine. He had lists of what keys did what (remember those keyboard maps). He took notes of what to type to launch what programs, and what to do to copy stuff.

When his newer computer (a Pentium 60) came with Windows 3.1, he never did get it down as well as he had DOS. And he had trouble with double clicks (he tended to move the mouse when he tried to click). He preferred typing stuff.
 
I remember in schools from early 90s to like early 2000s almost every school had only macs. Early 2000s though dell started to take over with those desktops. Most of the schools though had macs. Multicolored crt macs to the super old macs which only took 5.25 floppies. These days macs aren't that great mostly. Eventually they'll just do software for the pc to open themselves up to a bigger market. :)
 
I never really thought Apple was cool, but when they switched over to using intel cpus and their towers still cost what they did at the time it made for some good laughs.
 
Conker said:
Eventually they'll just do software for the pc to open themselves up to a bigger market. :)
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Unlikely, because then no one would buy their overpriced hardware. :p

I only really remember using Apple]['s back in elementary school, and they pretty much sucked. So I guess I've never thought Apple was cool. Steve Jobs is too much of a douche these days to be considered "cool", anyway.
 
Parmenides said:
Interesting, no way I'd get an iPad for myself or for anyone my age.... but is it really that easy for the most computer illiterate old people? Would it be recommendable to someone who has never touched a computer in their life?
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It's not a computer. That's the issue I have with it. You still have to have a host computer to sync with the iPad... It's not meant to be a replacement computer even from the company that makes it!


Trepidati0n said:
Because there is a niche. Why do people keep missing this. I just don't get it. There is a market of people who want 90% of the functionality
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Cuz not having a keyboard, printer, external speakers, ability to burn music CDs, and ability to listen to Pandora while surfing the web aren't things that 90% of users want to do.
:rolleyes:
 
*Insert snarky comment about apple never being cool*

Welp, my work here is done. Nobody will ever think of a line that smooth.
 
I don't think they ever were cool, although many Apple users thought they were, and some in the tech press followed along.
 
Recently bought my 80 year old grandma a 17.3 inch gaming notebook (Clevo), and set it up with Windows 7 (64-bit), she loves it.

I showed her the Apple iPad, and she thought the screen was too small & she didn't like putting her fingers all over the screen, plus she wanted to check out a bunch of flash videos of home movies by her relatives in Germany, so it all worked out ok.

When we were at the Apple store, her comment about the place looking too sterile got me laughing. :)
 
Quoll said:
It lost its coolness for me when it popped up in every classroom. As much as I loved Oregon Trail I couldn't stand having to use macs.
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:D Heh Oregon Trail! I know this is going to date myself but I remember it being "Lemonade Stand" on the Apple ][ !
 
As a long time Apple Computer fan, it's when they changed the name. Oh and I've never liked that you couldn't install OS X on any machine you want, that's not cool. If Apple had the market share Microsoft enjoyed, they'd be worse than Microsoft.
 
If Microsoft did half the things Apple does, they would have been sued out of existence years ago.

Apple is only popular among the clueless masses, the same people who are still waiting for Obama to pay their mortgages and health care.
 
Never have liked Apple. My friends kept insisting I buy an iPod Touch for me to use however I decided to go with the ZuneHD 64GB and I don't regret my decision. Sure there's a limited application for the ZuneHD and wifi enterprise isn't supported (yet) but I just use it for listening to music and playing solitaire. Who doesn't?

I only had to put up with Apple products when my brother insists that we need to use the iPhone when I was working for him. People's asked me if I support fixing apple computers and I go "Sorry, no, I'm not wasting my time getting hardware from Applecare directly to fix A and B when a PC gives me more flexibility to replace bad parts."
 
Crappy products owned by people who are predominantly insufferable. I don't ever remember a time when apple was "cool." It's the same thing as people trying to pretend a Nintendo DS playing a Mario 64 port is "cool" even as you style on them with God of War PSP.
 
TexUs said:
Cuz not having a keyboard, printer, external speakers, ability to burn music CDs, and ability to listen to Pandora while surfing the web aren't things that 90% of users want to do.
:rolleyes:
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Hahahahahahahahaha. Really?

Has a Keyboard, Its a freakin ipod as well, who wants to burn a music CD these days? External speakers?(has a audio out jack) Are you kidding?

The Pandora issue is a programming issue Pandora could solve on their own. I work for a radio streaming company and we have a iPhone stream app that gives the option to open quick time with the audio feed and allows you to browse the web wile the music still plays in the background.


Disclaimer:
I'm a PC guy through and through but I do have and enjoy a iPhone.
 
Kaitian said:
Never have liked Apple. My friends kept insisting I buy an iPod Touch for me to use however I decided to go with the ZuneHD 64GB and I don't regret my decision.
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Zune HD is the best DAP around. Especially if you like the subscription service (which, once you factor in how many songs you get to OWN, is only $5 a month).

If you want to play games or something, yea, the iPod has more apps.

I personally never used mine, so don't have one anymore.

[T5K]thrasher;1035708949 said:
Hahahahahahahahaha. Really?

Has a Keyboard, Its a freakin ipod as well, who wants to burn a music CD these days? External speakers?(has a audio out jack) Are you kidding?
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You gloss over the "printer" part? That's a pretty big deal...
It has no physical keyboard.
Just because us enthusiasts don't burn CDs much, doesn't mean people don't. If you truly think they aren't used, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I still use one in my personal truck (which I don't drive much). Because the CD costs five cents. Why do I want to lug a DAP in there every time I go somewhere, just for a five or ten minute drive? That'd be an expensive electronic to leave sitting in there, as well. CD is cheap, I don't care if someone steals it.

[T5K]thrasher;1035708949 said:
The Pandora issue is a programming issue Pandora could solve on their own. I work for a radio streaming company and we have a iPhone stream app that gives the option to open quick time with the audio feed and allows you to browse the web wile the music still plays in the background..
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Um, no. I was referencing multi-tasking ability.
Launching Pandora and Safari at the same time. Or launching Pandora and a game at the same time.
 
Like I've said, v1 of any Apple product generally sucks...
10 Million people beta tested Windows 7. That's why it's so great. Apple needs to take a lesson and actually let people play with their products ahead of time... Instead of releasing something sucky and totally missing relevant features people want (like printing).

I'd also only count the "default" setup. You can install third-party firmware, OS, software, etc on just about anything and make it better :D
 
TexUs said:
I'd also only count the "default" setup. You can install third-party firmware, OS, software, etc on just about anything and make it better :D
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Plus, keep in mind we're talking about average consumers to start with.
 
TexUs said:
Plus, keep in mind we're talking about average consumers to start with.
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The App Store is designed for average customers. We're not talking about computers here.

As for third party, well, good luck opening YouTube or a PDF on a Windows computer without third party assistance :-P
 
Azhar said:
The App Store is designed for average customers. We're not talking about computers here.

As for third party, well, good luck opening YouTube or a PDF on a Windows computer without third party assistance :-P
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We're talking about printing here...
 
TexUs said:
We're talking about printing here...
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Right, and the average customers do own printers. Believe me, installing apps is trivial at best. They all share the same OS, so there's minimal to zero configuration needed and some apps use universal print drivers and will detect network printers over WiFi without effort.

The only thing that would make the average customer balk is setting up print sharing using a USB printer. Network printers are simplicity in itself.
 
And all of that again, carries the stipulation that you've got either a networked printer (most users don't) or using another computer to share it from. Like I said, the iPad isn't a computer replacement at all...
 
Someone once told me that in life... you can be one of two things.. either arrogant or ignorant, but you couldn't be both.

The Mac-ad-regurgitators proved that wrong, and the worst part was that Apple encouraged it and built its image with the bricks of lies, omissions, and propaganda.

What's the statistic? I read here somewhere that less than 3% of the ppl who own macs have exclusively macs at home or use Apple OS exclusively. The others, like everyone in grad school here who walks around with a mac.. run Windows 7 on it, or have to own both systems at home.

So, for 97% of people, a Mac is not a PC replacement, but rather a fashion accessory that overlaps tasks you were already able to do before you got it.

It is not until I realized this, did I find a state of balance with my feelings towards Apple. They are tyrants, they are liars, and they basically sell themselves through spreading fud about other companies. But they're not a computer maker, they are a fashion company, with followers like those of D&G or LV. Its not about function, and it will never replace a real computer, its to make people feel better.

Apple is in the business of making people feel better, smarter, higher on the social totem pole; whether true or not, its not that people believe, its that people WANT to believe.

People, its like discussing religion.. you're trying to show them the "silly" in their book, but all they feel is you tugging at the very core of what makes them happy.

Holding an Apple, like a LV purse, makes people feel better about themselves. Apple thrives on how inadequate people feel after watching actors, 24/7, on their television screens. Why do you think they have such viral product placement in films and television, like Bones or CSI. When you realize this, you will no longer feel the need to hate on people that just buy Apple because they believe that it'll make them feel better about themselves.

So, I plead with you, stop hating on people that already have esteem problems. And I'm sure there are some legit reasons out there to own a mac, just like Bittorent is used for spreading Linux distros... but the majority, and the business model... yea.

The best you can do, is to educate your children, and understand that parents who buy Apple comps for their kids are concerned about the esteem they themselves feel about their kids. So, even if you do read it as "my kid is not smart enough to use a PC", please have some sympathy.


Kindly,
M.
 
The Red said:
I read here somewhere...
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Well, we're off to a good start.

The Red said:
But they're not a computer maker, they are a fashion company, with followers like those of D&G or LV. Its not about function, and it will never replace a real computer, its to make people feel better.
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If that were the case, they would simply be function-less devices, incapable of doing anything of any value other than occupying space and looking impressive. Yet Macs, iPhones, iPods, iPads and so forth are functional devices, sometimes intentionally limited in capability to make operating them more straightforward, but functional devices nonetheless.

The Red said:
Apple is in the business of making people feel better, smarter, higher on the social totem pole; whether true or not, its not that people believe, its that people WANT to believe.
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Apple's in the business of making money, like any other for-profit company.

The Red said:
Kindly,
M.
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You go out of your way to insult of a large number of members of this forum, with every intention of provoking some sort of angered response, and you sign your post with "kindly". We're really knee-deep in hypocrisy here, aren't we?
 
=phide;1035710305]Well, we're off to a good start.
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I cant find the original research in search, but here is the CNN: Fortune article quoting pieces of it: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/05/85-of-mac-owners-have-windows-too/



If that were the case, they would simply be function-less devices, incapable of doing anything of any value other than occupying space and looking impressive. Yet Macs, iPhones, iPods, iPads and so forth are functional devices, sometimes intentionally limited in capability to make operating them more straightforward, but functional devices nonetheless.
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What you dont see is how few ppl of who buy those devices use any of their marketed functionality. For every user I have seen use an iPhone to research a location instead of using a browser, there are 50 who use it to play pong on their phone because it makes them feel special because others cant do it... on their phone.

Apple's in the business of making money, like any other for-profit company.
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So is Blackwater, Sachs, and was Enron

[/QUOTE]You go out of your way to insult of a large number of members of this forum, with every intention of provoking some sort of angered response, and you sign your post with "kindly". We're really knee-deep in hypocrisy here, aren't we?[/QUOTE]

I think the very fact of how personal you're taking this speaks volumes, personally..
 
The Red said:
What's the statistic? I read here somewhere that less than 3% of the ppl who own macs have exclusively macs at home or use Apple OS exclusively. The others, like everyone in grad school here who walks around with a mac.. run Windows 7 on it, or have to own both systems at home.

So, for 97% of people
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Your statistics are wrong. It's not 97% of people, it's 97% of Mac owners... The percentage of people is actually higher than that.

If you actually do the math, 0.6% (That's right, LESS THAN 1%) of the world is OS X- only. Pretty poor numbers for an OS that's supposedly so superior to Windows that you don't need it anymore.

You can arrive at that number by taking 85% (the number of OS X users that also use Windows) out of the 4% global OS X market share.

The Red said:
People, its like discussing religion..
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I read phide's post first, and oddly enough, this is exactly what I was going to post.

"Making people feel better"... People gladly shell out money for assurances of being hip, cool, or saved from eternal damnation... The pastor of the biggest church in America is one of the biggest crooks around (Olsteen).




And again, I use an iPhone. I'm not a blind Apple follower, though. The iPhone has plenty of shortcomings. I'm only using it because the better devices on the market aren't on carriers here, or the carriers they are on with don't have 3G here. iPhone was simply the best device here. And who knows, depending what kind of upgrade pricing Apple/ATT shell out, and what kind of speed increases we see with iPhone 4... I might get another.
 
TexUs said:
Your statistics are wrong. It's not 97% of people, it's 97% of Mac owners... The percentage of people is actually higher than that.

If you actually do the math, 0.6% (That's right, LESS THAN 1%) of the world is OS X- only. Pretty poor numbers for an OS that's supposedly so superior to Windows that you don't need it anymore.

You can arrive at that number by taking 85% (the number of OS X users that also use Windows) out of the 4% global OS X market share.
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You are correct, I meant the percentage of the ppl who own macs.
 
Meh. I prefer UNIX to Windows, in fact - it pays my bills. OS X certainty is not UNIX no matter how many times Apple claims that it is. But it is close, and its not Windows. That coupled with it being so tightly nit with the hardware and a fantastic warranty, its a pretty good platform.

I am about to get a *free* MacBook Pro 15" because my 3 year old MacBook broke. Can't argue with that.

*$500 upgrade from the free 13" Pro they offered*
 
ZMTToxics said:
Meh. I prefer UNIX to Windows, in fact - it pays my bills. OS X certainty is not UNIX no matter how many times Apple claims that it is.
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When have they ever claimed that? Apple admitting their products were designed by someone else isn't something they've ever really done...
 
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