Saturday, June 07, 2003
The dumb things people say about the Mac
Sometimes we just say the dumbest things. I'm guilty of it. You're guilty as well. We all are, from time to time. This past week, I was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, and I overheard someone near me saying, "Their new guitarist is really good, but he's trying too hard to sound like their old guitarist, John Frusciante." I was a little distubed to hear such a lack of Chili Peppers knowledge, but I thought that rather than sit there and shake my head in disbelief, why not just supply him with the one piece of the puzzle that he was missing? After all, the guy had a point, just not the point that he thought he did. So I leaned over to him and said, "Psst, that is John Frusciante, he's back in the band now." You could almost see the light bulb flash on over his head. I would have thought that every Chili Peppers fan knew about Frusciante by now, considering he returned to the band about four years ago, but I guess this guy just had no real way of knowing that...until someone pointed it out it to him.
I tried to carry that thought with me this week as I encountered some of the dumbest statements about the Macintosh I've ever heard, all from people who should have known better. Each time, I looked past the urge to scold the individual for not doing his or her homework. I suppose not everyone can be expected to visit MacCentral and MacSurfer every day, or watch every Steve Jobs keynote, or even know that "iMac" does not start with a capital letter. There are those of us who, for whatever reason, choose to do our Mac homework on a regular basis. And then there's the other 99.9 percent of the earth's population. I suppose it's our job to ever-so-respectfully set the record straight for those who seem to want to know about the whole Mac thing, but need the occasional booster shot of accurate information.
All of the statements below were said to me within the past four days. They all would have sounded dumb five years ago, and sound even more asinine today...at least to us know better. But each time, I took the opportunity to enlighten gracefully, and I urge all of you to do the same.
"I love PowerPoint, too bad they don't make it for the Mac." A volunteer at my school told me this, remorseful that he wouldn't be able to show off it his PowerPoint skills to me. Remedying this misconception didn't even require speaking a word. I handed him an iBook, clicked on PowerPoint in the Dock, and showed off the Mac-only QuickTime transitions before leaving him alone with it for a few minutes. He ended up creating a slide show presentation about his high school that he then showed to a class of fourth graders. He's one of the smartest kids I know, yet he didn't know about the existence of PowerPoint:Mac. It's not his fault, he learned to use it on a PC in a business technology class. Why in the world he was using a PC for that class is a whole other issue (it sure wasn't at my school). But the bottom line is that he went back to his school knowing that the Mac can run PowerPoint just as well, or better than, the PC that he learned it on.
"I don't have any software to use with my digital camcorder." This came out of the mouth of a digital camcorder owner who also happens to own an iMac with an iMovie icon in the Dock. And here, I always thought that part of his motivation for purchasing the camcorder in the first place was to use it with iMovie. So much for assumptions. I offered to show him how to use iMovie. Hopefully, he'll take me up on the offer. But at least know he knows that his computer already has all the software he needs.
"I'd buy an eMac, if you could use floppy disks with it." I immediately ran to the wall calendar to make sure that it really was the year 2003. For a moment, I thought it was 1998 all over again. But then I realized that here was someone who was only one small misconception away from buying a Mac. This is a Good Thing. I explained that floppies are no longer the external media of choice, that they have grown useless due to their small capacity, slow speed, and relative unreliability. I said that anything small enough to fit on a floppy is better off being transported as an email attachment, stored on something like a USB keychain, or simply left on the hard drive of the computer, now that hard drives are so large that millions of word processing documents couldn't fill up the computer. I told her that most media files won't fit on a floppy disk, and are better off being burned to a CD, which holds as much stuff as 400 floppy disks. I gave her a copy of the manual that comes with the eMac (I've got 41 of those manuals lying around right now, taking up space), and she took it with her. Just maybe, she'll buy an eMac. But if not, at least now she understands why the eMac doesn't have a floppy drive. I never imagined that I'd still be giving that explanation about the floppy five years after it disappeared, but that' the way it goes.
"I can't play this, it's in Windows Media Player format." This came from someone who is familiar with both Macs and PC's, and really should have known better. At least now, he does know better. I could have ranted all day about how Windows Media is not the same thing as the Windows operating system, but it's so much easier to just point to the software and say "go get it". It's not as if the existence of WMP for Mac is open to debate, it's just a matter of informing the misinformed. A lecture about how QuickTime is a superior format will fall on deaf ears when the content someone wants to see happens to only be available in another, lesser format. It can't hurt if people like us write to the content creator asking that QuickTime be added, but the other 99.9 percent doesn't care about that -- they just want to watch their music video.
"I'm so afraid I'm going to catch that new BugBear virus." This was spoken by a Mac user, believe it or not. It's a bit harder to get someone to believe that Macs don't get viruses than it is to simply show them PowerPoint running on a Mac, but I directed her to sarc.com so that she could see the words "Macintosh: unaffected" with her own eyes. I went on to explain that while it's a good idea to use antivirus software on a Mac so as not to pass viruses on to PC users, and while it's always possible that someone is going to finally come up with a devastating virus that affects us, Mac users generally laugh at the idea that I Love You, or Melissa, or LoveBug, or Klez, or any other other major virus outbreaks of the past few years, is going to do anything to their computer other than count as one more piece of junk email.
I've been listening to the new Chili Peppers record since it came out, and it's taken me this long to realize that it's one of my favorite albums of all time. It's a masterpiece, but for awhile, I just didn't "get it". I don't always grasp the obvious as quickly as I should. None of us do. So the next time someone laments the fact that Apple went out of business in 1997, let go of the urge to slam them for their ignorance, and instead try to set them straight in a way that they have a chance of actually accepting. You never know when it might be your turn to play the fool, even when it comes to the Macintosh. From time to time, we all proclaim that John Frusciante plays the guitar too much like John Frusciante does. Unless you're trying to be ignorant on purpose, no one needs to hit you over the head for it.
Have you heard any absolute whoppers about Apple lately? Has someone you otherwise respect floored you with Macintosh misinformation? Have you jumped at the opportunity to try to turn it into a positive situation? Pepper me with it.
Sometimes we just say the dumbest things. I'm guilty of it. You're guilty as well. We all are, from time to time. This past week, I was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, and I overheard someone near me saying, "Their new guitarist is really good, but he's trying too hard to sound like their old guitarist, John Frusciante." I was a little distubed to hear such a lack of Chili Peppers knowledge, but I thought that rather than sit there and shake my head in disbelief, why not just supply him with the one piece of the puzzle that he was missing? After all, the guy had a point, just not the point that he thought he did. So I leaned over to him and said, "Psst, that is John Frusciante, he's back in the band now." You could almost see the light bulb flash on over his head. I would have thought that every Chili Peppers fan knew about Frusciante by now, considering he returned to the band about four years ago, but I guess this guy just had no real way of knowing that...until someone pointed it out it to him.
I tried to carry that thought with me this week as I encountered some of the dumbest statements about the Macintosh I've ever heard, all from people who should have known better. Each time, I looked past the urge to scold the individual for not doing his or her homework. I suppose not everyone can be expected to visit MacCentral and MacSurfer every day, or watch every Steve Jobs keynote, or even know that "iMac" does not start with a capital letter. There are those of us who, for whatever reason, choose to do our Mac homework on a regular basis. And then there's the other 99.9 percent of the earth's population. I suppose it's our job to ever-so-respectfully set the record straight for those who seem to want to know about the whole Mac thing, but need the occasional booster shot of accurate information.
All of the statements below were said to me within the past four days. They all would have sounded dumb five years ago, and sound even more asinine today...at least to us know better. But each time, I took the opportunity to enlighten gracefully, and I urge all of you to do the same.
"I love PowerPoint, too bad they don't make it for the Mac." A volunteer at my school told me this, remorseful that he wouldn't be able to show off it his PowerPoint skills to me. Remedying this misconception didn't even require speaking a word. I handed him an iBook, clicked on PowerPoint in the Dock, and showed off the Mac-only QuickTime transitions before leaving him alone with it for a few minutes. He ended up creating a slide show presentation about his high school that he then showed to a class of fourth graders. He's one of the smartest kids I know, yet he didn't know about the existence of PowerPoint:Mac. It's not his fault, he learned to use it on a PC in a business technology class. Why in the world he was using a PC for that class is a whole other issue (it sure wasn't at my school). But the bottom line is that he went back to his school knowing that the Mac can run PowerPoint just as well, or better than, the PC that he learned it on.
"I don't have any software to use with my digital camcorder." This came out of the mouth of a digital camcorder owner who also happens to own an iMac with an iMovie icon in the Dock. And here, I always thought that part of his motivation for purchasing the camcorder in the first place was to use it with iMovie. So much for assumptions. I offered to show him how to use iMovie. Hopefully, he'll take me up on the offer. But at least know he knows that his computer already has all the software he needs.
"I'd buy an eMac, if you could use floppy disks with it." I immediately ran to the wall calendar to make sure that it really was the year 2003. For a moment, I thought it was 1998 all over again. But then I realized that here was someone who was only one small misconception away from buying a Mac. This is a Good Thing. I explained that floppies are no longer the external media of choice, that they have grown useless due to their small capacity, slow speed, and relative unreliability. I said that anything small enough to fit on a floppy is better off being transported as an email attachment, stored on something like a USB keychain, or simply left on the hard drive of the computer, now that hard drives are so large that millions of word processing documents couldn't fill up the computer. I told her that most media files won't fit on a floppy disk, and are better off being burned to a CD, which holds as much stuff as 400 floppy disks. I gave her a copy of the manual that comes with the eMac (I've got 41 of those manuals lying around right now, taking up space), and she took it with her. Just maybe, she'll buy an eMac. But if not, at least now she understands why the eMac doesn't have a floppy drive. I never imagined that I'd still be giving that explanation about the floppy five years after it disappeared, but that' the way it goes.
"I can't play this, it's in Windows Media Player format." This came from someone who is familiar with both Macs and PC's, and really should have known better. At least now, he does know better. I could have ranted all day about how Windows Media is not the same thing as the Windows operating system, but it's so much easier to just point to the software and say "go get it". It's not as if the existence of WMP for Mac is open to debate, it's just a matter of informing the misinformed. A lecture about how QuickTime is a superior format will fall on deaf ears when the content someone wants to see happens to only be available in another, lesser format. It can't hurt if people like us write to the content creator asking that QuickTime be added, but the other 99.9 percent doesn't care about that -- they just want to watch their music video.
"I'm so afraid I'm going to catch that new BugBear virus." This was spoken by a Mac user, believe it or not. It's a bit harder to get someone to believe that Macs don't get viruses than it is to simply show them PowerPoint running on a Mac, but I directed her to sarc.com so that she could see the words "Macintosh: unaffected" with her own eyes. I went on to explain that while it's a good idea to use antivirus software on a Mac so as not to pass viruses on to PC users, and while it's always possible that someone is going to finally come up with a devastating virus that affects us, Mac users generally laugh at the idea that I Love You, or Melissa, or LoveBug, or Klez, or any other other major virus outbreaks of the past few years, is going to do anything to their computer other than count as one more piece of junk email.
I've been listening to the new Chili Peppers record since it came out, and it's taken me this long to realize that it's one of my favorite albums of all time. It's a masterpiece, but for awhile, I just didn't "get it". I don't always grasp the obvious as quickly as I should. None of us do. So the next time someone laments the fact that Apple went out of business in 1997, let go of the urge to slam them for their ignorance, and instead try to set them straight in a way that they have a chance of actually accepting. You never know when it might be your turn to play the fool, even when it comes to the Macintosh. From time to time, we all proclaim that John Frusciante plays the guitar too much like John Frusciante does. Unless you're trying to be ignorant on purpose, no one needs to hit you over the head for it.
Have you heard any absolute whoppers about Apple lately? Has someone you otherwise respect floored you with Macintosh misinformation? Have you jumped at the opportunity to try to turn it into a positive situation? Pepper me with it.
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