[rab777hp]

If you're so much in love with PCs, then leave and go buy a PC. None of us want to get into the pointless arguements of Mac vs. PC. If you love PCs and PC software so much better, then return your iMac and get a PC, and trade in your iPhone for a pocket pc.

Most of your complaints are not about the Mac itself, but the fact that you are not used to it, and do not understand its ways. But, you're not going to win any arguements out here, if you think you, against an entire army of mac fans, can win a fight, then I'm afraid that you are sadly deluded. Please stop angering all of us with your die-hard PC ways.

[Chris Breen]

I think Fred probably gets the point now. No need to pile on any further and add more evidence that Mac users are intolerant fanboys.

[Martian]

Well said. But I think it is about time that Macworld showed some journalistic leadership and tried to re-educate instead of tranquilize the fanboys. This adolescent fanboy cult crap does the whole Mac community a huge disservice.
Not only have the fanboys run off a former Windows guy back into the arms of Microsoft rather than help him get up to speed with his Mac, but their irrational self-destructive “faith-based computing” dilutes the beneficial pressures of the competitive marketplace.



For example, if the cheerleading section were a bit more loyal to their own needs rather than Jobs’ needs, perhaps Apple would have sweat a few more details before launching MobileMe

[macnuke]

dunno guys. Fred may have a point.....

no good graphics
slow processors. think about it... the G never did bust the 3G speed mark..
mice with no "real" buttons......
built in Firewire... really... what a wasted port.
only 90% of the pre-installed software is useful...
the total lack of virus's and whatnot..
no automatic updates to the software on a weekly basis..
and missing out on reinstalling the OS on a regular basis.. I mean, c'mon guys... how else am I going to look productive for that many hours without actually having to work.

and TEH FREECELL
geeeze guys... get with the games OK

[Chris Breen]

Martian said:

This adolescent fanboy cult crap does the whole Mac community a huge disservice.

It's a double-edged sword. If it weren't for the fanboys and girls I doubt you'd see the huge lines in front of Apple Stores when something big is being released. It makes for good publicity and, in this case, is an asset for Apple.

OTOH, I get really tired of telling Windows users what I do and then watching them shrink back in fear of me launching into a diatribe about why the Mac is the ultimate piece of godly technology. That tells me they've been exposed to the Apple Uber Alles crowd. And when I don't give them the pitch and we talk about their reaction, they will cite fanboys as a reason they stay away from the Mac. Some of these folks make it appear that Mac users are part of a cult, and that's not a terribly attractive thing to some people.

[rab777hp]

"Not only have the fanboys run off a former Windows guy back into the arms of Microsoft rather than help him get up to speed with his Mac, but their irrational self-destructive "faith-based computing" dilutes the beneficial pressures of the competitive marketplace."



Sorry, but I think he's already gone over, it is too late for him.

Pardon the Star Wars analogy.

[FredTheOldGuy]

What an interesting range of responses. There clearly are some very bright and articulate people on this forum. I love talking to those kinds of people. Not only that, but they seem to outnumber those who came to babble inanities. Rather than try to address people in separate postings, I'll do it here in a single posting and will make my responses in the order I read the notes. But before I begin, I'll explain the initial post I made.

Originally I had planned to post a note on Entourage and Mobile Me. Once I started the note, I kept remembering other little glitches that I had encountered that had annoyed me, and I added those to the list as well. By the time I had finished the note, I had actually wound up venting my frustrations over my various experiences with the Mac, and I felt enormously much better for having done it! That, my friends, was the genesis of the note that apparently created so much acrimony. Now to my responses.

Peter, I didn't know I was visiting a zoo. My initial post would be construed as "combative," as Chris described it, only within context of a group of enthusiasts who feel a personal partiality for the Mac and the programs that run on it. I didn't realize that this was an enthusiast group. (If there are any enthusiast groups online for the PC, I don’t know about them.) Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought the Mac World site was owned and maintained by the same group that publishes PC Word. If you go onto one of those forums and disparage the PC, I doubt if anyone would care. You don't like the PC? Fine. I didn't invent it, I didn't write the software that runs on it, and I have no personal investment in it. And I suspect you'd find folks there who share your view. So imagine my surprise to learn that my post was construed as a personal affront to people or even to this entire group. I don’t think he PC sites that I've visited are actually sites that advocate the PC. They exist merely for the purpose of information exchange. Evidently there are differences between Mac users and PC users that go beyond software and hardware.

Chris, I was introduced to the term "fanboy" on this form. From the context in which it appears, I can pretty well infer its meaning. Apparently there are enthusiasts in both the PC camp and the Mac camp, and there have been some words exchanged between them. I'm probably considerably older than most of you folks. When I was growing up people just didn't separate into factions over computers. We didn't even have computers. The very expensive HP calculator was the hot item of the day, and it cost several hundred dollars even then. (A hundred dollars in those days was the equivalent of more than $467 in today's money.)
Glenn, you're right about the "edge" stuff. The software-hardware interface I'm dealing with was escalated to the senior support level in Fusion, and there is no resolution for the problem because of the way the program is written. I don't know whether the issue would exist in a Boot Camp partition because I am resisting Boot Camp and haven't done it yet. If I can work within the Mac environment, that's what I'm going to do to the extent that it's possible. I think I will be able to live with iCal as my main calendar, but that still doesn't help me resolve the problem of syncing my laptop's calendar with MobileMe, and I need to be able to do that. Contrary to the impression my first note conveyed, I actually love this machine for everything but work, and I hate having to go back to my old desktop to do chores on it that I don't yet know how to do on the iMac.

As far as my impression that there just isn't the volume of software available for the Mac that there is for the PC, I still hold that opinion. I was trying to find some way to make wma files (Windows Media Audio, or something like that) play on a Mac, and the conversion programs for just aren’t that plentiful. Those that did do it converted the files in such a way that they were nearly unusable by some of my employees who needed to transcribe them. (Oh, and that's the kind of software I was trying to find, something that would play the wma format files. Having had no luck with that, I proceeded to look for software that would convert them to another format.)

Rickcarl, surly though your response is, I'll respond to you anyway because there were others who took exception to this claim. A big "ease of use" issue that I've been running into is the resizing of windows. To do it in the Mac, I have to click on the lower right corner and only the lower right corner of the window. With a PC you click at any point along any edge and resize it. There were some other little glitches that I was running into too, but they're not coming to mind right now.

(Oh, and can anyone tell me how to minimize all the windows at once and how to restore them all at once? I haven't figured out the magic keystroke for doing that yet. )

Mdawson, as to your characterization of my note as "antagonistic," I'll refer you back to what I said to Peter at the start. Only within a very special context is the note "antagonistic." It surely was not intended to antagonize anyone. I said nothing of a personal nature to anyone in this group. You may be right that the 20+ years of Windows use has imprinted onto my mind expectations and prejudices about the manner in which things should be approached. When I'm working with the computer, I'm not always so fastidious as to make distinctions between the operating system and the program I'm using. I'm trying to get something done with the computer. If I can't do it and can' t figure out how to do it, I don't care about dissecting the problem for the time being. Which part of the computer to blame--or whether to blame the computer at all--doesn't really matter to me at that point. I'm frustrated, and I want the damned thing to work. And, again, I'm not accustomed to being called a troll.

Mdawson does refer to my note as "bashing the Mac." I truly am missing something here. If you want to bash the PC, go ahead! I couldn't care less. If someone wants to bash a Mac, what makes you care about that? Why do you care whether someone else doesn't like the Mac.? You like it, and you're here with a bunch of other folks who like it. Clearly there's room in this world for both machines. Heck, I've even considered trying out Umbuntu (if that's the correct spelling,)

Now for Martian, the last guy who made a coherent comment. I haven't been chased anywhere Martian. Adolescent churlishness and bad spelling, punctuation, and grammar don’t frighten me. It's Saturday, and I'm not living at my computer (though considering the length of this post it's starting to feel like it). I confess that words akin to "adolescent fanboy cult" or some equivalent thereto have begun to occur to me in relation to some individuals, but this note is the first time I have ever uttered the word "fanboy," even if only in writing.

[Chris Breen]

FredTheOldGuy said:

>I was trying to find some way to make wma files (Windows Media Audio, or something like that) play on a Mac

This one I can help with. Take a look at Windows Media Component for QuickTime. If you need a conversion application, Flip4Mac will do the job.

[FredTheOldGuy]

Chris, that actually WAS very helpful. I downloaded it, and it worked like a charm. Thanks!

[rickcarl]

[quote name='FredTheOldGuy']


Rickcarl, surly though your response is...I'm not accustomed to being called a troll.


You call your PC a "hell hole", say Entourage "sucks", and label Macs a "bust" like "donning a straightjacket" and me as "surly." Your words say more about you than they do about PC, Mac or readers on this thread. PCs and Macs are tools. Both have a lot of good use in business and/or elsewhere.

[macnuke]

FredTheOldGuy said:

(Oh, and can anyone tell me how to minimize all the windows at once and how to restore them all at once? I haven't figured out the magic keystroke for doing that yet. )

F11

itsa toggle switch

[imalex]

Quote

{quote:title=FredTheOldGuy wrote:}(Oh, and can anyone tell me how to minimize all the windows at once and how to restore them all at once? I haven't figured out the magic keystroke for doing that yet. )

{quote}

There's the option macnuke offered (F11), or you can hold down the option key while clicking the minimize button on any application (the amber one in the upper left of the window). This will minimize all windows of that application to the Dock. Hold down option while clicking one of the minimized windows in the Dock to restore them all.

I do have to tell you, Fred, that I switched to Mac in '97 after using PCs for 10 years before that. I was skeptical at first, just like you, as I was convinced the Mac was such a closed environment there was no room for tweaking and tinkering to get things working exactly the way I wanted.

I was proven so wrong that I look back at those days with a laugh. While I was amazed at how quickly I got up to reasonable speed on the Mac (a matter of days, really), it did take a few months to feel comfortable enough with the environment to adjust things to my heart's content to fit the way I work.

Welcome to the Mac, and I hope these obstacles you're experiencing now will quickly give way as you learn more.

Alex.

[FredTheOldGuy]

But Rickcarl, I was talking about a machine. What are you talking about? And why do you care?

[FredTheOldGuy]

Evidently my keyboard or system works a little differnetly. The f11 keky on my iMac reduces volume, and when I click the option/alt-minimize button, it causes the active window to minimize but that's it. The rest remain open. In Windows (dare I utter that word here?) there is a key on most modern keyboards called the Windows key (i think thats what it's callled; it bears the Windows logo) and if you depress that button and the D key together, everything that is open minimizes. if you press it again, everything that was just miniized opens back up. What is the Mac key cominbation that does that?