Mac Killed My Inner Child

[miker]

Originally posted by Peter_G:
Today I made an astute observation. An inproportionately high number of Mac users are gay. I'm not a homophobe, and I'm not trying to rekindle the tired old Mac Vs Wintel debate, but it's true.

Also, the geneses of BSD/Linux/UNIX ran on x86 architecture exclusively. To claim open source as a ?Mac thing? is just plain wrong. Support for PPC (Mac) architecture was only added as an after thought. My biggest criticism of Macs is their self-contained nature. My PC has a graphics card from Japan, a sound card and microprocessor from Ireland, a main board from somewhere in Indochina and a hard disk from the U.S.A. If I was so inclined, I could install any one of a myriad of non-Microsoft operating systems (I?ve used BeOS as well as dozens of Linux distributions: Slackware, Corel, Suse, Redhat). I can customize my PC - the hardware and the software - to my exact needs.

The great thing about Linux is it rarely goes completely tits up in the same way as windows or Mac OS. Generally, only X windows (or whatever your GUI is) crashes and can easily be revived through the command prompt without loosing any of your work.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You'll discover the downside of Linux as soon as you attempt to cut your feature on it. Kino? Cinelerra? Gimme a break, I want to edit, not be battling the configuration.

As for your astute observation that most Mac users seem to be gay, I think you might just find it's more of an entertainment industry thing.

And the Mac's self-contained nature and adherence to open standards is actually a strength.

Mac components come from all over the world too.

So do yourself a favour. Stick with tinkering with and upgrading your PC while the adults get the work done ;-)

[Nigel]

Peter--

I am not saying that Open Source is a "Mac Thing". I am saying that They are the first major computer company to embrace it.

Hell, Steve Jobs is no Newbie to Open Source. Next Computers for instance ran Mach/FreeBSD. Before that Apple created MKLinux which uses the Mach Kernal and ran on machines back in the mid-90's. I had MKLinux running on an older PPC Apple. Apple doesn't support it any more but they do have a BB on their site dedicated to it.

PPC is a great system--To bad the Beige Box Army doesn't switch to it.

Good Luck

[peter_g]

You'll discover the downside of Linux as soon as you attempt to cut your feature on it

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is true. It would be unwise to attempt to edit a major video project on a Linux system. No one operating system can be all things to all people ? just as you?d have to be fairly foolish to edit a serious video project on a Linux box, you?d have to be fairly foolish to, say, run a web server on an Apple or Microsoft OS (even the ones that were created for the sole purpose of hosting websites). I was extolling the virtues of Linux, not touting it as the one to end them all.

And the Mac's self-contained nature and adherence to open standards is actually a strength

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is a strength, but to a greater extent it is a weakness. The fact that every piece of hardware in a Macintosh is made, commissioned by, or at least approved by Apple does lend itself to stability, ease of use and reliability. Similarly, Microsoft ?certifies? hardware ? it approves hardware it has found to work well on Microsoft systems. The difference is Microsoft give you the option of installing more obscure hardware. There is no grey market ?10 Rockwell knock-off modems if you are a Mac user (and I just love grey market ?10 Rockwell knock-off modems, complete with an instruction manual in broken English and a driver installation with a cheap, tacky, annoying midi file playing in the background). The negative implications of hardware sourced from all around the world are obvious - You are open to getting bad hardware, like the time I bought a PC with a shitty shit shit Maxtor hard disk. I'd prefer to have the option of using hardware manufactured by an array of companies. It's just a matter of being prudent. If you buy a PC from a reputable company like Dell, you are guaranteed to have a system that has hardware working well, in synergy. Perhaps that guarantee is slightly more iron-cast with a Mac, simply because there is a limited amount of Mac hardware available and it is all made by Apple.

I never said that most Mac users are gay - just a greater proportion then the general population. Perhaps a more diplomatic way of putting it would have been "an over proportionate number of gay men are Mac users".

Off the top of my head, here are some gay Mac users from popular culture:

Weyland Smithers (?Hello.Smithers.You.Are.Quite.Good.At.Turning.Me. On?)

Jonathan Caouette (The guy who made that documentary, ?Tarnation?)

[TJ_the_director]

gosh, I'm smirking as I quietly edit my feature film on my G4 with FCP. The adventure has been completely smooth and crash-free. While the PC folks brag and fix their crashes, I edit on my Mac and use my PC for the only thing it is good for: listening to internet radio stations!

[img]cool.gif[/img]

[sn-films]

Originally posted by Peter_G:
No one operating system can be all things to all people ?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think I've seen every Mac vs. PC debate on this board for the last 4 years and that possibly the best statement I've ever seen in one of these debates. Some people prefer PC's, some people prefer Mac's. Neither OS/architecture is perfect, but as long as the system lets you do what you want to do and tell a story, that's all that really matters, isn't it?

[miker]

Yep, it's always a case of the best (or nearest to best that you can afford) tool for the job.

I was a Linux user for 2 years and if I didn't have the need for industrial strength multimedia I'd still be running Linux. As it happens I want to stay in the Mac camp cos I've been very impressed. It aint perfect, but it's a great balance of the power of *nix made easy to use and, obviously, with proprietry tweaks for Apple hardware.
I've never quite got around to it, but DarwinPorts and Fink are really tempting, but, ultimately for my situation, unnecessary.

There was a time when I really enjoyed mucking with my own self-built PCs, then I started buying Dell for simplicity/sanity and the move to Apple was a natural extension for me to "forget about the computer and get work done".

I really respect the shake-up that OSS is providing for the IT industry (I'm looking at you, Microsoft) and I think the standards it provides are viable long term.

As for the whole gay men thing using Macs, the gay men I know personally all use Windows or are completely uninterested in computing. Funnily enough, I don't know any other Mac users personally but I am assuredly straight. Perhaps the observation has better correlation in the large cities like London and New York, and not little backwater towns like the one I live in.

[Matty2phatty]

all the gay people i know use PC's and all the Mac users i know are straight...

[img]graemlins/thinking.gif[/img]

[darksparrow]

That could possibly be the funnist thing I have seen in a long time.

[Actor]

Originally posted by Matty2phatty:
all the gay people i know use PC's and all the Mac users i know are straight...

[img]graemlins/thinking.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">From a purely mathematical POV that is a meaningless statistic.
</font><ul type="square">[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Suppose you know 100 people</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Suppose 2 of them are gay.</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Suppose 2 of them own Macs.</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Then the expectation value of the number of people who are gay and own Macs is 0.04 people.</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Since you can't have a fraction of a person and 0.04 is closer to zero than to one your observation is consistent with the hypothesis that there is no correlation between Mac ownership and sexual orientation.</font>[/list]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of course I made those numbers up as an example. You did not supply any numbers.

[Matty2phatty]

We're getting very serious about this aren't we [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

All i meant was that i couldn't understand why anybody would try to say that more gay people use macs.

If you were to say that lots of gay people work in the hospitality industry you'd probably have a case. That's where i made most of my gay friends.

I think this is getting a bit off topic now anyway heh [img]biggrin.gif[/img]