An entirely unsubstantiated stereotype has spread throughout the computer industry and inspired way too much smugness within the Mac community. What is this unfounded generalization which has been echoed by industry insiders and even such celebrities as Roger Ebert? "Mac users are more creative than PC users."
Bollocks. Folderol. Absolute nonsense.
Mac users are among the least creative people I have ever met in my life. In fact, I know several Mac users who have said that using a PC opened their eyes to creative opportunities that they never even knew existed.
For instance, Randy Hui writes:
I was working at a small company and we had just bought an HP scanner. We tried for an entire week to set up the [expletive] thing with their computer's Windows NT. After speaking with Microsoft tech support, then HP tech support, and finally Microsoft again, they came to the conclusion that there was no new driver available for NT. So instead of waiting several months for it, my boss had his friend who's a software engineer for Xerox come in a write his own driver. That finally did the trick...
See what I mean? How many of you have been so inspired upon purchasing a scanner that you actually wrote a new piece of software to celebrate? None of you lazy Mac users, that's for sure. You just plug the scanner in and start using it -- nothing creative about that!
Or consider Chris Ruch, who says of his PC:
Why can't I simply throw a program directory in the recycle bin and expect my computer to still run correctly? Those programs install so much junk that "links" itself to the system so heavily that you have problems when you restart (and it gives you all kinds of cautionary messages as you throw the stuff out). I like to throw things away without a hitch on my Macs. I like not having to fuss with drivers. I like being able to start from a CD if need be.
Well, I'd like to flip past channel six without seeing a rerun of "Mama's Family," but that's not going to happen any time soon. You're just not looking at this the right way, Chris. Think of uninstalling software as a puzzle. Anyone can assemble a two-piece puzzle. (Drag folder to Trash. Delete Trash.) It is a truly creative person who can both find out what the pieces of the puzzle are, and then put them together in the right order. Uninstalling PC software is just such a puzzle, Chris.
Dave Franks shares this fun tale:
Our office is an IBM AS/400 shop. We use mostly dumb terminals, but we have a few Macs and PCs that connect to the 400 via twinax cards. Under Windows 3.1, a typical installation and configuration of Client Access to connect to the 400 took two days to complete. Under Windows 95, that installation and configuration time was cut to four hours. The time it took to connect the Macs using Andrews (now NLynx) MacMidrange cards -- 20 minutes.
First of all, let me say that it was bad form for Microsoft to decrease installation time from two days down to a measly four hours -- where's the challenge in that? However, it's nothing short of abysmal that the Mac installation requires only 20 minutes. I mean, if cards are really that easy to install and configure, then everyone will be doing it!
Charles Palenz reveals his uncreative nature in the following anecdote:
I was doing a Powerpoint presentation on a Pentium 75Mhz with 16MB RAM and 20MB virtual memory. The presentation included graphics, which made the file about 10MB in size. After about ten minutes of cutting and pasting and resizing on maybe three slides, I decided to save. The save took almost 20 minutes, and toward the end I got a dialog box that said something about "could not paste image." I went back to view my charts, and parts of two slides were missing the charts I had carefully pasted onto them. The moral of the story: Save after each slide because the Wintel machine doesn't tell you it runs out of memory when it does.
The Wintel machine doesn't tell you when your souffle is about to fall either, but you don't hear Wolfgang Puck complaining. Macs take all the fun out of work by alerting you to problems before you waste time on them. A truly creative person would have memorized the application's RAM-requirement algorithms and anticipated this problem well in advance. Still, Charles, it does take a brave person to admit his shortcomings in such a public forum.
K. David Meit tells us how his lack of creativity got him into a bit of a bind:
The two important things I needed in a new PC were card slots for the SCSI adapter card for my Zip drive (formerly used on my Mac without a card, of course) and a network card. I chose a PC that had two free card slots (one ISA, one ISA/PCI) plus a built-in modem, sound card, graphics card and two new USB connections.
After our IT guy installed the Zip drive, I was told there was no more "space" in my PC to allow the installation of the network card. How could that be? The extra card slot was physically in the box, waiting for the card. Then the IT guy explained about DOS-based IRQ's found in Win95. It seems that all the built-in equipment on my PC had left only one IRQ setting available for new peripherals, although the card slots were available.
Hee hee hee ... they got you good, Mac boy! Many an uncreative individual has fallen into this little trap, which was designed to accelerate the forces of techno-Darwinism by weeding out people who don't even understand such a basic concept as DOS-based IRQs. You'll know better next time, won't you?
James Camp at UT Austin writes:
At one point, our dorm decided to install Ethernet connections in all of the rooms. While those of us with Macs popped in our Ethernet cards and were off and running, the Wintel folks were a different story.
A fellow who lived across the hall from me had the worst of luck trying to install his "plug-and-play" card. After hours of playing with drivers, IRQ settings and low-level setup software, we ended up having to open the case, flip some DIP switches, reinstall Windows 95 three times, and finally the card worked. Only problem was, the computer no longer recognized his printer. More fiddling around, and finally the whole thing worked. Except that now his scroll bars slowly drift upward when he is at the bottom of a Web page or the like!
Your point being...? Isn't it obvious why PCs are designed this way? To challenge our lackadaisical college students who are not getting the education that they crave and deserve in the classrooms. You learned nothing by installing your Ethernet card, James...nothing! Your buddy across the hall learned about DIP switches and those pesky IRQ settings, not to mention new and creative ways to surf the Web. Of course he'll be bugging you every time he needs to print something from now on, but the education he takes away from this experience will last him a lifetime.
We close today with this story from Pat Steele:
This really happened to my husband at work. He's a pharmacist, at a small pharmacy in a medical building, and they have PCs to print labels and keep track of inventory, patient histories, drug interactions, etc. They were all busy typing and filling, when all of a sudden, all the computers went down simultaneously. A bottle of Viagra had fallen off an upper shelf onto the power strip switch and pushed it into the OFF position. Of course, the joke of the day was, "I thought that stuff was supposed to turn you on, not off!"
Oh, Pat, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard a story like this one, I'd be one-thirteenth of my way to buying a Barq's Root Beer from our vending machine. Thanks very much for sharing your uplifting tale, and remember: How many Mac users can say that something like this has happened to them?
Some of you may be wondering at this point why I would write an article like this. Well, even if you're not, you're going to hear why anyway. The idea first came to light when a bottle of Viagra fell off of my top shelf and hit me on the head ... No, that was a different story idea. Actually, I was installing the game Diablo on my Mac, and I was amazed at the difference in the installation instructions for Mac users and PC users. The Diablo manual reads like this:
Getting Started (PC)
Place the Diablo CD into your CD-ROM drive. If your computer is AutoPlay capable, a Diablo menu will automatically appear on the screen. Select "Install Diablo" from the list of choices to start the installation program. Follow the onscreen instructions to install Diablo on your system. After the game is successfully installed, you will have the option of adding a Diablo shortcut to your Start menu.
If your system is not AutoPlay capable, open the "My Computer" icon on your Desktop, then select the drive letter that represents your CD-ROM drive. Double-click on the "Setup" icon and continue as above.
Getting Started (Mac)
Place the Diablo CD into your CD-ROM drive. Double-click on the Diablo CD Icon, and then double-click on the "Diablo Installer" to copy the required game and system files to your hard drive.
If you can't see the difference, then you must be a PC user.
So why can't every computer be as easy to use as a Mac? The answer to that question is simple: They can. The more difficult question is: Why would anybody buy a clunky, non-intuitive, difficult-to-use-and-maintain PC when they could eliminate all of these problems by using a Mac? Only Satan and Bill Gates know the answer to that one.
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