Fallows Article on Info Managers

Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Nov 19, 2006 at 11:56 PM

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Stephen, a couple of points.
> >First of all, you are admitting that your first post
>with the comment about Mac’s speed was based on old data.

In much the same way that my criticism of ADM is based on “old data.” I do not grant license to software and hardware companies to present users with a moving target, to be immediately forgiven for their past failures. The best way, imo, to evaluate Apple is looking at at least a 10-year history. It is NOT reasonable to suppose that because a product gets better one year, it will remain that way the next. The whole track record is relevant to the evaluation. Thus I hold the miseries of System 8 & 9 and even the sub-professionnal System 7 firmly against Apple.
> >Second, you question
>whether “Mac users on the whole are objective observers and commentators on their
>computers’ performance.”

> >May one draw the inference that PC users are
>objective?
> >Or are you saying that Mac users are as lacking in objectivity as PC
>users?
> >Is there a lick of evidence anywhere to suggest that one group or the other is
>lacking in objectivity?

Look, Daley, every time you cannot form an opinion or want to avoid looking at an argument, it really doesn’t do to say “where’s the evidence.” Do you think that because no one has formally studied a topic and published results, opinions are impossible. If your perception is that all the various platforms’ users are the same, either a difference does not exist or you are too obtuse to notice it. Both are possibilities, but the arguments for positions like these do not consist of evidence of the kind you seek, because it simply doesn’t exist. It consists of impressions tested for coherence. You may not be up to this sort of intellectual labor, but calls for “evidence” just lower the level of the discussion, presenting a facade of crude scientism that you cannot actually believe.
> >Rather, it sounds to me like a way of simply discrediting
>Mac users as a group, having been soundly called on the issue of Mac
>performance?

No, I don’t think so. My investment in the lousiness of Mac products is minimal. Certainly, I would rather know the truth than discredit someone conveying possible truths. Rather, my impressions of the dishonesty of Apple as a company and less wittingly of vocal Mac users as a group precedes and is far more firm than any beliefs I have about the current condition of Mac products, which could easily be wrong for the moment. (But see previous post on temporal standards for assessment.)

Come on, doesn’t everyone know this. When someone criticizes Apple to a mass audience, they get mail bombed. Windows users, though far more numerous, do not generate such problems. The press generally knows that Jobs psychopathically generates a “reality distortion field,” yet he is oddly forgiven for it and never truly taken to task. If someone criticized Windows here, no one would take it personally. But the response of Franz smelled to me of personal offense. Why would someone get upset about criticisms of a *product*? You see this among Apple fans; you see it among ADM fans. It is not a general characteristic of people to become highly emotionally invested in the perfect accuracy of their choice of tools. Have I EVER become irritated—in the manner of an Apple fan or in my manner when the flaws of Macs are brushed aside—when a tool I have chosen was criticized. Not to my knowledge; it would certainly be an ego-alien experience.

I am not troubled by competing products. And I could see myself bying a Mac. What I am troubled by is the practices of companies like Apple and ADM, and the readines of bystanders to forgive psychopaths.
> >Just curious.
> >Daly
> >Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>>There’s some
>forthright discussion of speed and reliability issues in Mac OS X at
> >>http://www.atpm.com/12.08/paradigm.shtml. There seems to be general
>agreement
>>that OS X through 10.3 was plagued by stability and speed problems. I
>pointed out that
>>this had generally not been previously admitted in the Mac
>literature, as it isn’t
>>recognized in your response here. There seems to have been
>improvement in 2005 and
>>some regression in 2006. If the consensus represented in
>that unusually forthright
>>discussion was that OS X just became usable recently, it
>is unlikely to have become a
>>speed demon or to rival Windows XP in stability in the
>time since.
>>
>>When I played with
>>Omni Outliner on a Mac 6 months to a year ago in the
>Apple Store in LA, it was painfully
>>slow. I don’t think Mac users on the whole are
>objective observers and commentators on
>>their computers’ performance.
>