Fallows Article on Info Managers

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 20, 2006 at 01:00 AM

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
> >
>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.

Comparing ADM and Apple is like comparing—well, apples and oranges. The only similarity without stretching a whole lot is that they both start with A.

Your criteria for evaluating a product based on a 10 year history bears little relevance to operating systems. Take Windows (please take it, I can hear some people—Mac sycophants all— saying under their breath), for example. It has improved steadily, a fact you could not readily acknowledge based on your 10-year criterion.

>>
>>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.

You’re right. It is a waste of mine time to ask about evidence. Instead, I should just shoot from the lip. Opinions are often vulnerable to evidence, so the less evidence, the better for the opinions.

No doubt I am naive, thinking that when one makes a sweeping generalization about a whole group of people there ought to be some evidence. You suggest that to ask for evidence is to lower the level of the discussion—I’ll take your word for that, no point clouding the discussion further by seeking substantiating input.

I was not really suggesting the users of the different platforms are the same—they can be very different to each other, and still share the same level of objectivity, or lack thereof.

>>
>>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.)

Indeed, firm beliefs become more possible—and plausible when one is not encumbered by evidence. I think I understand. And certainly, this approach has worked for politicians, so it has lots of real world testing behind it. How could I have been so naive?

>
>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.

When have you known me ever to forgive a psychopath?

Cheers,

Daly