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