Editorial - Macrimination 

Everyone Else's 2 Cents

By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor

Some of the most fun you can have as a Mac fan is to troll the comments under stories that compares Macs and PCs.

Talk about flaming. Talk about passion. Talk about pure idiocy.

Macrimination, in its purest and most potent form, is not an organized, multi-state, fund-raiser driven movement, but half-truths and urban legends quoted as fact by misled Windows users. The truly dangerous Macriminator lives down the street from you, in a house just like yours, and is never quoted as an "expert" by CNet or PC Magazine. These are the people who think that their experience running a Mac with System 7 in college is enough basis for saying "Macs are unstable and too expensive" and spread the disease to all of their friends, so they believe the same thing.

While I'm not in the habit of tearing apart comments by everyday people, I can't help it after reading a recent SeattlePI.com blog entry on "Longhorn vs. OS X," and then actually reading through the dozens of comments by both Windows and Mac users below the story.

I am not identifying any of the posters to protect the innocent.

The first comment to catch my eye was this one: "If Macs are so much better than Windows, and Microsoft has 'borrowed' so many of (Apple's) ideas, then why has Microsoft become so much better?"

That would depend on how you would define better, of course. Better at being a worldwide monopoly? Possibly. Better at writing insecure code. Well, I'll let you, the reader, decide that one. After all, Apple has been guilty of some security shenanigans itself recently.

This was answered by a sensible user who said: "Just because Microsoft and Windows are bigger than Apple and the Mac doesn't mean Windows is 'better.' Obviously, Windows is more popular, but I much prefer OS X ... to any version of Windows."

Of course, that "more is better" argument used by many PC users is never very relevant. "There are more roaches than humans, does that mean the roach is smarter?" another poster asked.

This was answered by this posting from someone who thinks that the only Macs available are top-of-the-line G5s, and forgets that low-end Macs pack more into the box than many low-end PC systems do: "My answer is economics. Why spend $3,000 for a Mac tower when you could drop $500 for a PC tower with good enough horsepower to run the apps and games that are out today? Sure, the $3k Mac is a kicking dual 64-bit machine that runs circles around almost every consumer grade machine out there. But ($3,000)???? Come on."

Oh, and here's a really good idea. "In response to a Panther vs. Longhorn (due in 2006) comparison, why not turn the tables. I'd like to see a comparison of Panther to Windows ME. They have release dates that are also about three years apart."

Yes, let's compare it to Windows ME. Did anyone actually buy that OS? Oops. I'm sorry, I was starting to sound like a poster there for a moment.

Finally, a voice of reason. And an on-topic post, at that. "I think it's a bit silly to compare Panther and Longhorn as Panther will long be obsolete by the time Panther comes out."

I think he meant "by the time Longhorn comes out" there, but we're not taking off points for typos here. I'd be in trouble if we were.

"Panther *STILL* crashes! Like I said, we have hundreds of Win2k machines running countless apps, but the dozen or so Macs crash on average 15 to 20 times more often! Those are real statistics. Our average Mac users expect their Mac to hang or freeze once a week, our average PC over the past two years has frozen twice a year!"

This comment was torn up several other people further down in the list. Let's see a show of hands, how many OS X users in our audience expect their machines to freeze once a week. Come on now, raise them high. No one? Are you sure? I could have sworn this guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

OK. I'll let another poster respond.

"As for your 'opinion' about macs, how educated is it? Have you ever used a mac? Obviously not. I am an IT professional (who) uses PCs 50 percent of the time and Macs 50 percent of the time. Most people who use Macs for more than 5 minutes immediately see how much more stable the OS is."

Or at least usable. I've always said that if we had an International Mac Day, and made everyone use a Mac for 24 hours, that the worldwide OS monopoly would flip the next day, with MS getting the 5 percent and Macs on top. But I've yet to find a presidential candidate willing to push for this in Congress.

But what's the point with all of this arguing? An OS is an OS is an OS, right? As another poster wrote further down: "Why on Earth do people bother to argue about this crap? Geez."

Good question. Go into the forums and post some thoughts.

Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.