What type of Mac-Head are you?
We have quite a few registered users on this site, many of whom post regularly. Thus, I can only assume that they own a Mac, enjoy using their Mac and have some desire to learn more about the platform as a whole.
And yet, if you look at the wide variety of comments we get, you will see that there are several themes that seem to prevail. The reason for this is due to the simple fact that not everyone uses a Mac in the same way or for the same reasons. So, let us try and determine what the various types of the Mac user are. This is a three part series, by the way, with Windows users coming next Friday and Linux users rounding out the set two Fridays from now.
The various types of Mac Users:
The Zealot People overly enthusiastic about all things Mac. I probably fall into this category. This type of user, more than likely, used a Mac as his first computer and just never got over it. Often owning multiple Macs spanning many years (I still have a 33 MHz Performa 630 CD) this group is the core of the Mac community driving sales, software development and sites like this.
The Supercilious Mac User - I was going to say arrogant but that word just doesn’t do “us” justice. Think of the SMU as a zealot with an attitude problem.. They tend to look down on Windows users (for obvious reasons) and is often accused of being exceedingly arrogant. Which we counter by saying “it’s not that we are arrogant its just we know we are right.” We aren’t mean out of spite, we just realize that the choice others have made, well, sucks. Sorry, but there you go. Life’s tough and then you die, no sense in making the experience any worse then you have to.
The Power User I could have named this one “Professional Media Creator” but I didn’t think it had the same ring to it. Regardless of the title this type of user is the one who sits in front of the latest G5 churning out movies, songs, artwork, games, animation and the like. You will find many PowerBook carrying artist in this, Apple’s strongest commercial sector.
The MAHWAW No, this isn’t a traditional Hawaiian dish, it is the “Mac at home, Windows at work” crowd. People who have two different computers for there two different lives. This crowd likes Macs but not nearly as much as the Zealots preferring to use the Mac for its iLife suite and leaving the “office work” to the PC.
The Gamer This is a very common type of user as they use Macs for most tasks but keep a PC around just for the games. Think of these users as being married to OS X but keeping XP around as a booty call for when they want to have a little fun on the side. They justify this behavior by saying things like “games are better on a PC than a Playstation” or “Macs don’t have the games I want”.
The N00B This would be your aging Aunt whom you managed to talk into getting an iMac. You were too tired of cleaning off spyware and the like so you just told her to give up and join the fruity side. This type of user surfs the web, checks their email, writes letters and that’s it. Aside from the different icons and background they can tell no difference between a Mac and a PC.
The Switcher Ah, this type of user is becoming more prevalent thanks to the halo effect Many of the people who fall into this category are often veteran computer users, bitter (to varying extents) about their Windows experience. They crave the simplicity of that the Mac offers and often find themselves enjoying their new computer.
The Ignorant Columnist One of my personal favorites this would be the type of people who know nothing about Mac but still feel the need to write about them.. Often getting important details wrong (like the iTunes thing) or trivializing key differences (i.e. Spotlight is the same as Google’s desktop search utility) these analysis are desperately seeking a clue but none can be found.
So, that is my little list of your average Mac users, additions, comments, gripes and flames are all welcome.
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Comments
we don’t have to counter others with disrespect either, just feel kind of sorry for them
Do you people ever listen to yourselves?
Do you people ever listen to yourselves?
I think he just meant feeling sorry (as opposed to actually agressive, but veiled as sorry) for people who are disrespectful. Oh, that was me who said that, never mind.
This doesn’t make me a “zealot”; it just means I understand the “Mac Way” and why Apple makes those design choices. You might disagree with those choices, but that doesn’t mean Apple engineers haven’t spent many hours debating what might be the best choice for the user and the overall OS experience.
This is the basic problem. The belief that only Apple can research ergonomics and GUI design and come up with the “right” answers. Any other company (eg MS with their Natural keyboards and two button mice) must therefore be wrong.
So it does actually make you a zealot! (sorry to pick up on your tangent, vb)
So it does actually make you a zealot!
I was going to propose a new category - “Zealots in denial.” But there would, by definition, be no takers.
Eyehop, I thought you meant feeling sorry for Windows users. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that, but my apologies if that’s not what you meant.
And finally, I really love the MS natural keyboard. I don’t know if they invented it or just made it famous (aka the “Apple strategy”, or “make it famous then act like you invented it”
)but they make the best natural keyboard I’ve ever used, and I’ve used several.
I really love the MS natural keyboard
Ditto. Best keyboard I’ve used. Seems weird at first but in no time perfectly sensible. I believe it was MS who researched and developed it.
I always find it funny (IMO) that Microsoft’s best products are hardware! (The Natural keyboard and the MS mouse)
oops sorry off topic.
Thanks for getting me into that crisis… so I think I don’t belong to any marginal group.
I am a “Switcher”, a “Power User”, maybe a little bit of “The Supercilious Mac User”, too and the “Gamer” if you take the PS2 instead of a PC (who claims that the PC is better than a PS2???)... and another one you forgot:
the “poor PC User”, who really want’s it’s entire “computer-farm” running on MACs (a few minutes after he has purchased his first MAC ever) but has to wait just a bit longer until he can afford it
I’m a “Power User”, “Switcher” who’s recently become somewhat of an “Evangelist.” In a previous life, I was a 3D modeler / animator, but now focus on software development and multi-media production as a consultant. Like vb_baysider, I’ve used nearly about every platform you can think of, including Linux, SGI workstations, a BeOS development system and the Amiga series.
I had always been interested in the simplicity and design of Mac OS, but, as a Power User, the lack of preemptive multitasking and protective memory in Classic Mac OS was too significant for me to overlook. This left Windows NT / 2k as my primary OS.
When Mac OS X was announced, it seemed to be the best of both worlds. I immediately purchased the public beta and had completely transitioned from Windows with the release of 10.2 in 2003.
Recently, I’ve become a registered Mac OS developer and started writing simple Cocoa applications in my spare time.
This is the basic problem. The belief that only Apple can research ergonomics and GUI design and come up with the “right” answers. Any other company (eg MS with their Natural keyboards and two button mice) must therefore be wrong.
Chris,
If you look at the historical evolution of Mac OS vs. Windows, you’ll find that the core Mac OS GUI has remained fundamentally the same (menu names, one button mouse, menu bar at the top, etc), while Windows has changed dramatically over it’s lifespan. You can look at this two ways: Either Mac OS is stagnant or that Apple’s research and design was strong enough to stand the test of the last 20 years. (Even Mac OS X is essentially OPENSTEP in Mac OS clothing)
Since many of the changes made to Windows were to adopt Mac OS features (a practice that continues even today with OS X and Longhorn / Vista), I’d say that Apple made he “right” choices early on, and continues to do so today.
This is not to say that Microsoft can’t design good products, but in the case of hardware and OS design, history has show that, for the most part, Apple leads and Microsoft follows.
Note: to see the evolution of Mac OS, Windows and other operating systems. check out the GUIdebook site. You can see a side by side comparison of desktops here.
This is not to say that Microsoft can’t design good products, but in the case of hardware and OS design, history has show that, for the most part, Apple leads and Microsoft follows.
While I think there’s a lot of truth to that, I don’t think it’s nearly as much as Apple press-releases or Jobs keynotes would have you believe. In fact it’s become the undisputed lore of Apple-ology that Apple is the only company that innovates while all others copy.
Part of that is the instilled knee-jerk reaction of Mac fanatics to anything and everything that competes with Apple. For example, is there anything Windows could have called Windows Vista ( fairly innocuous name) that would NOT have been ridiculed by Apple fans? Could any competing portable music player come out in which the design (and no, not all of them suck) wouldn’t be lambasted for either being a) ugly or b) a rip off of the Ipod?
But the truth is that Apple has done its share of copying, borrowing, and stealing and not in minor ways. The Dock, for example, didn’t have a counterpart in OS9, while Windows had the task bar as far back as Windows 95 and the quicklaunch bar in 98. And of course there’s the Konfabulator/Dashboard connection, which is especially relevant since the design is what they ripped off. And under the hood it took the Mac years to implement protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking.
Not that there’s anything wrong with any of this. I think the computer industry canibalization has resulted in two operating systems pretty close together in terms of ease of use and reliability as well as trade offs in pros and cons. I can easily move between my XP machines and my Mac without too much of a change in gears. It’s a great time to be a computer user.
For example, is there anything Windows could have called Windows Vista (fairly innocuous name) that would NOT have been ridiculed by Apple fans?
Probably not, but the forum over at MacCentral has many hilarious acronyms and burning bunny-type marketing ideas for Apple to use to lambast MS’s new brand. Check it out. I do like Windows Vista and wish them well living up to the concept behind it. True it is that Apple has run with some good MS ideas. It would be good for all if they continue to compete, especially if Apple market share grows some more.
Maybe MS should call itself Orange. Then ad copy could say, “it’s not a lemon, it’s an orange.”
I fall into the MAHWAWUD category.
I would certainly prefer to have the choice to use Macs at work, not only because I personally like the interface and the integrated design, but also because I happen to be in a position to see just how much the “Windows only” network and desktops costs to operate. I am also now attending meetings that spend hours agonizing about the effort and cost of upgrading to XP - I predict we will not be there before Longhorn is released and the cost will not even be measured (tens to hundreds of millions is my estimate).
Many of the IT costs that my very large organization incurrs are related to security, application integration and testing, and user training. None of those would disappear if the organization would allow a choice, but many of them could be reduced substantially. My occasional suggestions to try Macs out are not popular with my fellow bean counters who do not like to do value calculations when price comparisons are so much easier and they do not sit well with the IT professionals that know that the cost savings will come by reducing the IT headcount.
Most of our poor users will never know just how much less effort it can be to learn how to be a power user on a Mac; they know how to use Outlook and occasionally actually fire up Word, PowerPoint or Excel. Asking them to load and edit a picture or create a video presentation gets a blank stare - the bean counters did not consider those to be a capabilities worth buying.
As the “system admin” of my home network, I know that my life is made easier because I have had to spend less time keeping the network secure, keeping the machines up to date, and teaching my family how to do more tasks themselves.
New Windows machines running XP seem pretty competitive with the best that the Mac has to offer, in the same way as a Pontiac seems pretty competitive with a Honda or a Toyota.
The Dock, for example, didn’t have a counterpart in OS9, while Windows had the task bar as far back as Windows 95 and the quicklaunch bar in 98.
The dock made it’s first appearence in 1987 as part of the NeXT computer OS, a company Apple later purchased.
Another little known fact: NeXTSTEP 2.0 introduced system-wide realtime spellcheck (red squiggly underline) built into the UI in 1990. Cocoa developers on OS X get realtime spellcheck for free. (I’m using it right now to check the spelling of this post in Safari)
This feature, which is limited to Office / Outlook, did not appear in Windows until 1998. Realtime spellcheck is still not present system-wide as of Windows XP or the .Net framework version as of 1.1.1. (perhaps Longhorn / Vista in 2006?)
I’m the type of Supercilious Power-Using Zealot that makes people’s skin crawl. MAHWAWs make me vomit. I wouldn’t take a job if it meant using Windows and I know I’m great enough to demand whatever computer I want. Every morning I put six-color war paint on my face and say a quick prayer to my dual 9600 Powermac running Apache and SFTP on Darwin. I know for a fact that Windows users are not only less intelligent, but also perform miserably in the sack. I will out-drink, out-dance and generally out-perform any Windows user at any task, computer related or not. Yes, I work in Advertising, but that’s not why I use Macs. I use Macs because they’re the only machines that are worthy of assisting me in all my creative brilliance. And if any you Windows-using drones have a problem with me or my platform, I’ve got a six pound Pismo under my pillow that I will gladly introduce to the side of your head.
Dick Mitchell,
Ah yes, you are a true nutcase like myself. It is always good to see another true believer out there. Together we can annoy Beebelbrox as never before.