I was indeed speaking to Senvae. His comment confused me, and still does.
Senvae wrote:Lets slow down a bit. I never said anything about Mac users.
I'm quite relaxed. Provoked in the sense of questioning your motives, but not in the sense that I am personally angry with you. I'm not. I am, however, trying to understand your above statement in the context you present in your most recent post. I am being analytic about this.
Explicitly, no, you didn't say anything about Mac users. Even if I granted that your comment was entirely devoid of implied criticism towards Mac users, which I do not, then you would still need to contend with my other claim, namely that you did cast aspersions on Macs by saying:
I said I would have used a Mac as a door stop.
Which seems a pretty strong statement to make if you were only expressing a personal choice. You could have just left it at, "I'm not a Mac user, and this is spam." You did seem to try to present an argument of some sort against Apple or Macs, although your motivations are unclear. You intentionally insinuated Apple is like a spammer, because this spammer might work for Apple, and you insinuate that Mac computers are no more useful to you than a doorstop.
That is my personal choice.
Yes, it is. I don't think it's a very reasonable choice, but that's not even what I am searching for here. While, indeed, if you're just going to use it as a doorstop, then, as I said, I would be quite happy to offer you very nice block of wood in exchange for that Mac to have a loving home. So clearly, in my original response, there was a bit of... emotional indignation. I fully admit that. That aside however, what I really want to know now is: what was your motivation for bringing it up in in the first place? I think it is fairly self-evident you were doing exactly what I said you were doing, but if I am wrong, please show me where I am.
I built my own PC from parts and I tried customizing my own Mac using their website and it was 4 times the price.
I built my first intel Mac from PC parts. It's called a clone or a hackintosh. It worked quite well for a long time. Mac Hardware versus PC hardware (or even if there is such a distinction now with intel) and the associated costs is one issue. The use of software on a Mac, or a clone/hackintosh, and the associated editing strategies, is another issue entirely. My concern is not to debate either of these with you, but rather to show you that by thinking you are having such a conversation with me, you are demonstrating that your original comment was very intertextually loaded.
Plus I hate their marketing strategy. iPod, iMac, iPhone, its all so gimmicky, and they act like their products are made of teardrops from God himself.
So now you've gone on to bring up issues you have with Apple's business decisions. It is hardly the fault of either the hardware or the software for those decisions. It isn't like the devices are going to board meetings and marketing themselves. Again, if the comment you made is intertextually connected with the idea that Apple products should be punished for the decisions of their creators, that is to say, you wanted us to read into it that idea, as if your Mac is a doorstop in the same way you would make an errant schoolboy stand in the corner, then you definitely did mean to articulate an argument in your comment.
I've seen Macs crash, they aren't perfect.
Yes, they do, and no they aren't. Nowhere did I articulate that I thought otherwise. Again, if this is an issue that was buried within your comment, then it does constitute an argument.
I also saw how awesome the Mac staff is at handling tough situations, by deleting forum posts concerning defective products of theirs. One of them was about this monitor (which you HAD to use, I think it was all part of the PC itself) and it had many stuck pixels and the LCD quality wasn't great. They were complaining on another tech forum that the official Mac forums were snuffing and deleting their treads.
Mac users are well aware of this tendency. I myself have called Apple on it more than once. Like your other examples, this is not something I was responding to.
I am NOT dissing Mac users, if you like them, good for you. I am stating that by my personal experience, I would prefer to stick with PCs since I know how to fix them and I am used to Windows bugs and how to work around them.
I question the first claim. I think you did, knowingly, insinuate that you had a problem with Macs that would upset Mac users.
Your personal experience, and your preferences, while all well and good, and not objectionable, are irrelevant.
This is NOT an invitation to start a PC vs Mac war, I do NOT want to hear about what I am missing.
I am uninterested in playing Apple's PR boy. If they want me to do that, they can pay me. There is no such thing as a PC vs Mac war anymore. You can run Windows on a Mac and OSX on a PC. Rather my purpose here is to question why you felt the need to use such a loaded comment and lash out at Macs when there were Mac users helping you. What purpose did it serve to do so? I think your attempt to argue a position I don't have, aside from being an entire line of Straw Mans, is an attempt to shift the spotlight away from the real issue.
You wanted to mock Macs, so you did. I called you on it, and you backpeddled. If I am wrong, show me an argument that I am, otherwise, just admit that you thought you could get a little bit of Mac bashing in, and you were wrong.
That's all there is to it.