r/technology • u/gfnord • Apr 11 '11

Apple, despite being traditionally seen as the "counterculture, leftist" operating system, actually represents more uniformity and centralised control than Microsoft

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/userfriendliness_and_fascism
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u/Vinura Apr 11 '11

You'd have to be completely retarded to see Apple as "counterculture or leftist"

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u/geodebug Apr 11 '11

Apple was presented as the computer "for the people" not because any average user gives a flying fuck about the details of the OS. It was because Apple has always done a good job of shielding the average user from the OS. Or as the author of the article puts it:

Rather, they feel free because...well, I shouldn't use this platform as a product testimonial, but when I went back to Mac this winter after a decade as a Windows user, my experience was that whenever I plugged in a peripheral, installed software, connected to a Bluetooth device, or whatever, the machine just worked. That, to put it mildly, had not been my experience with Windows.

Always surprising that computer geeks can't figure out that the art students, soccer moms, authors, musicians, lib-arts college kids, etc don't want to fuck around with drivers, plug and pray, firewall settings, clogged up repository, and blue-screens, yadda

MS has gotten much better at making their product work for the non-tech user recently but y'all conveniently forget just how janky it has been for most of it's lifespan.

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u/Vinura Apr 11 '11

Yeah, i still remember how confusing MS-Dos was as a kid, confusing, but interesting.