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Weblog:   Why I am not a platform zealot
Subject:   Open Standards Zealot
Date:   2004-05-27 07:21:22
From:   jmincey
Your article is a classic case of bait and switch. Given your headline, I had expected to read an essay on the merits of multiple platforms and how each has its pros and cons and is well suited to some tasks and not to others. I had expected that you would come down in favor of diversity of platforms for purposes of security and of tailoring computers to the end which they are intended to serve. Finally, I had expected to read something in favor of open standards and platform-independent networking.


Of course, there is none of this in your article. Instead, it is a diatribe about your negative experiences with a Macintosh. Now all file systems are vulnerable to corruption, and it sounds as though your boot blocks may have been trashed somehow. (Did you get an error message about "Invalid key length" by chance?) Be that as it may, I simply don't believe that an employee designated to be an Apple "genius" at a retail store didn't know what a command line was and didn't know that the Mac offered it. No one will be acquainted with all error messages or all software utilities -- of course not. But your article goes over the top and strains credulity.


With each Mac Apple ships a restore disk which includes a separate partition of diagnostic and repair utilities. It will perform a full panoply of hardware tests for you (among other things). Apple's disk utilities are indeed modest -- and Apple acknowledges as much. I look forward to more robust tools from Apple in the future, (though Windows itself does not include robust disk repair tools -- otherwise there would not be such a healthy third-party market in this area).


I have installed a number of Airport cards -- including several in iBooks, and I have had no trouble with keyboards. You just have to take some care -- that's all. Laptop keyboards are notorious for being fragile, and if you don't think so, inquire with IBM as to its Thinkpad keyboard failure rates.


Let me suggest that in an effort to appear even-handed and objective you are -- with your bogus headline -- guilty of false advertising. Your article has NOTHING to do with the merits of multiple platforms; and a more accurate and honest headline would have been this:


"A Switcher's Bad Experience with a Macintosh"


-Jeff Mincey
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Showing messages 1 through 8 of 8.

  • Open Standards Zealot
    2004-05-27 07:32:28  Justin Gehtland | O'Reilly Author [View]

    Jeff --

    A) I'm sorry you were offended by my blog post. At least, I'm assuming you were offended, since your tone implies it.

    B) The title wasn't bait and switch at all; it was, perhaps, too short, but, heck, my post clearly explains why I am not a raving platform zealot, after all. ;-)

    C) More to the point, please, whatever you think of my post, don't call me a liar. If you'd like to talk to me or my wife (who was standing next to me) about the Apple "genius" who clearly had never seen single user mode, you can contact me directly. justin at relevancellc dot com. I know that the geniuses can't know everything, but c'mon. I'm not ignorant, nor am I a liar. I'm merely reporting what happened to me.

    D) I spent three days with the repair disks, with Norton and with DiskWarrior. None solved my problem. The diagnostic and repair utilities would not fix the permissions problems (it would report them fixed, but when I reran the scan, the problems were still there), Norton wouldn't touch the primary partition and DiskWarrior fixed some of the issues, but not all.

    E) I'm glad your experience with installing Airport cards went smoothly. Mine did not.

    F) My post was not a diatribe against the Mac. Only against those people who have been telling me, even in the face of my recent experience, that the Mac is a panacea. It isn't. Nothing is.

    • Open Standards Zealot
      2004-05-27 22:07:25  xerobase [View]

      > I'm glad your experience with installing Airport
      > cards went smoothly. Mine did not.

      And therein lies the rub. You get to report your individual experience from the O'Reilly platform, while the rest of us who have little or no similar trouble can only bemoan another veiled mac-bashing in the Comments.

      > My post was not a diatribe against the Mac. Only
      > against those people who have been telling me ...
      > that the Mac is a panacea.

      Then the post is simply ill-conceived to begin with, or at the least just poorly written, because you don't bother to make clear "the point" until the last paragraph.
    • Chris Shiflett photo Open Standards Zealot
      2004-05-27 09:53:04  Chris Shiflett | O'Reilly Author [View]

      > C) More to the point, please, whatever you think
      > of my post, don't call me a liar. If you'd like
      > to talk to me or my wife (who was standing next
      > to me) about the Apple "genius" who clearly had
      > never seen single user mode, you can contact me
      > directly.

      I believe he was referring to this comment:

      > He'd never seen a command line.

      Showing someone the output of fsck in single user mode and coming to the conclusion that he/she has never seen a command line is a bit of a stretch, regardless of the reaction you observed.

      Because the original poster did not agree with your conclusion, he stated:

      > I simply don't believe that an employee
      > designated to be an Apple "genius" at a retail
      > store didn't know what a command line was and
      > didn't know that the Mac offered it.

      I don't see this as questioning your integrity but rather disagreeing with your logic.
      • Open Standards Zealot
        2004-05-27 10:18:20  Justin Gehtland | O'Reilly Author [View]

        Ahhhhh....I see the confusion now, thanks. ;-)

        So, let me go back and make it perfectly clear: it was not that he had never seen fsck. It was that he'd never seen the Mac in CLI mode. It was unclear whether or not he'd ever seen ANYTHING in CLI mode, but he was, and this was clear from further discussion with him, that he had no idea that the Mac could be interacted with in that way.

        I hope that helps clear it up.
        • Red Herring Argument
          2004-05-27 10:36:46  jmincey [View]

          Justin, are you absolutely sure the person you spoke with was an Apple "genius"? I ask because at times the most tech savvy sales person may substitute for the genius or help out if one is out sick or on vacation or if the store is otherwise short staffed.

          In my experience, even the Apple SALES people (at their retail stores) are quite aware that OS X includes a "Terminal" utility which permits access to the UNIX shells and shell tools (and CLI syntax). They may not all know about single-user mode specifically, but even this is fairly common knowledge to anyone who is so much as a casual visitor to the discussion forums on Apple's web site. I have been pleasantly surprised by the technical fluency of the staff at the Apple stores.

          This is why I suggest you may have misunderstood the individual you spoke with. When they spoke of never having seen something before, maybe they were referring to the specific error message which was being reported. And in any event, the Apple people have a protocol to confer with each other in the event one can't help a customer with his problem. No employee can know everything.

          Meantime, I'm not among those who thinks Apple (or Steve Jobs) walks on water. At the end of the day, the Macintosh is a machine and OS X is an operating system designed and developed by fallible humans. But I don't know anyone who says anything to the contrary. Even the greatest Mac proponent will acknowledge that the Mac is not flawless -- after all, if it were without flaw, then there would be no need for Apple to release bug-fix updates nor for Apple to maintain a large tech support department. So let me suggest this is a red herring -- you are arguing against a position that no one takes in the first place. (Or can you indeed show me someone who contends that the Mac is a perfect machine?)
          • Red Herring Argument
            2004-05-27 10:45:14  Justin Gehtland | O'Reilly Author [View]

            Please see my post called "Starting to regret picking on the Mac."

            As for whether or not my Genius was a Genius, well, he could have been a Martian in human clothes (and an Apple t-shirt) for all I can prove. All I know is:

            a) he claimed he was the Genius on shift
            b) that he had never seen single-user mode before
            c) the only thing he could suggest was running Norton

            I'm sure that most Apple Genuises are smart, helpful people. Please, Apple Geniuses, don't hunt me down! You are doing a great job!

            • Red Herring Argument
              2004-05-27 11:26:27  jmincey [View]

              >Please see my post called "Starting to regret picking on the Mac."

              And this post would be...where?
              • Red Herring Argument
                2004-05-27 15:00:14  Justin Gehtland | O'Reilly Author [View]

                http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4969
Showing messages 1 through 8 of 8.