Thanks. I got a headache from rolling my eyes while reading Larry's article.

I just e-mailed Larry to make him an offer for his Mac. We use Adobe Creative Suite extensively at the office, and if his computer is still in factory condition, I'll take it in a heartbeat. Assuming he doesn't demand the $4,000+ price he claims to have paid for it. (Are those Australian dollars or something?)

Larry's automatic e-mail response -- holy God, do people still use those things? -- says that he's traveling and won't be back in the office until Tuesday. I guess his Blackberry is broken or something.

Wait. Hang on a sec. Larry says that he bought his Mac on May 21, 2006. Then he says that "I scraped along with Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac." Where'd he get it? IE for the Mac doesn't come with Tiger, which has shipped with all new Macs since 2005. And it hasn't been available for download on the Internet since January of this year. Which means he couldn't have gotten his hands on a legitimate copy.

I smell a rat.

(I'm continuing this on my own blog.)

I work in the IT department of a large law firm that's all Mac based. We must have "special" versions of Safari cause flash is no problem. I'll have to make sure that I delete my law firm email address and my gmail address from Apple Mail since those shouldn't be working in Mail like they have been for years. I'll also have to make sure that I stop using shift-command-3 to capture screen shots. It's a shame because that was a handy feature.
How did this guy survive to be the age he is with a brain like that?

Let's just say I'm glad I am not in the market for a law consultant. In the beginning of June, I purchased another G5 tower to run as a server. Just rebooted it for the first time since then.

Also, didn't the machine come with the Mighty Mouse?

I smell a rat. Larry says he bought his computer on May 21, 2006, but Apple stopped selling the 2.7 GHz PowerMacs, which he claimed to have, last October.

Apple started shipping a bundled Mighty Mouse with the Power Macs that came after the one Larry claims to have bought. If he'd bought a currently shipping Power Mac in May, he would have gotten a Mighty Mouse with it, but if he bought a dual 2.7 refurbished or used, he would have gotten a regular Apple Pro Mouse.

(Much more on this on my blog. Sorry to be such a pest about it, but I just wrote a lengthy article that points out some of the more ... let's call them "unusual" aspects of this article.)

There is only one way to categorize that article by Larry......

Link-bait.

This is the type of thing I warn any new Mac user about. Things work differently on a Mac than on Windows. If you try to force a Mac to work like Windows, you'll be frustrated. Take the time to learn the Mac way and you'll fall in love with it. Otherwise, as is seen here, you'll just continue to do things the hard way.

Larry, I'm smart too. I've been using and programming computers since the early days of PCs (TRS-80, Apple II, ...) and even I had to learn how to work with a Mac. It's not about smarts. It's about muscle memory. You think that because you're used to using Windows that that's how computers should work. But it's not! OS X is closer to how computers should work. It's why Vista is going to basically clone many OS X features.

Now as far as the Word and Power Point issues, welcome to Microsoft hell! That has ZERO to do with your Mac.

I think Larry may have bought his Mac in May 2005 - the May 2006 is probably a typo. He states later in the article that he "limped along with Explorer 5.0 for Mac, then discovered in 2006 that Microsoft would no longer support the Mac version."

So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that. Everything else, though....

not to be a mac apologist, but...
Mac screen capture is extremely powerful, cmd-shift-4, among others. Perhaps he was watching movies when he was trying to do a screen capture? When DVD player is active, the screen capture function is deactivated.
Any problem with MS Office files is a MS problem. I wonder if this Larry ever tried to convert a very old MS Word file. Same problem.
Mail is easy to set up with non Apple accounts. I have had two or three of these running. iCal is more of a problem, but can work with any standard compliant server.
If you wish to write web pages for IE, then it is pretty silly to buy a non-MS computer. IE is part of the MS strategy to force people to use MS Windows, Now that this Larry person has seen this fully, perhaps he should ask the web pages should be written standards compliant.

"Larry's automatic e-mail response..."

Larry puts his email on the web in the open, and has an automatic responder. Wonder how long it will be before his server/mail is blacklisted as a generator of spam.

So in one day we have learned that Larry doesn't know how to use the basic functions of a computer, read a manual, thinks IE for Windows is better than Firefox (that should tell us something right there), and has set himself up to generate spam.

It's an irony that he should take the time to write an article with the words 'screen capture'. Here's a hint: go to Help and type 'Screen Capture' there instead.

He has responded on his blog. Macs are the Betamax of the 21st century!

I read the column - what an incredible lack of knowledge there. A willful ignorance in things, and for someone who runs websites an absolute lack of knowledge on how the web should work.

I thought about sending an e-mail, but didn't think it would be worth it honestly.

I liked Larry's article and dislike this one. It says above you were going to help him. You never did -- unless repeating his name over and over counts.

I laughed out loud, drawing stares from my fellow co-workers at this post. It points out just how so many people approach the Mac (including my art director): "I don't like Macs, so I'm going to find fault with it. Now, where are those faults? AHA!" Your interjections are the perfect way to point out how silly and absurd his claims are. Bravo!

So in five months and at least one dummies book, he couldn't figure out that Cmd+Shift+3 captures the screen. This warrants another ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC. And I'm a strategic law consultant."

"I run several Web sites, all optimized for IE 5.5 or higher."

*sobs gently*

Could we maybe require people to have some sort of license to write webpages, or at least to call themselves a web designer? Covering such simple questions as "Is the standard for web pages IE?" and "How would you test your web page's correctness?". Possibly also "If I only ever test my web pages with IE, should I be suprised that they don't work in other browsers?".

Keeping the community clean

Funny, I just checked out Larry's personal website in Sarfari... Unless I'm missing something, (maybe he wanted a marquee tag to adorn his beautiful design?) it worked just fine.

Hillarious.

By the way, maybe it's just because I'm an adled Mac zealot, but I'm sitting here on a computer running Windows XP, staring at the File menu in Word 2003, and I can't for the life of me find a File>Delete.

Not even if I click the little arrow that makes the menu display all of its commands. Not even if I go to Tools>Customize>Commands, and browse through every possible command to add to the file menu.

> Outlook for Mac...

Which is a tool that doesn't run anymore because it hasn't been available for years and years. On top o of that Outlook was only available for OS 9.

You can tell the bloke's an idiot as soon as he says: "With a former PC, I had to have my hard drive wiped clean and formatted -- several times -- after catching nasty viruses."

This doesn't happen to intelligent and careful users even if they're running Windows - and certainly not several times. Most malware requires some kind of user intervention to cause damage: ergo, we have a dumb user here.

one right thing, my powerpoint files so not survive intact going from mac to pc, or pc to mac. graphs get messed up, and fonts are not 100% matching, e.g. bullets are different (in some fonts). similar problem with some excel graphs. so even if I bought office for the mac, which works 99% of the time with pc files, I use paralells with windows office for powerpoint. and I don't like having to.

I can think of a couple good PA comics that are desriptive for this:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/03/06

Mac comes preinstalled w/ php and apache.....screen capture is easy...come on man, Don't make this a top 10 article.

A bizarre article, very few of the complaints he registers are evan valid! Typing in 'screen grab' in 'Help' directly takes me to the help file on it, not to mention you get a far better image than the 'print from screen' Windows uses. Frankly the whole article sounds odd, especially since I've helped many 'switchers' and what he had problems with haven't shown up in mine. This includes as it would happen, an attorney here in the Bay Area who had been VERY Windows centric. He now has a MacPro for himself, a Macbook white for his Wife and two older G5 iMacs for his kids. I'll have to forward him the story.

Bodine's firm provides marketing and training services to Law Firms. It is a well known fact that the Windows environment requires lot of training and support for a user to be productive. Further, his firm develops websites that are optimized for Microsoft's IE. It looks as though he has never heard of W3C standards and their validation services. Moreover, he wants use the Macintosh like Windows PC, without realizing that they are two different beasts. One is thoroughbred horse and the other is an ass that can bray very loudly and does its own thing. But, with his rant he got a lot of hits and free publicity.

Shame on Law.com's Legal Technology site to publish an article that is full of ignorance.

Forget emailing Larry. He is a marketing guy and probably will be using his article and the rise in his hit count to show how effective he can be at generating publicity.

The more effective people to question are the editors of law technology news (http://www.lawtechnews.com/r5/home.asp). It is their editors who should be publishing an apology for publishing an article that is so full of incorrect facts. It is in their best interest to appear unbiased, while it is in Lary B.'s best interest to generate attention.

Treat Larry like a child and don't reward his bad behavior with more attention. Treat Law Technology as an adult and point out that they have published an opinion piece that justifies itself with incorrect facts.

Wow that guy is not very bright at all. I read the whole article and am amazed he can operate a toaster.

Thanks for bringing this up. I read Larrys blog at work and forgot to write an answering blog-post about his issues. Glad you did this for me. I totally agree with the comment above: Keep the community clean, Larry, please go buy yourself a Windows PC again. Cheers!

This deserves a WTF. Not Giles' comments -- which are spot on -- but the original article. So many questions.. like.. say.. why spend the extra $3000 on the Power Mac when an iMac can rock the Office and the interwebs? And SURELY it would take FAR less effort to realize Mail works without a .Mac account than it is to track down a copy of Outlook Express..? And.. and.. wow.

larry's comments to various responses received further highlight his ignorance...he recalls the marketshare myth and uses that to intimate that the reason windows has such high marketshare is b/c it's such a superior product...i didn't think this guy could be any stupider after reading the original article...but he proved me wrong.

To be fair, Safari is still pretty immature, and has serious problems with Ajax and some other things.

ANONYMOUS has the right idea: http://www.lawtechnews.com/r5/home.asp?initial_file=contact_us.asp

Send the "LTN" an email. This article is tantamount to libel or slandering the entire mac & switcher community. Just 'cause Larry can't flip a light switch doesn't mean that "all lightswitches are broken". Larry needs to swim at the bottom of the ocean for awhile.

Larrry coulnd't operate his web site with his Mac? I wonder how I operate/design/develop a dozen different websites with only my Mac. I must be bending the space-time-continuum or something since Larry can't do it, and he's a smart guy.
I pity the person who hires Larry as either a lawyer or a consultant. Since knowing the facts is essential to both jobs, the idea really scares the $^#%@ out of me.

Perhaps this is why Law Technology News published his article without careful screening for factual accuracy -- He is a member of their Editorial Advisory Board (from their website at the bottom of the article)

Larry Bodine, a member of the LTN Editorial Advisory Board, is a law firm marketing consultant, based in Glen Ellyn, Ill.
E-Mail: Lbodine@LawMarketing.com.
Website: www.LarryBodine.com.

Am I the only one who thinks Larry's picture is a suspicious likeness of the comedian Bob Odenkirk? That this is some elaborate, albeit strange, prank?

Larry, can I buy your Mac?