Journal ted_nugent's Journal: A Tale of Two Camps
Having now reached my first anniversary as a "switcher", I've spent some time lurking in the mac forums and download sites. One observation I find interesting is the mixed culture that has resulted since the introduction of OS X. There are two user bases, each having polar opposite perspectives on applications.
The first one is the old world Mac community. These folks are the loyalists who have stuck by Apple, through thick and thin, lo these many years. Many of them weren't too happy about the death of their old OS and the arrival of the very different OS X, but are begrudgingly coming along.
These folks love utilities that make their desktop look and act more like OS 9, but they loathe the X-Window system. They're very happy to pay and register for any useful shareware. In fact, they're thrilled to see any development happening for their platform. They're used to being a distant second place when it comes to the commercial software market. Which, apart from a few small freeware utilities and games, was the only source of software.
Then there are the switchers. Not the type targeted in Apple's marketing campaign, but the more savvy power users who are drawn to the Unix undercarriage married to stylish good looks. These folks were impressed with the original Macintosh, but by the early 90s didn't see it as being so innovative anymore. The switchers considered OS 6-7-8-9 to be an overpriced, unstable, black box used only by industrial artists and technophobic consumers. These folks are used to getting most types of software for free, and want nothing to do with classic applications or carbon libraries. These folks revel in the fact that most anything not available as a native app is available as a Fink port.
What about the Windows switchers? I'm sure there are a few out there, but they're harder to spot. Maybe they just aren't a forum posting kind of people.
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A Tale of Two Camps
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