Let's talk attitude! Part 1

My first inclination when I thought of this article was to just start off teaching folks how to have the proper Mac attitude. That's the aggressiveness in me coming out. Preparation is everything, and to be prepared, we must know what we're dealing with out there. In this instance, we're dealing with the PC mentality. So first, we're going to learn something about that. Then we'll discuss the Mac side.

I'm a Mac fanatic. I've been in more Mac vs. PC arguments than I care to remember. In the beginning, PC guys offered up nonsense like "well, you can't drop to DOS" on a Mac. Well, duhhhh. On the other side of that coin, you couldn't "drop to the Finder" on a PC. I asked one guy, a PC consultant to tell me exactly what I needed to do at "DOS" level on a Macintosh. He rattled off something and I took him to the Control Panel that tended to that matter easily and graphically. So he rattled off something else. I told him on a Mac, that particular item was tended to automatically by the operating system and there was no need to fiddle with it. So he rattled off something else. For every one of his "needs" to drop to DOS, Macintosh had an easy graphical method for meeting that need. Of course, the guy didn't convert to Mac.

And I don't know if he understood what I meant when I said it was just much easier to point and click than it was to go deal with arcane directory lists or system commands. That guy was a die hard PC fan and probably still is.

One day, while reading the newspaper, in the computer ads I noticed an advertisement for a PC consultant. Being in "one of those moods", I thought I'd have a little fun. So I called the guy and told him I was looking at buying a computer and asked if he could help. Of course, he said he could. So I let him ask me a few questions such as what I was going to do with the computer, etc. Once he got a few answers, he told me he could put together the perfect system for doing those things. Of course, it was a PC. So I let him run through all the technical jargon about megahertz and megabytes and baud rates and all that stuff, knowing at some point, he'll have to shut up and then it's my turn to talk.

That time arrived and I said, "well, that's mighty impressive. . . but what about Macintosh?"

He said "There's not much software out there for Macintosh." I said, "I read that there were over 30,000 programs for a Mac. How many do I need?" (One must be able to speak without snickering to make these type calls.)

Taken aback, he said, "well, you'd need to be compatible with the 'standard programs everyone used'." So I asked him which programs those were and of course he mentioned Microsoft Word and Excel, etc. So I said, "the article I read said those programs were available for Macintosh and you could share the files you create with people using PCs."

So he said that Macs weren't as compatible on most other programs and that the PC had many more programs available, for instance, he mentioned there were over 60 word processing programs for the PC.

Naturally, I asked, "How many word processing programs do I need?" He said, "one." I asked if there was one available for Mac. He said "yes". So he mentioned spreadsheets. Same routine, I asked how many I needed, he said one, yada yada yada.

I said that everything I had read said the Mac was much simpler to set up and use than a PC and if I could do everything I needed to do, that sounded like the direction I would go.

So, this PC consultant, who thinks he's talking to a potential customer, in his infinite wisdom and mired in the quagmire of the PC mindset says to me, and I quote:

"Well, if you're looking for a computer that's easy to use, I guess a Mac might work for you."

I thanked him and hung up.

Based on that statement, I guess that guy just presumes that there are at least some people out there that might be looking for a computer that's hard to use. He was almost implying that discovering someone who wanted a computer that was easy to use was a thing strange to him.

I'll have more on this tomorrow in Part 2 of Let's talk attitude!