Mac Chatter – The Best & Worst Mac Comments From Around The Web

Our new Mac Chatter series gathers up some of the juiciest, silliest, most outrageous, and most interesting discussion about the Mac industry from around the Web. Raena Armitage scours the forums, message boards, and article comments from some of the most (and least) popular hangouts in the Mac Web and beyond.

Please note that we have left the quoted posts "as-is," including bad punctuation, bad spelling, and bad writing.

It’s that time again, folks – I’ve been quietly stalking the Mac Web in search of tasty bits of conversation, and it’s time to dish up. With MACWORLD Tokyo just weeks away, and the new iMacs finally shipping their way around the world, great discussions are thick on the ground. Apparently, so is the snow in Observer danielbottoni’s part of the world –

On February 2nd a Groundhog came out and didn’t see a shadow of a FedX truck, so it might be ten more weeks before I see my iMac. Tonight I will dream of spring and my G4 arrival.

It could be a lot worse – and indeed it is. parky over at MacNN has an axe to grind over the fact that European iMac orders seem to be playing second fiddle to US customers…

If Steve Jobs had been ‘Mr Honesty’, he should have said the iMac will start to ship in the US at the end of January, and in other markets at a later date. You cannot expect to excite a market with a new product, announce it is available, and then back track.

It is always the same with Apple, all show and little honest content… I honestly beleive they had no intention of shipping iMacs to Europe and the US at the same time. They have not done in the past and will not do in the future. It may not be dishonest, but it is not the ‘moral’ thing to do.

There’s a point there, especially when non-US customers are often paying more for the same setup. Thankfully, parky’s iMac shipped on the 7th. Then again, as scottiB adds, ‘Hopefully, none of your iMacs arrives in this condition!‘ Word to that.


It doesn’t seem as though anyone’s really weeping about the idea that Macs won’t be sold at Circuit City anymore. For JakeThePimp, it could mean the difference between a nice clean police record and a few months’ probation.

I went in there and the guy asked why I wanted one of those (meaning macs) for… he even said that the HP was a much better computer and was twice as fast as the macs. The HP had MS XP the latest and greatest OS. I asked if SSH was built into XP, he asked if that was some kind of Game and if it was not he might be able to get it. I walk out before beating this guy.

I’d acquit him, but whatever.


It seems that David Coursey’s current pro-Mac jag at ZDNet is getting attention. Hidden among the PC-weenies’ bleatings, Stephen Shepard makes this outstanding point

Apple has made a move that with OS X that few have realized yet. By making UNIX it’s core Apple will soon be the largest vendor of UNIX in the industry. This is a huge opportunity for the company. In the past IT managers steered clear of Apple products because of it’s proprietary nature. This is becoming a thing of the past, with Darwin (the core of OS X), being an open source project Apple has opened the door to the base of it’s operating system, and with adoption of industry standard hardware there is little that remains proprietary except the GUI which sits on top of OS X. The hardware options will grow as the OS increases marketshare and profits….Once the company’s survival isn’t so dependent on the sales of more expensive boxes we’ll see changes there too. That means configuration options, real server systems, possibly bare bones boxes for the tinkerer in us all or maybe even clones again (I HOPE).

And he’s right – witness the renewed interest in the platform and the excitement over the new hardware. The industry’s taking notice. Almost a year later, though, there’s still resistance from the diehard Classic users. Says littlemacweb at the Applelinks boards

No X is *not* Macintosh, or the OS for the ‘rest of us’. So I wish they would stop calling it Mac OS X and just call it X. It doesn’t deserve the Macintosh name..

Apple will figure it out when they see how many of us do not like the PC-like slavery involved in using UNIX.

I guess I’ll make OS 9 last as long as I can and hope Apple returns to its senses by then.

Don’t hold your breath, kiddo. Oh, and watch out, you may be a luddite.


How’s this for creative? Our own forums are home to the poetic musing of many a Mac user with a growing collection of Mac haiku. Observer hilzoy bemoans the lack of OS X Palm conduits:

Woe is me; I use
Now Up to Date and Contact
They have no conduits.

(I know that I could
Sync the files from OS9.
That’s too much trouble.)


If you’ve seen anything of note in your favorite online hangouts, I’d love to hear about it. Why not drop me a line?

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