Heh.

Uh, dude – that’s not very impressive. Try a level beyond the twenties ;-)

>sometimes IT people create that

Oh sure attitude problems abound and can exist everywhere – it’s the prevalence and apparent general acceptability of this attitude that annoys me. Not knowning how a computer works is one thing. Thinking it’s ok not to understand the simplest operations of one of the most commonly used tools for doing your job is another.

>it’s *always* chaps

No, no, mate I assure it isn’t. I have plenty of experince of appallingly patronising/total show off/really not very good IT women. Mainly men on the whole ‘refusal to share information to make themselves important’ thing I must admit though.

I did once work with a supposed support guy who was actually a lawnmower repair man from austrailia. I kid you not.,..

I have met people who blamed me for problems that arose because they couldn’t and more importantly *wouldn’t* learn this simple task.

To be fair, sometimes IT people create that – the whole patronising, don’t you worry your little head, I’m so clever and I’m also a fifth level mage in Dungeons and Dragons support smugness thing. I think you’ll find both attitudes in big firms: people too lazy to learn the basics because they know IT will come and do it for them, and IT chaps (it’s *always* chaps) who don’t want to share any information whatsoever (or who see every minor support ticket as an opportunity to display their extensive tech knowledge/put the listener into a coma (delete as applicable)).

Jo is absolutely right – you don’t need to be able to maintain it. It would be unhelpfully restrictive if every driver on our roads had to be a qualified mechanic. it might reduce congestion of course…

Personally however I have always been frustrated by peoples lack of ability to use what is, in every company I have worked in, a *vital* piece of equipment for doing their job. No company I have ever worked for would have hired an illiterate, yet they had plenty of people who’s computer skills where at best non-existent. Even worse was the attitude of many people. I don’t expect you to be an expert but nor do I expect you to think that it is OK not to understand how to switch your machine off. I have met people who blamed me for problems that arose because they couldn’t and more importantly *wouldn’t* learn this simple task.

Here are some other things people rely on for their work: central heating and/or air conditioning, mains wiring, water supply, telephony, buildings. Is it irresponsible not to be able to maintain all of them? Or do we live in a civilisation that has been built through division of labour?

Indeed, yeah. Much of the stuff blamed on Windows is usually third party, such as display drivers.

To take you analogy on a PC is a bit like taking a ford to the ford dealer and being told on no – that’s an engine problem – you have to travel to the cosworth branch if you want someone to deal with that.

I think you’re deluding yourself. You’ve assembled a bunch of bits. If the bits break you don’t fix them – if they’re under warranty then you send them back to whoever made them. You don’t fix anything. In the mechanic analogy – a mac or whoever user is someone that when it breaks goes to a garage and asks them to fix it. You take the engine out and you send it back for someone else to fix or repair. There isn’t really that much skill there.

In case you think I’m talking out of my arse – I’m a hardware engineer for one of the biggest computer companies in the world.

I’ve never built a computer for myself. I don’t really feel the need. You can get most companies to get you something pretty close to what you need at a significantly lower price. I might upgrade a PC though. You say you feel sorry for mac users as they are beholden to apple to fix their pcs. What about laptop users? Other than a few components laptops are usually bespoke. Laptops, in the main, can be extremely difficult to open let alone repair and I’ve seen experience laptop technicians screw up this pretty basic task. The reason macs are difficult to maintain is because the mainstream macs are all essentially laptops. There are a relatively small number of power macs out there which are PCs in pretty cases and are as maintainable as PCs. The consumer iMacs are laptops without keyboards. Laptop processors, laptop memory, laptop hard disks and all in a bespoke case. Because of that they are difficult to maintain from a hardware POV. But really, other than hard disks – how often do you think that components fail? Unless you’re poking around inside it or put it in somewhere stupid (too damp, too warm, etc) then almost every component will last until it is completely obsolete. This is the experience of most users.

Back to the car analogy. Making your own PC is like buying a Peugeot 106 and adding turbochargers, big spoilers and the like. It goes as fast, if not faster, than a lot of supercars and costs the same too. You’ve made it yourself to your exact specifications and it fits you and your lifestyle perfectly.

I’d rather go out and buy and Aston Martin.

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but I think I’m coming to different conclusions than you – with the exception of authorised Apple repairers who, in my experience and my neck of the woods, are pathetic: when my powerbook’s graphics card went, I was without the damn thing for six weeks – two of which were waiting for their tech to diagnose a fault I’d already diagnosed, and two of which were waiting for them to get the appropriate part in. I’ve no idea why it then took another two weeks for them to fit it. I suspect that the problem was one of understaffing and overwork.

So yeah, I agree with that side of things: if you’re reliant on authorised repairers, that’s not great if you’re using the machine for business (yes, you can take out an extremely expensive AppleCare contract, but if I did it’d be the same repairer that took six weeks to do a relatively simple board replacement – which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence).

Can you imagine being without your car for six weeks because the garage needed a fortnight to diagnose a fault and another fortnight to order the part?

I also agree that PCs are better for the homebrew crowd: I’ll be building a machine soon and I’m quite excited about it, because it’s going to (a) be a monster and (b) be configured to the exact requirements I want, without any compromises. Which is great, and of course it’s up to me to keep it up and running.

That said, though, I don’t think *all* computing should be like that. To use the car analogy again, some people enjoy tinkering with their cars; I don’t. I just want to get in it, turn the key and drive away. And computing should be like that – which is one of the things I like about Macs.

I can give you two real-world examples: my mum and my in-laws, neither of whom know anything about computers (and don’t need to). My mum’s got a really old iBook I gave her a few years ago; my in-laws have a relatively recent PC that, again, I passed along. In both cases the hardware has been absolutely fine, but the software… the iBook is maintenance free, and whenever my mum wants to bash off a letter, look at our pics on Flickr, check cinema listings or whatever it’s there, it’s ready and it works. Whereas with my in-laws I have to do regular maintenance trips (despite loading it with anti-virus, anti-spyware, security programs and so on) to keep the PC happy, install updates and all the rest of it. And that’s an utter, utter pain in the arse.

Back to the car analogy: my mum’s iBook is like her car. It works every time, she doesn’t have to fiddle with it, and it gets her where she needs to go. Whereas the PC – despite being bog-standard and unmodified – is more like a troublesome banger that needs constant tweaking and the odd hard punch to make it go. Again, fine if you like that kind of thing, but a pain in the arse if all you want to do is go online and check your email.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed about Vista, though. XP’s pretty old and creaky and so far at least, Vista looks like a better system for my in-laws :)

One day, he broke my laptops hard disk. No fault of his. It just went. I saved what I could, bought a new drive, fitted it, reinstalled the OS, whole thing fixed in two days.

His Mac broke. Wireless network connection becoming intermittent. He has to phone tech support like an emasculated Luddite and send it in to get it repaired. First time, they miss the problem, he’s without the Mac for a week while they miss it. Second time, well they are supposed to be replacing the part, but it’s been away a week and counting.

A computer is a mightily powerful thing. My main PC is for work, it’s the hub of a home cinema and it’s got serious gaming power. If it breaks, I fix it, because I built it. Because if I am going to be using a machine and depending on it for my work it would be abjectly irresponsible to not be able to maintain it. Macs are a symptom of a modern condition common to many folks who just don’t want to get their hands dirty fixing stuff, from plumbing to car oil changes to PC maintenance because they are scared to be responsible for the consequences of failure. I pity Mac owners because they are beholden to others if the thing breaks, they have no power over their own computer, if it goes wrong all they can do is run crying to tech support.

That, and the MS approach feels more paranoid and more invasive than the OS X way. That’s largely because the system stops every time there’s a UAC prompt, whereas you can keep working on other things in OS X if you don’t immediately enter the password.

Easier, if you put Terminal in the Dock (just right-click it and select “Keep in Dock” while running). Although I suppose you could drag Command Prompt into the QuickLaunch area of the Task Bar. But even then, Terminal is a bigger icon, that grows as you get closer to it, if you turn on magnification, so arguably easier to run even if you do have CP in the QuickLaunch. So there.