Do “Tech Gurus” think we are idiots?

Posted on 11 June, 2008 by Jimmy Liew

Take for example this article by CNN “tech guru” Jonathan Blum on Why Macs still aren’t right for most businesses.

The beginning of the article stated that although Apple is flashy and using it is still more trouble than it’s worth for basic computing tasks.

Can’t a so called tech guru think of a more original way to describe the Apple than being “flashy”? Credibility in question. Funny how he then opens his article about how a firm saved half of their costs when they switched to Apple.

Next, he proceeded onto listing out some frivolous observations like having a slogan that says “Designed by Apple in California” as being overdone. Erm, if this is from some Cleo beauty writer I might agree, but from a tech pundit? Stick to what you know best!

Next up, more superficial observations – the power button.

But why should locating the “on” switch be such a struggle? Just stick the thing where I, and my employees, can find it: right up front.

Firstly, he was using the iMac which has its power button behind. Being Apple, where form and function does usually matters and correlates. First the form – having a button on the aluminium enclosure means having to drill a hole thru the front which if anyone has any basic metal work, is not as easy as metal can warp. Secondly, the iMac has a swivel screen that tilts up and down. If you have the power switch on the front facade, you would have to press against the bottom half of the screen, causing the screen to be tilted every time you switch the iMac on. Having it on the back, allows one to just hold onto the side, with your fingers pressing onto the button, leaving your viewing angle as it is before. There might be other technical/electrical reasons why the buttons ended up being at the back than in front.

Then his gripe about lack of i/o slot is not least baffling.

But – as ever, with Apple boxes – there were not enough USB ports. I was forced to dump my USB hard drive in favor of an Ethernet enablement unit.

All iMacs come with 3 USB 2.0 ports at the back, with one which will be used by the Apple Keyboard (based on the entry level iMac with default configurations), which on the keyboard itself, there are two where you connect one with the Mouse, leaving three more USB ports available.

How many USB ports do you need sir? One for the USB hot plate to warm your coffee, and one for the USB fan to cool your head? Mind you, there are also one Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 ports just in case you need for faster connections.

Next he complained about some web-based VPN software being unstable on the iMac. GoToMyPC for the Mac requires Safari or Firefox and Sun Java. Firstly for the Mac, this is a web-based app, coded on Java. Do we expect all web-apps to be trouble free, especially one that runs on Java? Secondly, there are plenty of free VPN softwares that are coded for the Mac platform which if he had bothered, would have done the same thing as this GoToMyPC.

Next, a classic example of how some writers, without doing much research, just write some hocus-pocus about some far fetch feature which seems totally out-of-this-world where normal folks won’t understand.

The desktop is divided into quadrants that extend beyond the screen’s edge. Only with some complex keyboard commands can I slide from one to another. All the goofy Apple-centric commands leave PC-trained users constantly fighting to parse out what the control, option and command keys do.

This my friend, is called Spaces – a virtual desktop which gives you additional real-estate that you can manage virtually. A feature that originates from Unix, that’s available for almost decades. If he popped open System Preference, he would have notice that switching between spaces was a matter of just pressing Control plus an Arrow key or the F8 button to select which space to go (see below). Erm, your readers are NOT idiots.

More examples of shallow observations from him:

The real eye-rolling winner is Time Machine, quite possibly the silliest operating system extension in history. Must I really sit through a full round of special effects – the desktop slides away to reveal some mysterious star in full supernova disappearing into infinity behind my various backups – just to find a what I said to a client in a lost e-mail? Honestly.

Yes the effects might be a eye-candy, but the real beauty of Time Machine is in the ease in which one can find and review the archived files, and then select the correct one to recover, furthermore giving you the option to overwrite or save the file with another name. Or should the need arises, allows you to migrate or restore your whole system back to a particular point in time (but only if you have not omit any necessary system and user library files for backup).

These are just some examples of poor researched and supported Apple-bashing articles by so-called tech gurus. Bottom line – do your own research and don’t depend on asshats like this to assist in your decision making.

To find more examples of such jackass writing, follow Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, as he is the expert on nitpicking through such asshats.

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