The real reason behind tech illiteracy is phones, with their 100% PC independent and 100% locked down ecosystems.
This gets reposted ever month
C64 forever!!!
I think for the past couple of decades windows and mac have had similar levels of complexity for the average user. Most people dont do anything more than going through an install wizard
But most Linux Distributions also have a Install-Wizard and even GUIs for installing software…
I would even say installing a normal program on Ubuntu via the Softwaremanager is easier than installing a normal Windows Executable since Windows adds the extra Steps of having to search and download it and afterwards to read the software terms and mark the checkboxes
The only more complex step with Linux is downloading the ISO and booting from it
-> So just the Distribution of the initial OS is easier with Windows and macOS for Desktop, for Mobile we anyway won as Linux-Community with having Android on most phones
Since when did this become an autistic trait? I joined the school computer club when I was 14. It started that year with a single IBM PC. We did not load Linux because it didn’t exist for another decade otherwise I’m sure we would have. I have to believe that kind of curiosity and learning still exists without one needing to be autistic. Then again, under current diagnostics for autism, we might all have been on the spectrum since we were all geeks on some level.
Then again, under current diagnostics for autism, we might all have been on the spectrum since we were all geeks on some level.
Who is gonna tell him?
The fact that you’re responding to a joke in a very literal way is honestly pretty good.
I did my first programming on a mainframe with punch cards, then migrated to a TI-59. At some point I was typing little games into my friend’s VIC-20, and then I got to take my first real programming class in 9th grade using an Apple IIe. I’m not autistic at all, just nerdy as fuck.
I still have the TI-59, buried in a box somewhere.
Dang, you’re old old
Only physically. In my mind I’m often still 14 or 25 or some random young age.
Hell yeah! That’s the way to live!
disclusion is not real science
It ain’t real English either
but “exclusion” is, lol
ps autists will not skew the results, there are vastly more normal kids than autists, and even then only a subset of autists are into IT, making the results skew smaller. i guess you could call it cherry-picking, cuz youre picking from what is supposed to be a random set of people
I dont think you meant normal in a disparaging way towards autistic people, but I think the more appropriate word would be neurotypical
Yeah, that is an unfortunate clash between scientific definition of “normal” ie: a statistical distribution which follows a normal curve, or a sample which has very high likelihood of being part of such a distribution.
I think this is also a part of the reason why many physicists use the word “Gaussian curve” rather than “normal curve” just to avoid ambiguity with the common word “normal”.
Best use of a Mac is to sell it and buy 2 computers to put Linux on.
To fix Windows problems, reboot (and pray)
To fix Linux problems, Be root.Tbf rebooting fixes Linux problems too, though usually after
paru -Syu.I had a job developing software for datacenter machines’ hardware and software health. And the most common automatic repair that we had was escalating 1. reboot; 2. reinstall OS; 3. check hardware. I know it’s different but it was fun to see it “first-hand”.
And also, “to create Linux problems, be root” works as well.
to create Linux problems, be root
Personal attacks are against community rules.
Macs can actually be really good linux computers. It’s not always straightforward, but I’ve heard good things once it’s installed.
Anything running Linux can be good of course- just not going to easily convince me that paying double (or more) is rational.
I agree with you but you don’t pay double when you buy an old “obsolete” Mac and install Linux on it. Granted, my computer needs are very basic but my 13 yr old Mac is running better than ever after I got rid of MacOs.
Now I understand you.
Macbooks aren’t really always overpriced anymore. Macbook neo is among the best value at its price range and m5 Mac air is roughly comparable with other of its tier.
Not sure if either can run Linux yet tho
MacBook supported for 7 years and then no more updates vs 10+ years of support on average.
I guess if you dont mind the forced obsolescence and ewaste, maybe?
Well yeah that’s a huge issue infecting the vast majority of the arms computing space which sucks a lot but not a uniquely apple issue. Windows seems to be heading in the same direction such as with the Microsoft surface laptops which also have a 6 year end of life and to a lesser extent most laptops have about 6 year of driver support.
This can be fixed in most laptops by switching to Linux but the issue is still there.
I hear Linux runs pretty good on a can opener!
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Hey, if it’s an Intel Mac they run Linux great. I’m using a 2011 iMac running Linux Mint going on two and half years and haven’t had any issues!
(I know that more recent Macs have Asahi Linux, but I’ve not used it and cannot speak to it)
Nice.
I wasn’t autistic, I was poor and switching to Linux made old hand-me-down computers work like new. It also frustrated me a lot, but that’s part of the game.
I remember this meme from when the Berlin Wall fell and everyone in the DDR got access to Ubuntu.
The first 3 computers I ever touched were an Apple II, Apple II e, and a Powemac.
Then I spent a decade in the Windows wilderness. Back and forth… Now safely home to Linux.
Maybe not a good question by itself.
That was definitely back before Apple went crazy with their whole closed ecosystem. Apple II feels a lot more like linux these days considering the amount of documentation available about the hardware. And parts aren’t locked down with serial numbers like in the iPhone…
I had a lot of fun as a kid messing with an Apple IIgs. One of the games I had was “Thexder”, and you can probably guess where I got my username.
thexder and silpheed were both ahead of their times. good memories.
The question really does need to be separated out by era. Are we talking Mac System 7 vs Windows 3.1, Mac OS 9 vs Windows 98, early OS X vs Windows XP, Intel Macs versus Windows 7, ARM Macs vs Windows 10, etc.? Each generation had a different user paradigm, and people who were good with one versus another might mean different things than other generations.
Basically the same here haha
Is Discluded a word? Isn’t that Excluded?
No no, discluded is for when you exclude someone and diss them at the same time.
Annie failed English but they change her grade to get her out of their school
She was about to say discarded, then change the route mid sentence.
I think it’s one of those flammable/inflammable sort of things.
Got 'em!
I started on a Mac, got a bachelor’s degree in IT on a Mac, and have used a Mac professionally in that field for over 20 years.
I think most people would assume the Mac kids to be more tech literate.
The Windows nerds I’ve met have all said Macs are toy computers that don’t do real work.
Ask them to write a file path, they’ll put the slashes the wrong way.
That should disqualify them from any further tech related discussion.
Oh yeah? Well I have a hypotenuse too!
Why would it skew results? It’s a study of correlation, not causation.
Because it would add one more variable. “Skew” isn’t really the right word though. It could affect the results in unpredictable ways, discoverable by comparing a separate study done with only autistic kids.
Is the hypothesis that people in those two OS’s have no clue about other OS’s and the one thats looks like a fruit have a superiority complex?
Linux users are particularly notorious for not having superiority complex.
I use Arch btw
I have a superuser complex
sudo drop your complex
Changing “sudo” to “please” on my terminal was the best thing I ever did, now all of my conversations with my computer look so polite
“please !!” sounds like you beg on your knees to execute the last command
You don't have permissions to do this action; next action: rm -rf /
Your illness is rooted deep into your consciousness. “su” is “switch user” by the way…
Hate to be that guy, but it’s akshually substitute user
No-no-no, you love being that guy :)
Omg it’s me
I use Arch btw (unironically lmao)
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It isn’t a complex when it’s just actually superior
psh everyone uses arch nowadays the steam deck is huge! Now if you used nix OS that would be impressive!
I wanted to try NixOS, gave it a couple shots, but didn’t manage to properly switch before it went full slop. Maybe I need to try Guix.
I do, but its not really impressive
Everyone uses linux, you have to use bsd to stand out
Nix is just so normie. Why don’t better use Gentoo? That’s what an actual nerd with no social life does!!!1!1
Noobs not daily driving their LFS builds
Nah, all my homies build their own kernel from scratch… In Assembly. TempleOS goes brrr
Sure but we do have a clue of the other two. Regularly having to act as the IT guy for family for a OS I don’t interact with…
i think the hypothesis is that windows kids have general tech literacy and problem solving skills and OSX kids dont. and linux users are autustic ;-]
The most powerful things windows can do are gui based and the most powerful things macos can do are in the cli
Not saying everyone bothers going that deep but there is a reason most software engineers and other professionals would prefer mac over windows
Windows is an inconsistent mess and their terminal tools are afterthoughts
I don’t know if that’s accurate. Have you seen PowerShell? It’s so good, some people install it on Linux to use as their main shell
This just proves the world has deeply disturbed people
Nonsense, c# developers might install it on Linux but nobody who understands unix like systems considers it
This is incorrect. And the GNU tools would be much better if they were object-oriented like PS is. No I don’t have PS on my personal machines (Cachy btw) but that’s genuinely a super great feature. It’s an idea who’s time has come (ages ago)
That might be true if *NIX had another shell with an object-based pipeline, or if PowerShell wasn’t object-based
I’d argue most people who dismiss PowerShell offhand like that don’t understand it particularly well
Most gnu / bad tools are essentially objects, you just have to xarg the column you want
Object orientated anything is pretty terrible
Yeah, having to take the extra steps to parse strings every time is far superior to objects that can sort, filter, and give you the exact properties you need natively
I mean, if your complaint is a heavier overhead, sure, but for most uses as an interactive shell or for smaller scripts, I don’t really see how that would negatively impact you in meaningful ways compared to having to splice raw text and hope the package maintainer doesn’t decide to add a column in a future update
No he is sorta right, powershell is actually kinda fire.
I use it daily, there is no point putting it on a unix like system
One day we will be rid of windows servers and I won’t have to use poweshell ever again
And that’ll be a sad day; powershell is one of approximately two great things that Microsoft ever did.
It’s a little verbose in its commands, but it’s very good.
The most powerful stuff will always be script/CLI/shell based. Guis only work so and so well, but having multi step procedures requires something else.
Windows included
Seems right (I use Linux)
That would be a very weird conclusion when Macs were generally the ones taught in school, and are also based on BSD.
A lot of apple’s design philosophy hides the technical detail, to try and create a friction-free user experience. Android does the same thing, but apple were doing it earlier and on desktop devices to some extent. Windows back in the day was significantly more transparent, although I don’t know if I can say the same for modern windows
That’s well and good for some things, but the concern that it reduces the natural tendency to become highly tech literate is genuine.
add to that that for some time in history it was quite common to build your own pc (something that abviously went away with rise of laptops), which required whole other level of understanding.
I built my laptop. Framework user fwiw
went not isn’t
First time witnessing a stroke over the internet
This has been my experience and have anecdotal evidence of people who can use a Mac but don’t understand any of it. One customer we had problems with until we just cut it off was that she’d have issues with her Mac and couldn’t navigate it effectively to try troubleshooting. She didn’t understand how to install on it so we could run remote management software.
You used entirely different OSes than me then. Macs were not easy to use while windows was standard. If you were using a Mac you were learning a lot more since the majority of PCs in homes were windows and you didn’t have to do anything on them.
No. The only hard thing with macs was and is tivoization, because they want to decide what you can install and what not; that’s the reason why jailbreaks and things as brew and all that had to be created.
My school system used macs before OSX and switched to Windows almost entirely when OS 9 was still the latest thing. Sounds like another user had the same experience. OS 9 was nothing like unix and had no terminal even, to my knowledge.
your car’s main control unit may also be based on bsd (i have no idea whether that is in fact the case) but surprisingly most people would not call themselves experts on car electronic just because they drive a car.
while a lot of people considers themselves to be “it experts” just because they were raised by youtube instead of their parents since the age of 2.
Apple hasn’t always used a Unix-like system, though. The old Mac OS on those school computers was it’s own beast.
And now it seems like schools go for either chromebooks or tablets anyway.
generally
Where? Not in Spain. In fact no one I know was taught computers in Mac.
I think one of the reasons is that MacOS didn’t really have any games back then, so there was no reason for a kid to be glued to their computer. And if you use something for a long time, you collect problems and ways to solve them, getting the experience and some technical knowledge along the way.
Number munchers and Oregon trail have entered the chat. Also the dozen other games on floppy disks (that my middle age mind cannot remember now) that we played on our Apple IIe’s.
My mom worked at Software Etc in the 80’s.
There were so many more, and better games, for PCs.
The only good games on Mac were ones ported from PC.
I was my mother’s official “troubleshooter”. If a customer returned a game, she gave it to me, to test.
There were definitely a lot more PC games returned than Mac, but there was almost never anything wrong with them. Probably came down to individual setups.
Which was Mac’s strong point. There was no real diversity in hardware, so everything worked.
But all the Mac games SUCKED compared to PC.
Unfortunately, this was also when I was exposed to Ultima IV… and my homework never saw me again.
Were you under the impression I don’t believe there were pc games back then? I didn’t say that, also, funny enough you say
The only good games on Mac were ones ported from PC.
But the only games I specifically named actually were on Mac first then later ported to DOS.
Someone clearly never played Dark Castle
I’m not so sure but I think back THEN there were less captivating PC games as well. My perspective is from the early 00s Russia, when you had to deal with pirated games, unbelievably slow Internet, funny videos shared between friends on CDs, going with a hard drive to a friend’s house just to share your music collection, etc. Basically, we had to know how to do this kind of stuff because the alternative was so expensive. Now with LLMs you don’t even have to “google” anymore, so there’s no need to know, for example, what a file extension is.
Interesting perspective. I was in the rural US and my experience was probably closer to yours than you might think. 33-48kbps modems were insanely slow, even back then. Between that and my parents banning the Internet in the house, most everything I got my hands on was pirated, and either painstakingly (secretly) downloaded over midnight hours on the unreliable modem or from a floppy disk or burned CD from a friend! This was circa 1997-2001 until I moved out and got a usable Internet connection.
Yeah, that checks out, I usually notice a 10-20 years “cultural” gap. Personal anecdote: watching The Sopranos in 2020s still felt like the topics in russian media and culture are just starting to catch up, before that no one really talked about depression as a disorder, and people taking ADs were seen as “crazy”.
Yep. A lot of people also say that the rural US is typically about 20 years behind california in a few ways, which I also agree with.
There were so many games, just not AAA titles
Huh? Mac had the better games! In fact I lived in the countryside and our school was mostly Macs until I got to high school.
Huh? Mac had the better games!
That’s a wild claim.
Mac had heaps of games in the 80s and 90s. Then from the 90s to the 2010s, it was WINDOWS TIME for games, with some being ported to OSX and Linux or run with compatibility software. Now it’s Windows/Linux hardcore and still only small or modest Mac support.
Mac did have a ton of fun games back then, though! I didn’t get a Mac of my own until Intel Core Macs came out, but I loved the Macs I used at my friends’ houses and school.
I went through an edgy “Apple is worst computers” phase in the 2000s, but I grew to like the hardware and OS after I picked one up to install Windows on to bring to LAN parties (all non-Mac laptops that could play games fuckin suuuuuucked back then and I was never at home.)
They are talking about stuff from 30 years ago and having difficulty processing that they are old now.
I don’t know about better, but the Mac games I had in elementary school were awesome for kids that age. Oregon trail and number munchers. I don’t think pc gaming had really taken off much at all then. That was years before doom, even.
In the 90s, especially early 90s, the hardware was just plain faster and more capable. Coupled with a remarkably robust shareware community, gaming was great on them. The difference between Doom II (the PC-DOS game everyone remembers) and Marathon, which was its mac contemporary, was ridiculous. Textures, resolution, gameplay complexity, the ability to actually look up and down, etc.
Then Gil Amelio tried to turn them into a business-focused company for a few years, and mac gaming never fully bounced back from that. I mean, it almost did. Halo was going to be a Mac exclusive at launch, and then Microsoft bought out Bungie right before launch to sell their new X-Box.
You’re either very young, or didn’t have access to Mac’s as a kid. The games were great. Number Munchers was sick.
I don’t think 40 (how long ago Number Munchers came out) can be considered “very young.”
Yes, that’s my point. He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.
If he’s 40 he for sure would have either played them, or just never been around Mac’s as a kid.
He’d have to be in his 20’s to have missed all the early Mac games.
More like 30s. If you were born 30 years ago in 1996, by the time you’re able to use a computer it’s already 2000 and Mac is left behind.
Did it have Zoo Tycoon? No? I think we’re done here.
It will depend on the age, but using Windows used to require some tech literacy. As far as I’m aware, Apple has always tried to avoid this need, which also prevents learning it. Modern Windows isn’t much different than modern Mac though. I’m assuming kids on Windows today aren’t much better than kids on Mac.
Controversial opinion but the system working well doesn’t prevent learning about it—if the user wants to. Like Apple computers are still computers, they’ve always had development tools. You could always study it under the hood and learn.
I don’t think that’s controversial. However, there’s two ways people will be encouraged to learn about it. Either the system invites you to tinker, or it doesn’t function how you want and requires you to tinker. Apple, in all of their products, mostly does neither. It functions fine, and it is opinionated about how it functions and doesn’t invite you to change it.
Sure, there will be curious people who, no matter what, tinker. They don’t need to be encouraged. The OP isn’t really trying to measure them. They’ll be the baseline where there is no measurable difference. The average user is what we want to understand. The average user on Mac isn’t expected to understand anything about the system. It just works. Both Windows (historically) and Linux do some amount of inviting you to tinker, and also requiring you to (depending on distro for Linux this may not actually be required). Windows has increasingly locked things down though, and also revert any changes on update more and more frequently.
Yeah, MacOS hold the users hand way too hard, in a way that is insulting in my opinion.
I’m assuming kids on Windows today aren’t much better than kids on Mac.
Totally right, I have seen it in person.
