Bono, Steve Jobs, etc.

[John Carvill]

<< Full agreement with this statement. The reason why MP3 are a
successful format is that most people can't tell the difference. But
they still get to buy cool toys which is really what it's all about. >>

Yes. BUt you cold just as easily state the opposite, i.e. people can't
tell the difference because MP3 is such a successful format. People
have been sold iPods, god knows how many tens of millions of them, and
the success of these MP3 players has led to a decline in the average
quality of music being listened to, on the planet, right now.

As for the 'transparency' between using Windows and Mac, I guess it's
all down to individual experience. I find the Mac shockingly bad, in
terms of the main elements of the user interface - that awful
'Finder', the restriction of window resizing to the bottom right
corner, Apple's ridiculous treatment of the mouse in general and the
right-click context menu in particular, the tiny, easily missed
buttons on the top left of windows, meaning a first attempt to close
one often results in a miss, leading to a double-click on the second
attempt, which then gets interpreted as 'oh, you wanted to *minimize*
this window did you?', etc etc.

Love this rant from Charlie Brooker:

"I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I
even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs
are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for
scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers
for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own
from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to
slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who,
incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze
pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is,
"I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational
ornament only got one mouse button?" "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/05/comment.media