Nah I work with a lot of Mac users and I’ve not heard any complaints yet. This is just the internet effect I think, people like to complain about things.
While I agree, what bothers me a little is that all this time Apple had already claimed that Macs are so easy to use etc. So I guess they finally admit that it's not really true. At the same time I hope it will be at least more true for the iPad. Until mom asks why her favorite flash game doesn't work.
Things I have recently helped relatives with:
installing software for their navigation system, so that they could update the maps
Getting their internet radio connected
scanning, printing
installing a webcam and skype
In fact my impression is that "non-power" users often try to do even more hardcore stuff with their computers than I do, simply because they don't know which technologies are just hype and which ones are ready for prime time. For example my father tried speech recognition and used on of those horrible fax/scanner/printer units that hijacks your computer.
Thanks. My work experience would confirm the 'non-technical user' thought. We're mainly Mac based with the odd PC. The PCs are usually on the brink of death due to crapware that someone thought to install. The Macs seem to avoid this, in part perhaps because to the users are so unfamiliar with the system that they don't try to install the crap.
The biggest problem I have had since I switched my parents to Mac is just my brother in-law who lives with them and regularly loudly proclaim about Macs being a waste of money. He’s installed “virus scanners” multiple times that were themselves if not viruses, at the very least adware. He’s also attempted to defrag my moms ssd-having Mac Mini with some sort of software that claims to do so.
They don’t have admin rights anymore most because of this. For some reason though their printer driver regularly pops a notification asking for admin privileges.
I think Macs "just working" has always been a myth. Ask anyone who gets paid to fix Macs.
Sure, I see less of them, but hardly unexpected considering people buy fewer of them (and they're less targetted by malware).
On the other hand, I hate dealing with them because they can suffer from the same "it should work but doesn't" crap that Windows machines do but without the critical mass of support via Google.
And unless you get your issue escalated, the Apple Geniuses are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
This is tangential: I wrote a Mac client for a popular internet service early on. I did it on my own time, without any programming background, learning as I went, spending my own money to get it done.
I remember someone on a forum very angrily posting that the program didn’t have all the features he wanted, and all the bugs weren’t being addressed, and of course Mac users were being treated as 2nd-class citizens.
I was shocked at how presumptive he’d been, and tried to explain without going off how much effort I’d put into this, and how wrong he was. It was a harsh lesson on user expectations.
It's worth noting that older non-tech-guys haven't been able to tell the difference between Macs and PCs forever, even when they have wildly differing designs, to the point that it's a tech support cliche now.
It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later, everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.
Anecdote: Most of my non-technical friends are happy to use iPhones and purchase Macs that they can afford (the lowest price point, as bad as the specs are) because to them it's all the same. "It's an iPhone. / It's a Mac."
They don't care what the exact specs are as long as they can use their browser, word processing, watch netflix, and do minor photo editing. They don't know what IPS or TN are, and don't seem to care.
Hell I have a 15" mbp all spec'ed out and most of what I do is browser, terminal, netflix.
100% agree on Macs. Personally I have never had to play IT support when my parents had a Mac. Now with Windows, it’s basically whack-a-mole. Some days the camera stops working and some days WhatsApp doesn’t startup. And they are not power users by any means. So they don’t muck around with their setup either.
I recommend that you sit behind a non-technical relative or friend, and watch them use a Mac without offering them any help.
There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though OSX's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit.
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Really, it's just a learning curve and it's the same for any new OS.
Most non-technical people don't have the habit of figuring out what to do. They have the habit of doing what they're used to. For most, if you change even the smallest thing in their interface it can be catastrophic. (My mom often calls me for things like not being able to use internet at all anymore because the bookmarks bar is gone because someone accidentally hit ctrl+b or something).
I think the whole "Apple just works" thing is majorly overblown. Every time I have to use an OSX laptop I cringe because I have to look for stuff in the weirdest places and it takes me so long to figure out how to do things that I often just give up (if I'm using an OSX laptop it's usually because I don't have much time and just bummed the first laptop that was around). I can't imagine my mom magically finding everything intuitively if I can''t.
Also, you say you backed your assertion up with evidence. What evidence? I see none at all. The plural of anecdote is not data. (I'm not saying I'm providing evidence either, I'm simply providing a counter-example to your anecdote.)
You'd be surprised. Macs for us are only half a percent of our userbase (yet still many hundreds), and are mainly used by app developers and graphical design roles.
Especially the app dev guys tend to have fairly nonstandard usecases. However most of it happens in labs firewalled off the company network.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm not the one having to figure out how to work around these things with very limited documentation from Apple, like I have before ;)
It's so weird to read these kinds of things. I work for a software company in Dallas, Texas, where almost all 200 or so employees uses Macs. It's very, very common around here, although by no means universal.
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