“I’d never used one of the new iMacs before I bought it, and though we’ve added dialogue here to grease the wheels I thought Apple Enthusiasts might be amused to know that I spent almost five entire minutes trying to turn it on,” Tycho writes for Penny Arcade! “On Friday I described the PC using a patented ‘wilderness terminology,’ and I wanted to expand on that thought somewhat. I don’t think that every PC user is locked into some kind of self-abusive cycle. I think that for most PC users, particularly gamers with no genuine recourse, their ‘choice’ of platform isn’t really what you’d call an act of volition. It’s the default. I mean, right? It’s what emerges from the tap. All we ask is that it be wet.”
“In this, it does not disappoint,” Tycho writes.
“There was a period where I did cleave to Windows as a platform, and it was largely as a response. Even when an Apple product set my loins ablaze, their marketing message always steeled my resolve against them. Assuming their “Megahertz Myth” methodology was ever sound, it became less so as PC processors began to skyrocket in speed and performance. Nevermind that AMD used largely the same message, it was about not liking Apple and I became very good at it. What I have come to realize is that even an unctuous, sometimes deceptive clock is still right twice a day. They’ve made an unbelievably transparent computing experience that I actually look forward to. Their willingness to just slough off the antique parts of the platform, though no doubt turbulent for the faithful, have allowed them to package the most genuinely modern computing product on the market,” Tycho writes.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Doherty” for the heads up.]
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MacDud,
With much respect, I ask that you never breed. Your seed would be a toxic addition to the world’s collective gene pool.
Thank you,
Luke
macDUD could nevAr breed, because he doesn’t have a penis…
he’s got a mangina.
Josh Marshall, author of Talking Points Memo, has posted news he purchased his first Mac over the weekend. Congratulations, Josh!
McDude, if I have to lug around something that big, I think I’ll use my iBook. I don’t dispute it may be coming but I think the screen will scratch/smudge too easily. Touch screens are cool but ultimately unnessesary (spelling?)
“Hello, Cupertino Police.
[ Listens ]
What?
Who?
Oh, yaah — we got him.
Yep. No, no, it’s all set.
Huh?
No, no, no. Well, it’s confusing.
[ Listens ]
Yaah, I guess it turned out he didn’t have a mind.
What?
No, no — I kid you not. No mind.
[ Laughs ]
I’m serious. Yes. A brain but no mind.
[ Listens ]
I don’t know. Kept spouting some gibberish about payoffs and bad spelling and some guy named Gates.
Huh?
Yah, says he was always picked last for sports as a kid. He’s pretty big, too. I’d say . . . umm, 300, 350.
What?
Yah, yah — he’s here. Why, you wanna visit? Okay, but you’ll be searched first and visiting hours are only until 8:00.
[ Listens ]
Alright then. Yep, I’ll buzz you back.”
[ -click- ]
UHH, FRANK, BLOCK TWO, CELL 703. BRING, UHH, ‘MR. BORING MACDUDE’ , NUMBER 7105666 TO MAIN RECEPTION. ‘BORING’ TO MAIN RECEPTION.
HIS MOMMY’S COMING TO VISIT HIM. SOMETHING ABOUT NEEDING HIS MED’S.
OHH, AND I THINK SHE’S BRINGING A PIE.
steering somewhat back on-topic – i’ve been reading penny arcade for quite awhile, and it surprises me quite a bit to see gabe and tycho excited about the mac. upon reading about it, i chuckled and said “i’ll be damned”. i mean, these guys are HUGE into games, obviously, and they’ve taken a liking to a relatively non-gamer-friendly platform. but like gabe said, it plays WOW. that kind of resonates a point i try to make to people when they say the mac sucks for gaming – macs don’t have as many games, but they have the ones that really matter, like WOW, doom 3, quake 4 (coming soon), the sims, unreal tournament 2004, etc etc.
so yeah, seeing the PA guys excited about the mac, which they used to have a great time mocking (and i, admittedly, once did too), is kind of surprising, but it’s really cool too.
64 bit dual core processors coming from intel in September.
More details
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/11/merom_to_be_launched_in_september/
OMG. I never thought they’d be converted. I still remember laughing at that cartoon they did where they weren’t cool enough to get in the Apple Store and had to wait outside in the rain.
Charles has obviously been busy switching them.
MDN: “Windows gamer switches to Apple Mac”
ROTFL
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
MDN
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue rolleye” style=”border:0;” /> – PennyArcade is not a games site, its a comics site. The name of the comic is called PennyArcade. These guys draw a comic. Oh, yeah, they have a forum to discuss games, gaming, and comics.
It is a comics site.
Hey some of the people on this site are assholes. Man have we really become that elitist that we even mock switchers? Gabe and Tycho are cool guys that run a gaming site and have been extremely Windowscentric. Why cant we just welcome them to our world and wish them the best. I think its great that they are willing to try something new and have the courage to admit its as great as we’ve been saying for years. I say Welcome to the family!
Oh and by the way the iPod Hi-Fi in no way sucks two of anything. Its possibly the best speaker system for the iPod out there. For anyone that has something negative to say about it I suggest you actually go to your local apple store and listen to it. They truly are amazing. For those not near an apple store, Move.
You folks responding to MacDud, and especially his grammar, are betraying a true lack of sophistication (I’m being nice).
“that new speaker system really sucks two. Its only workth about 50 bucks an only stupid peopl who dont no good sound will buy it.” This is not how a real person with poor grammar and spelling skills writes and spells; this is how a troll writes and spells trying to emulate a person with poor grammar and spelling. And he does a bad job of it, too.
MDN: best disproof of the myth that Mac users are smarter than the general populace.
Davidlow, just because someone is smarter than you doesn’t give you the right to demean them. Tycho has always written his posts using that kind of creative writing and if you can’t wrap your head around what he is saying then, well, maybe the school system has failed you.
I’ve been reading Penny Arcade for a while. They’ve commented on Apple many times in the past and I could see this day coming. I knew either Gabe or Tycho would get a Mac and I’m just glad that he dove in head first and got an iMac, something that will give him an excellent experience as a first timer.
The way I see it, MacDud is deliberately using bad spelling and grammar while making derogatory remarks of Apple products as a way of mocking MacDude, who frequently rants about how bad Apple products are despite being a self-proclaimed Mac user.
This is not the first time I’ve seen obvious, blatant sarcasm interpreted as genuine by readers on this site.
Makes me wonder sometimes….
When I saw the recent PA comics dealing with the switch, I couldn’t resist zinging a buddy of mine in Houston who is a PC person and heavy gamer who always would needle me about the Mac. I sent him a note pointing to the recent PA strips and bcc’ed it to a number of Mac user friends who also know the both of us. Afterward, though, it dawned on me that not all these Mac user friends were very familiar with Penny Arcade and weren’t gamers, so I sent a followup collecting the evolution of PA’s depiction of the Mac. The email is generally quoted below, for the edification of the MDN community that may not have seen this history.
——-
In the past, Penny Arcade derided the
Mac as an inferior platform with misleading ads,and users that are technically ignorant doofuses (at least in this case the doofus had a game demo before the PA guys…)
The “grape” user in the comic above is “Charles”, who is PA’s default
Mac user character (as you can tell by his shirt). He has appeared
intermittently in the strip whenever it was riffing on the Mac, and
was usually portrayed as this kind of ignorant and annoying nerd. The
PA Guys tended to like rubbing any bad news for the
Mac (such as the withdrawl of an earlier announced Mac game release)
[url=”http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/06/21
“]in his face…[/url]
Hell, they even made him play Darth Maul!
But gradually, the wall began to crack as Tycho and Gabe start to feel
the Mac at least had some decent specs and a few new games are coming
out for it, and as this happens, “Charles” started to become a bit
cooler looking, even though the mainstream Mac user was still an elitist stereotype.
But even with the derision heaped on Apple users and marketing, Tycho
could acknowledge the sheer sweetness of the OS X interface; and with iTunes and the iPod a huge success, Gabe starts to see the
light (especially as the artist, what with the Mac having so many
creativity enhancing apps) and is drawn in by the ever-cooler
“Charles” with the Apple Pied-Piper siren song.
Despite the earlier mocking of its stylistic pretenses, Gabe and Tycho
certainly recognize the Mac-PC style gap, but still are embarrassed]http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/11″]embarrassed[/url] by the idea of being caught by people they
But in they end they could not resist giving in the inevitable,
especially as Apple made the step of moving over to [url=”http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/01/11#1136992800″]Intel based
processors[/url].
This has culminated in today’s rant and comic, in which Gabe is, er, “playing for the other team“…
I really wish the comments on this site had a “Preview” option… <confused>