My dell laptop is 4 years old. It was the most basic model and was what I could afford at the time. It has performed flawlessly since I purchased it. I have never had any problems with viruses or other malware and it's never crashed. A shred of common sense and intelligence is all you need to keep a pc working properly. The "problems" associated with windows xp and vista have been blown way out of proportion and don't apply to the average user. I'll probably use this computer for another year or two and then get another dell. If I'm perfectly happy with windows, why would I go through the hassle of buying and selling a machine every year just to own a mac? The whole premise of this article is way too oversimplified.

The guy points out to you, directly, that OSX wouldn't work on his machine. You didn't even dispute that contention.

Your solution was, apparently, that he should have stopped using his computer entirely for what? A year? Until Apple fixed OSX so it would be adequate for his machine?

Then you accuse him of misinformation. That's ridiculous. Actually, it's worse than ridiculous.

Gee, Apple shipped a crappy initial version of its operating system that wouldn't work on older machines and made everyone unhappy?

Who does that behavior remind me of?

By the way, admitting that there's ever been even the slightest flaw in Mac software is plenty enough to get you kicked out of the tribe. It's like insulting the baby Jesus.

"The guy points out to you, directly, that OSX wouldn't work on his machine. You didn't even dispute that contention."

Actually, he said it did work, just slowly.

"Your solution was, apparently, that he should have stopped using his computer entirely for what? A year? Until Apple fixed OSX so it would be adequate for his machine?"

Um, no. My solution was that he continue to use OS 9.1 and software that worked with that (like I did). I said that pretty clearly. Vendors continued to upgrade their software for OS 9 long after OS X came out.

"admitting that there's ever been even the slightest flaw in Mac software is plenty enough to get you kicked out of the tribe."

Uh-oh, I think I just said the first versions of OS X were slow and clunky. Tribe? Am I kicked out?

I don't why I feel compelled to waste my time trying to help defend this platform against all this ignorance, but I do.

Once again you distort what was actually said to fit your BS.

"The guy points out to you, directly, that OSX wouldn't work on his machine. You didn't even dispute that contention"

No, he did NOT say it wouldn't work on his machine. He said it worked sluggishly, which was agreed. The first version of OSX was sluggish on that previous-generation iMac, but not bad at all on the generation of iMacs that were shipped in early 2001 just prior to the OSX release. Was it slow? Yes to a degree depending on your rig. Slow to the point of being inoperable, absolutely not unless you either 1) didn't have enough RAM, 2) were on a much older G3, 3) had your rig bogged down with too much crap. What, do you want someone to call the first release of OSX a failure? It surely was not.

"Your solution was, apparently, that he should have stopped using his computer entirely for what? A year? Until Apple fixed OSX so it would be adequate for his machine?

Apparent only to you, obviously. The solution offered was NOT to stop using his computer. It was to stick with 9.1 until OS X was updated to work efficiently on that rig. You know what? It was updated in less than a month. And Apple also offered OS 9.2 for those who were having problems with the transition or needed a more stable Classic environment under OS X. There were plenty of options that were just flat ignored and used as cannon fodder by the OP.

And lay off with this crap about Apple users not admitting flaws with Apple. There have been plenty of Apple users publicly unhappy with the iPhone, the reduced price of the iPhone, the battery issues on the iPod, the toilet-seat clamshell iBook, the battery issue on the TiBook, the one-button mouse just to name a few. Of course you choose to ignore that to further your BS.

... with things that are supposed to be "automagical", no matter who makes it, is that it's wondrous and beautiful and incredibly easy, up until the moment where you want to do something that wasn't in the original use cases. Then you're doomed to spend the next few days or weeks slogging through all manner of tech confusion. Because Macs are so much more dedicated to the automagical than the PC (for both better and worse - it's just a simple statement of fact), I'd expect this to be much worse on a Mac.

So maybe I was unfair to suggest you were telling the owner of the iMac that he stop using his computer. He was supposed to go back to OS 9.1. Ok, fine.

You're telling me Apple supplied a simple method for back-revving the OS back to 9.1?

Because that's exactly the sort of thing I would have expected to be near impossible without wiping the machine.

But if it's easy, then fine, I guess.

As for people complaining that Jobs ripped them off for $200 as early purchasers of iPhones, that was a momentary (and hilarious) blip in the cult. First, we got to laugh at all the iTards who lorded their oh-so-fine techno goodies at us the month before, and second, to witness Jobs having to pay them to shut up.