There is apparently, still, a lot of phobia out there about changing over from one computer operating system to another. Even after nearly a quarter century where the main camps have been largely the same (Windows on the PC side and Macintosh for the Apple minority).
Last week, I borrowed my wife’s PC laptop while I was on the road (see
“Alabama’s Broadband Tide”) and thought she would be quite happy using my 24” Macintosh iMac in the interim.
No way. She was ecstatic to see the laptop back on her desk Friday night. The Mac? “It is scary,’’ she said. “The cursor rises up and jumps out at you. I hate that.”
She was actually referring to the toolbar, where the icons for all the applications you can use expand in size when you roll your cursor over it. But, to her, that was the cursor acting up. She just avoided the Macintosh altogether and used her Blackberry to check and answer her work email, while at home.
Don’t fret, Mac fearers and Mac haters. There’s a Web outlet for your primal screams about to launch. It’s called, naturally,
MacPhobia, and will be comparing the individual features of the Windows and Mac operating systems. It debuts in about three weeks. Not everyone finds Mac as cool as T-shirt clad symbolic spokesperson in all those
PC vs. Mac ads on television.
Of course, while I was on the road, I found the cursor on my wife’s Toshiba laptop infuriating, as well. For some reason I could never figure out, I would go stretches where I could not type a full sentence without the cursor throwing itself back into the middle of a previous sentence. Or up to the midst of a sentence at the top of the screen. Or the bottom.
Maybe some group of computer users who have switched to the PC from the Mac need to set up a similar site for PC phobics.
Oh, there is a
PCPhobia site. But it is not intelligible. Not to the poor confines of the English-speaking American public.
A U.S. version – if it is indeed about PC foibles – likely would also find a ready audience.
