This topic might not be about iPhones, but it does touch on Apple culture. However, recently I’ve found a lot of people that I talk to, whether they’re friends, people that I work with, or friends of friends that I don’t know. Are becoming “fanboys”, and here is the urbandictionary.com definition:
1. fanboy
A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, hobbits, Magic: the Gathering, etc.), but who lets his passion override social graces.
At the mall I almost got mowed over by some Dragonball Z fanboy on his skateboard.
The biggest fanboys that I come across are the Operating System fanboys. They’re usually separated into three groups. The ones that absolutely love Apple/Mac OSX/iPod’s and Steve Jobs, and then the ones that can’t part from Bill Gates and Windows XP/Vista/Windows 2003/Zen, and but not least the Linux/Unix geeks that love their Debian or FreeBSD and think Ubuntu is for losers.
I don’t hate these fanboys, I just hate how they’re missing out on oppurtunities. Why hate something that does something better, or differently for that matter. People might complain about stability, but honestly when it comes down to it. It’s all about how the User percieves stability. Some OSX users will complain that they no longer get BSOD and how they never get viruses (which isn’t true). Windows users will mock how OSX doesn’t have very many Gaming Titles and sometimes will include Linux in that boat. And it will go on and on and on.
But I digress to the original reason I wrote this post. I was looking at my RSS feeds and found that the iphoneincanada.ca posted an article called “MacBook Review: My iPhone 3G’s Older Brother” which pretty much speaks for itself. It’s an article about a new Mac the author had purchased. I read through it and found the following tidbit in his article.
By “iphonefan@phoneincanada.ca” I must admit the system feels very rock solid, as opposed to Windows XP. I always had a feeling that Windows XP would crash on me whenever I was doing something important and get that dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death).
I have used the his site in the past for some articles and had given full credit to his original posts, I’m not a copy and paste blogger. If I find an article thats well written then I give full credit, even when its poorly written 
However, this one bit kinda struck me as odd. I mean it goes back to what I was talking about previously. Why do people jump boats, and become fanboys. I wrote a response, and unfortunately his comments are moderated and so I didn’t want to loose what I wrote up on his blog. So I decided to post it here, because I like this subject so much, partly because its human nature. Here’s my post.
I have a MBP, it’s a work laptop and its second generation. I also have a 700M as well. I like both of them. I do prefer the MBP as its specs are more updated. I run Debian and Windows XP on both. Bootcamp and Fusion are awesome, and I generally find myself taking out the Mac Book more than the Dell 700M.
I was kinda shocked that you would take an OS that you regularly used before buying the MB. And start boot kicking it to the curb.
I’ve used all three OS’s extensively, and had crashes on OSX with Apple and non-Apple produced software that totally lock the system up. The can be said about Windows XP and Linux. Ultimately I do find Windows XP to be stable, the only times I’ve had issues with it BSOD was when there was hardware or software related issues. Re-Formatting has been an old past time favorite, with Windows XP. However recently, I haven’t had the need. And I do almost everything with my Windows XP thats theoretically possible, Graphic Design, Gaming, Music, Email, Browsing.
I guess what I’m getting at is, I was once a Windows Fan Boy, way back in the day. Until I started using Debian as my desktop at work, which churned my productivity up like crazy. I then started using Mac OSX at work and noticed that it was actually a nice OS to use. So I’ve become an avid fan of all Operating Systems that I’ve come across and still used extensively. They all serve their purpose and I guess everyone has their personal preference. I just can’t live with out Windows XP at home, and I can’t really live without Linux at work.
So why hate? Why become a fanboy?
Anyways, I have absolutely no problems or hate for the author of iphoneincanada.ca
Cheers,