With the upcoming Superbowl I thought I would create my own commercial (or parody of one).  In this case I have really enjoyed the ad campaign where people tell their stories about how Windows 7 was “My Idea.”  The thing that is funny is my brother attempted to upgrade his PC to & and all I heard on Facebook was how it crashed and didn’t work and when he posted success it was something like – “I just picked my computer up from … and it works wonderfully now.”  Ummm… Am I missing something?  People talk about the “Cult of Apple” and all I keep thinking about is that my time is too valuable to me to have to deal with a computer that I have to play Russian Roulette every time I it start up.

I remember my first experience with a PC- I had been teaching for a couple of years and the school district distributed these IBM machines to us and we had a quick training on how to use them.  That was the first time I had ever needed to reboot.  Our trainer was “Oh it froze, hit ctrl-alt-del and that should fix it”  I did then I raised my hand and asked “Where’s what I was working on?”  When I was told I had to start over I grumbled… and from that point on decided that non-Apple computers are for those who want computers to be difficult, who want to pay hundreds in extra software just so the machine will function, and for those who want to keep the helpdesk in business.  Amazingly enough the people who run the helpdesk are also the ones who recommend hardware…  and no, there still isn’t iPhone support for email, or wifi in my school district, we run Windows XP with IE6 because upgrading to anything else would be too difficult.

…and now a word from our sponsor.
Posted on January 31, 2010 by Bruce
With the upcoming Superbowl I thought I would create my own commercial (or parody of one).  In this case I have really enjoyed the ad campaign where people tell their stories about how Windows 7 was "My Idea."  The thing that is funny is my brother attempted to upgrade his PC to & and all I heard on Facebook was how it crashed and didn't work and when he posted success it was something like - "I just picked my computer up from ... and it works wonderfully now."  Ummm... Am I missing something?  People talk about the "Cult of Apple" and all I keep thinking about is that my time is too valuable to me to have to deal with a computer that I have to play Russian Roulette every time I it start up. I remember my first experience with a PC- I had been teaching for a couple of years and the school district distributed these IBM machines to us and we had a quick training on how to use them.  That was the first time I had ever needed to reboot.  Our trainer was "Oh it froze, hit ctrl-alt-del and that should fix it"  I did then I raised my hand and asked "Where's what I was working on?"  When I was told I had to start over I grumbled... and from that point on decided that non-Apple computers are for those who want computers to be difficult, who want to pay hundreds in extra software just so the machine will function, and for those who want to keep the helpdesk in business.  Amazingly enough the people who run the helpdesk are also the ones who recommend hardware...  and no, there still isn't iPhone support for email, or wifi in my school district, we run Windows XP with IE6 because upgrading to anything else would be too difficult.

3 thoughts on “…and now a word from our sponsor.”

  1. Miss S

    I can’t get over no right click on Macs. That was the end for me.

  2. Bruce

    Funny… I could never understand the right click… making things overly complex when they don’t need to be. How many times have I had to remind a colleague that “all” you need to do is right-click on this and then you get this “helpful” menu. Another barrier for the new user. You can get a multi-button mouse and use it on a Mac. The latest Mac mouse actually is multi-touch. I just remember an early Apple ad with a simple explanation. The tag line under a photo of someone’s hand hovering over the mouse button was something like “Because you have have one of these” alluding to the user’s “pointer finger.” The actual reason- Apple owns the patent.

  3. Luke Shumaker

    Actually, once it’s your school’s turn for a tech upgrade (it was the highschools’ this year) you’ll be getting… IE7

    Also, not all “non-Apple computers” are bad, just the ones running Microsoft sofware.

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