Crashing is Crashing

I was listening to a bunch of nerds talking the other day, and realized something interesting, as it pertains to knee-jerk FUD perceptions about Macs vs Windows.  I normally block those topics from my puny brain because tech-war talk bores the shit out of me.  But something more akin to psychologically effusive stupidity was apparent.

First off, to be fair and accurate (forget "balanced". I don't care for Fox news), you have to restrict all such comparisons to similar versions. You cannot honestly contrast Mac OS 8 with Windows Vista. The same is true in both directions. Compare Leopard with Vista, and so forth.  It just makes more sense that way.

So, the Mac guy says his one Vista machine crashes all the time. He follows up with "that's common with Vista". The Windows guy says "hmmmm", and nothing more. The Windows guy says his kid's Mac hangs a lot. The Mac guy says "that's got to be a configuration problem". I thought: why isn't the Vista issue a configuration problem? Because all the Mac guy has seen is his experiences with his one Vista machine (probably on bootcamp or Parallels), which are hamstrung by limited daily use, compared to his Mac-oriented activities.

The pretentiousness of that is what bothers me most. It's a common perception with Mac fans. My Vista machines (four of them) have NEVER crashed. Ever.  Early alpha builds crashed (prior to b.4074), but that's about it.  I've been running them since it was released and they're on disperate hardware. One is running on pure crap hardware.  Anyhow, back to the story...  So, in the Mac-boy's view (and many Mac fans), because their Windows machines are crap, all Windows machines are crap.  It's shortsighted and dumb.  I don't ever claim OSX is crap or buggy.  It's a fine product.  But my Windows Vista and (more significantly) Windows 7 machines are rock solid, fast and do everything I need them to do.  I'm so tired of the bullshit koolaid drinking fest.  

I couldn't let it go.  I had to speak up.  "Your Vista box crashes because you have a piece of shit box running it.  Go buy a new box like you would for running Leopard."  You wouldn't try to run Leopard on a PowerPC box from 2001 (even if you could).  Run it on what it was designed to run on and then make your opinions based on that.  To the guy with the Mac problems, I suggested  he bring it to the Genius Bar.  After all: They're freaking geniuses.  :)