The "Game"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817637

by jamesmcintyre • 17 years ago

6 9 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Every product or service has two functions: what it does for you and what it does to you.

For years I've been asking myself "why are people still purchasing windows machines?" myself knowing how superior they perform as personal computers it's baffling.

I think I've come closer to the answer… windows users like playing games, very complex, puzzling to the extent of frustrating… games… like a crossword puzzle.

Let me explain.

My mother has envied my Macbook for years and I had talked up the Mac enough that she finally broke down and had me buy one for her. I picked up a Macbook for her and figured I'd be a good son and set it up for her. I go to do so and quickly realize, unlike my days in the windows world, there was little "setting up" to do. So I ran software update that way I could at least feel like I did something.

Then when showing my Mom how to use the Mac I realized… there wasn't much "showing to do". Once she was on the web browser it didn't matter what was "around" the browser… as long as the browser worked without flaw by all means my mom was already a master of the mac. So I twiddled my thumbs.

The Mac is like a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, ready for you to do with it whatever you choose… and for some that can be intimidating, paralyzingly so.

Windows is like a sheet of paper with a tic tac toe grid and one x already drawn, always ready to be played… this is comforting because even if you do not have a task to perform with the paper and pencil you can burn time by playing the game.

So if Mac is "the absence" and Windows is "the game" what is it that is absent from Mac, what is this game that is Windows?

The game could be called "The defragging anti-viral registry cleaning pop-up blocking trojan horse riding Hero and his conquest of Windows".

While many Windows users claim they are frustrated with the annoyances that plague the Windows world (like viruses and all to often system maintenance tasks) I'm not so sure this is true. In fact I'm beginning to realize that they love it!

I'm not saying this satirically or sarcastically, but literally.

Windows users never have to stare at a blank piece of paper. The Windows operating system, with it's myriad of "upkeep" tasks ensure one is never left to his/her own imagination but instead be enticed to play "The Game".

I'm guessing most Mac users have Google as their homepage and that's comfortable for them… it's sparse and ready to be commended to do whatever one so choose.

But most windows users probably have a portal as their homepage, like Yahoo or AOL. Portal sites do not require a catalytic action on the part of the user, the user instead is provoked to act in a predictable fashion: read this article, watch this video, read this email. Always a tic tac toe game with one "x" already marked… enticing you to strategically mark an "o".

In conclusion

There may always be a place for a personal computing design that implies a user act on it instead of just acting with it. Windows user today are going to begin to make a new statement with their choice to continue to use Windows (wether they like it or not). The statement?… "I like the old days when a guy would take care of his computer, clean it of viruses, defragment it's hard drive… it just made you feel good when you knew your's would run better because you took better care of it".

If you have things to do with your computer… get a Mac. If you have time to indulge yourself with games there will always be a cheap Windows machine waiting for you.

post script: technology inevitably dematerializes, loses it's weight and gravity… eventually it becomes ambient: everywhere and nowhere. Google Chrome OS is the eventuality of this movement… an operating system that is essentially a web browser running on lightweight silicon and nothing more. With less becoming less we return to nothing, and we return to a childlike state of curiosity of "what could be". Make no mistake I like seeing people switch to the Mac but my awareness campaign will be over before began as the new choice will be of "which browser" not "which computer".

yan• 17 years ago

I'm not for one to jump on the OS wars bandwagon, but i think what you're trying to say is: The mark of good equipment is how much it gets out of your way to let you do what you intend to do.

You can take a Pulitzer-winning photo on a point&shoot, but you will have to trick it into behaving how you intend it to behave. Ditto for music instruments, race cars, bikes, or really anything that can be seen as a tool. The "professional" grade of these tools are the ones that usually get out of your way most, be it by giving you more knobs to tweak or less hurdles to jump over.

Since the operating system and the computer are /my/ tools, I want them to get out of my way. My macbook and OS X do that. FreeBSD did that for me before that.

planck• 17 years ago

Let me save you some time: Windows users keep buying Windows machines because their last machine was a Windows machine and they already know how to use it. You don't need to write a 1,000 word essay to say that.

Alternative choice: A good-enough Windows machines costs less than half of a low-end Mac.

jamesmcintyre2• 17 years ago

You know most average pc users think someone "sends them a virus", they ask "why do they write viruses to attack my computer?". You and I know this is the question of someone who doesn't understand the purpose(s) behind malicious software... but think of how well this image of a hacker writing a virus for your computer aligns with the billion-dollar marketing campaigns of anti-virus software corporations. They don't try to educate users WHY the malware is written, only to position their product as a weapon against the evil-doers.

So it hit me "the malware ecosystem is not as large a detriment to the windows platform as I thought, in fact it has somehow become not only 'ok' and accepted but continues to be proliferated as a 'necessary evil'" (keyword "evil" to imply it's intents are targeting YOU).

I agree with your statement that habit and familiarity play a large part, but what drove me mad was that I know despite the powers of habit and familiarity surely Apple's good word-of-mouth and powerful ad campaigns would educate pc users of a "better way" and they'd take it. But are "switchers" more so motivated by the poor performance of the pc or the great performance of the mac? I think more by the poor performance of the pc (in other words, if they don't feel that the pc performs poorly than they do not have sufficient motivation to take all the (superficial) risks associated with switching). The status-quo is windows, and to gauge how they feel about windows performance they check against the status quo. Those who identify with often breaking from the crowd and rebelling have probably already switched to Mac. Those who gauge their choices against thy neighbors and find comfort in numbers aren't yet convinced Mac is superior and in fact would argue that Mac is only superior because it is not handling "the load" that the windows platform is handling and once it does (if it does) it too will buckle under the pressure.

"good enough" is comfortable for them

lhorie• 17 years ago

>> I'm guessing most Mac users have Google... But most windows users probably have a portal as their homepage

You know, coming to conclusions by starting from guesses and straw men isn't very useful.

For some reason, a lot of people like to say the Mac is inherently a more "productive" tool. Some people also say Emacs makes them more productive. Others swear by Dvorak or Colemak. But the thing is that the user is always part of the UI system and things like familiarity and muscle memory play a big factor in productivity. Not to mention the actual tasks. Not everything can be done easier in Macs than in PCs.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

Just reading your comment brought back muscle memories - between '72 and '79 I used the first CRT-based text editor I ever saw, and I swear I could sit down at a KSR-33 Teletype attached to one of those old 1 Mhz machines and be almost as productive as with any Mac editor - golly - even the opcodes are coming back - and I can hear the TTY in my mind's ear. Scary.

cesare• 17 years ago

Are you familiar with Edward Bernays? Have you watched Adam Curtis documentary 'The century of the self'?

From http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2008/8/14/3837144.h...:

Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. His family emigrated to the US from Germany by way of England before World War 1. Bernays was the father of the modern public relations business. He used some of the ideas that were the brainchild of his uncle and was able to convince clients of the ways that people thought and how their thoughts could be turned to the benefit of the clients’ needs.

One of the clients that Bernays worked for was Sarah Lee. They had a problem. They had created a cake mix that just needed water added to it and then could be popped in the oven. The problem was that housewives were not buying it.

Bernays did some studies and came up with the conclusion that the housewives that the product was targeting felt that they had not personal involvement in the success of the baking of the cake. He proposed that the company change the formula for the product to require the user to have to break an egg and mix that with the water into the cake mix before baking the cake.

The rest is history. The new cake mix took off like wildfire and still today in every supermarket that you go to you will find cake mixes that require the user to break an egg into a bowl and then mix it with the powdered ingredients in the packet.

iterationx• 17 years ago

His "Propaganda" book is quite good too. Also he came up with the slogan, "Make the world safe for democracy"

jamesmcintyre2• 17 years ago

thanks cesare, that's very interesting! It really resonates with what I attempted to articulate in the post.

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

I buy Windows machines because after about 8 years of fighting to get various distros of Linux to do what I want, I realized that XP was as stable as Linux and there was no reason not to move to Windows and stop pulling my hair out.

Most people buy Windows machines because they are good enough. Just like they buy Toyota Camrys and not Rolls Royces -- the Toyota gets the job done.

End of story.

The "Game"

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