Embarrassed to be a mac user
I have had my serious tiffs with some Microsoft employees, especially over a specific Mail & Calender app they put out for OSX and it's downright scary database problems, and a particular product manager of an OSX client I won't mention *cough* Entourage *cough* who didn't even understand how the current vulnerabilities in Outlook were being exploited (convo can be found via a determined google). I'm no MS fanboy...
Ah, but I said there was embarrassing stuff... Essentially, Rick Schaut has a blog where he talks about various things he's involved with, like the MacBU, MS Word for the mac, etc. Pierre Igot also has a blog, and did a little rant on what he thinks MS should be doing. Um, essentially condemning them to the fires of hell and uncoolness for not using Apple's global spell checker and Address Book.
I'm all for rants, I partake in them at least daily. But this one was just stupid to start- it's obvious to anyone that it would be a decent chunk of work to just 'adopt' Apple's tech in this case. Which is fine, and really only two things went through my mind while reading his entry:
- This guy has never worked on a project of sizable scope successfully
- This guy doesn't seem to be in a field of work that has milestones, deadlines, and finite resources
- This guy really doesn't understand usability, but loves throwing around the buzzword, because honestly most people know that usability is very much like porn to most: hard to quantify, but you know it when you see it. So it's an easy word to regurgitate when you're reasonably sure the person you're throwing your puke at will be insecure enough about the ability recognize puke that they won't call your bluff
No worries. Normally one would just think the above, do the whole 'to each their own" mantra and move on. And that's that. But neu, it's just starting to get entertaining.
As it turns out, Mr. Schaut called his bluff. And then Pierre Igot begins to systematically turn himself into one of the biggest ass-hats in the entire OSX community, which is saying quite a bit when you consider the amount of asshats one encounters on a daily basis on various mac lists...
The "Moses down from the mountain with playdo tablets" types. Throw a tiny bit of water on their knowledge written in stone and they're screwed. And Mr. Schaut apparently brought buckets whereas Ingot brought a thimble. Oh, I'm sure Mr Ingot is chatting with his zealot pals and they're slapping each other on the back at a job well done. But handicapped kids do the same thing after winning the gold at the special olympics- they don't really know any better. But it's always entertaining watching the zealots hump one anothers legs in spasms of righteous one-button back-slapping...
Bygones. At this point Pierre Ingot is just one of the pack of the zealot asshats slithering around the mac world... not even a front runner. He'd just posted silly and ignorant things so far, no real personal attacks against the guy... although a slight insinuation was made. But neu, there are some people who are natural overachievers when it comes to being asshats, and Pierre Ingot really comes into his own as the comment thread keeps going. And going. And going.
And more zealots pop up. As Pooka would say, "Bitches, bitches, everywhere, and not a one to slap". Congratulations, Pierre Ingot- you've graduated from asshat, shot past arrogant dilettante asshat, and moved hardcore into whiny-asshat-elitist-bitch territory.
So, just to recap, in case you haven't been clicking above, here are the relevant links, in order:
Egh, I feel like I have to buy a copy of crappy MS Office 2004 just to help counterbalance some of the asshat karma.
Posted by drunkenbatmanMarch 12, 2004, at 01:50 AM
I read the asshat post and laughed (I read another post first and wandered here to find out what the fuss was about) Just asshat wanted to say its a bit asshat weird too, you asshat use the word asshat like its a product asshat youre paid to asshat endorse asshat.