SOURCE ARTICLE BY: Joshua Fruhlinger is the former Editorial Director for Engadget and current contributor to both Engadget and the Wall Street Journal. http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/19/why-we-fight/#continued

[size=14pt]I think I figured out why we love to argue about technology. It came to me via the wisdom of my mom, not surprisingly.

It started last Sunday, when I was at her house to mooch some lunch while helping her get photos off of her digital camera and onto a sharing site so she could, ahem, share them. She was complaining that younger generations won't have photo albums, those lovely, physical relics of days gone by that mother and son can pore over and share memories.


"But, we'll have Facebook Timelines," I replied, sheepishly.

She glared.

I glared back.

There was no middle ground. I could have pushed the issue, telling her that it's time to get with the times, that if she wants to be able to share her photos, she should just create albums on Facebook (or even Flickr), tag them, share them with friends, even have them printed and framed. But instead I chose not to. After all, her way was just as good: bring a roll of film to the store, have pictures developed and share them at will. Sure, it's costly to get duplicates made, but the tradeoff is that you have a physical object that can literally be shared, passed from hand to hand, in a warm personal moment.



We've lost that act. We've also lost the act of sitting at the turntable, listening to records after school. At the same time, though, we gained Spotify and playlist sharing.



Which is better? Depends on the person. And that, my friends, is precisely why we continue to argue about technology, get branded as a "fanboy" and wage wars of words about the ways that we all use our stuff.



In fact, some of us even brand ourselves "PC Guy" or "Mac Guy" as if it says something about our personalities. Heck, Apple shaped an entire advertising campaign around the Mac vs. PC personality stereotypes. We don't see eye to eye. For some of us, Android works better than iOS. For many, Facebook is a waste of time while others find it a pleasant addition to their social lives. I know several people who are completely addicted to Twitter, tweeting their every move while others find it a narcissistic nightmare of humanity gone bad -- you can guess which side I'm on.



And yet we feel the need to judge, to toss grenades at one another for our tech choices.



"I just don't understand how you can possibly think that the Commodore 64 is a better machine than the Apple IIe," I told my best friend in eighth grade.


"You just don't get it, do you? The 64 just works." he replied.


No, I didn't "get it". The Commodore 64 was a closed system without expansion ports and a crummy poke-based version of BASIC that was outdated and stilted. It was, in the words of my 13-year-old self, "lame."


This is going to blow your mind: Turns out we are all different. Who'da guessed? Some people feel more comfortable with Nikons while others swear by Canons. Meanwhile, I love my trusty Panasonic GF1 because it makes me look like a much better photographer than I actually am.


I like rock and roll, my fiancée likes pop. That's never going to end well. People are waging wars at this very moment over religious differences.


But our technology arguments diverge from disagreements about music and religion in that we have numbers and statistics to fuel things along, allowing the arguments to plod forward seemingly forever. It's like sports and cars, where we can argue batting average and horsepower until we're blue in the face. But at the end of the day, you're not going to get me in a BMW and you're never going to find me rooting for the Red Sox.


Perhaps as technology develops, diverges and becomes more ubiquitous, we'll be taking sides the same way we do sports teams: for personal reasons backed by hard facts and a spiffy T-shirt.
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lol
where are al those fanatics oh!!!

....like I always say....arguing over what U have no control over of is "basically pointless".

puskin: ....like I always say....arguing over what U have no control over of is "basically pointless".

#word

puskin: ....like I always say....arguing over what U have no control over of is "basically pointless".

Thank you very much for lettin 'em know. But i think some people just like to look for internet wahala. Really makes dem happy.

The main reason why people are fanboys is because they are broke. They cannot afford everything, they settle for one...and that's fine and good. What's not fine is that they now feel so INSECURE about their purchase and have to make fun of and run down the competition just to feel better about their purchases.

So..rule of thumb. Anywhere you see someone call people 'iSheep' or 'iDiots' or 'seXbox' or 'gaystation3', 9 out of 10 times they are poor people.


My devices

Blackberry bold 9900
Galaxy S III
Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9
Blackberry Playbook wifi
Apple iPad (3rd generation)
Lenovo A750 (Android)
Nook Color (rooted, running ICS)

Game consoles
Nintendo 3DS (ok, sold this one)
Playstation Vita
Playstation 3 (x2, one 60GB launch edition, jailbroken...the other not jailbroken)
Xbox 360 Slim
Nintendo Wii


Why should i spend time on a forum comparing the abilities of my PS3 compared to the upcoming WiiU when i can just buy it when it comes out and have 'em all?

texazzpete: The main reason why people are fanboys is because they are broke. They cannot afford everything, they settle for one...and that's fine and good. What's not fine is that they now feel so INSECURE about their purchase and have to make fun of and run down the competition just to feel better about their purchases.

So..rule of thumb. Anywhere you see someone call people 'iSheep' or 'iDiots' or 'seXbox' or 'gaystation3', 9 out of 10 times they are poor people.

you are yourself guilty of name calling on this forum....man in the mirror

walcolm:

you are yourself guilty of name calling on this forum....man in the mirror

Because i know fandroids when I see them, usually the broke guys who just bought an Android device, download all the talking points from GSMArena and start giving us bullcrap here.

Nothing wrong with calling someone a 'Fandroid' or 'Apple Fanboy'.

Everything wrong with words like 'iSheep' and 'iDiot'.

of course i've been guilty of calling people here on this forum 'Samsung Sheep'...that's why if you knew how to read, you'd see that I said 9 out of 10 times and not 10 out of 10

texazzpete: The main reason why people are fanboys is because they are broke. They cannot afford everything, they settle for one...and that's fine and good. What's not fine is that they now feel so INSECURE about their purchase and have to make fun of and run down the competition just to feel better about their purchases.

So..rule of thumb. Anywhere you see someone call people 'iSheep' or 'iDiots' or 'seXbox' or 'gaystation3', 9 out of 10 times they are poor people.


My devices

Blackberry bold 9900
Galaxy S III
Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9
Blackberry Playbook wifi
Apple iPad (3rd generation)
Lenovo A750 (Android)
Nook Color (rooted, running ICS)

Game consoles
Nintendo 3DS (ok, sold this one)
Playstation Vita
Playstation 3 (x2, one 60GB launch edition, jailbroken...the other not jailbroken)
Xbox 360 Slim
Nintendo Wii

Laptops nko? How many?

texazzpete: The main reason why people are fanboys is because they are broke. They cannot afford everything, they settle for one...and that's fine and good. What's not fine is that they now feel so INSECURE about their purchase and have to make fun of and run down the competition just to feel better about their purchases.

So..rule of thumb. Anywhere you see someone call people 'iSheep' or 'iDiots' or 'seXbox' or 'gaystation3', 9 out of 10 times they are poor people.

Like to disagree with you on that. No, money sometimes doesn't have anything to do with it. Living in an environment like Nigeria where people place a lot of emphasis on material things, you see people buying stuffs and gadgets just for "effizy". Plenty of times, they don't have a clue as to how the particular device has other functions apart from its possession e.g Blackberry. That's why you see so many people being picked on in the forums. For some, its blind loyalty others inferiority complex. Personally, i can afford to get most of the devices i want but always do a lot of research before buying one, not out of blind loyalty or because one is superior to the other. My personal choice comes first and will not shove it down anybody's throat.

Lastly, am wondering about the rational behind posting every device that you own ??

engrhamid:
Laptops nko? How many?

Macbook Pro, Dual booting Windows and OSX

I try to have the best of all worlds if I can

samir101ng:

Like to disagree with you on that. No, money sometimes doesn't have anything to do with it. Living in an environment like Nigeria where people place a lot of emphasis on material things, you see people buying stuffs and gadgets just for "effizy". Plenty of times, they don't have a clue as to how the particular device has other functions apart from its possession e.g Blackberry. That's why you see so many people being picked on in the forums. For some, its blind loyalty others inferiority complex. Personally, i can afford to get most of the devices i want but always do a lot of research before buying one, not out of blind loyalty or because one is superior to the other. My personal choice comes first and will not shove it down anybody's throat.

Lastly, am wondering about the rational behind posting every device that you own ??

I will TRY and be gentle with you.

You'll notice that my post was directed at the people who use words like 'iSheep', 'iCrap', 'haemorrdroid' etc. This clearly is not something you do often, so why are you stating you're different here when it should be a given?

samir101ng:
Lastly, am wondering about the rational behind posting every device that you own ??

1) that isn't every device I own

2) If i'm preaching 'make love, not war', shouldn't I show what I mean by that?

I have a unique solution to all this fanboy nonsense. I pick up all that I really find compelling and sell off the ones I don't need. It may not work for you or for many who will not find this financially viable but for me it works. I merely listed what I owned to illustrate my point.