In my region, people who grew up with mac are more likely to finish higher class school than people who grew up using windows.
But not because they use mac but because they tend to have richer parents…Good grief! The word is excluded. Holy shit.
Shit was making my eye twitch.
probably a Windows user
*Reads comments in thread*
I started with a pair of matchsticks and a trenchcoat that I got at Galipoli in WW1, using the Phosphorus I found in the Bosphorus to craft makeshift TI calculator based on specs I got via Fax from a Samurai. I ran slackware on my slacks until we defeated the Ottomans, but they unleashed their puppy linuxes on us, and we stood no chance.
Meanwhile…
At the Hall of Justice, we join our heroes enjoying a celebratory game of Tuxkart on their PopOS devices after their latest defeat of Lex Luthor’s DOS army.
“That was a great buffer underflow, Batman” said Superman, piping his Krypto into a GPG wallet.
“Thank you, Superman. Evil shall think twice before compiling on a non GCC system without warnings enabled!”
It’s all that musl he has.
What if you were started on an Apple computer before Macs existed?
Get out.
I think that being forced to learn about WINE at a young age may have been beneficial actually (if extremely unpleasant)
So unpleasant.
There are dozens of us
I remember when Wine was in alpha for twelve years (and then beta for three more). Was surprised to learn that it finally exited that stage, some time ago already.
Ummm how do kids turn out if you install Linux Mint on a cheap laptop and give it to them to screw around with? Asking for a friend.
It leads the kid to Arch. I hope you prepared to always hear “I use Arch, btw.”
I’ll let you know in 10 years.
Nice…I meant, I gave my 7yo (at the time) a computer we put Mint on it. He is 9 now, so by 19 I think we will see how it has changed his skill level vs the gen pop
BAAAABE, I WANT A KID.
My cousin became an IT tech. I set her up with Ubuntu on a cheap desktop when she was about 12.
One of us.
My 8 and 9 year old kids use xubuntu on a 2013 macbook air. They use it for writing stories, making a lot of pixel art with Piko Pixel, and some code block style programming with Lego Spike. They are learning about multi-user systems, file management, etc. I’m keeping an eye out for a cheap pc that can run Minecraft (lots of those right now since people are just trashing old win 10 machines) because the older kid wants to learn how to make Minecraft mods.
What about people who started on DOS?
They are either database administrators or completely oblivious to modern technology
Lies and slander.
I am a system administrator and a network administrator. I abhor database management tyvm.
Heh, me too. DBAs are to sysadmins what sysadmins are to devs
Or AmigaOS?
Or Basic 2.0?
There was a 2.0?
TIL.
I was referring to the C64 which came with Basic V2. I did have a Commodore plus/4 as well to do some programming - it came with Basic 3.5 as far as I remember.
Oooh. That version. I forgot they called that basic 2.0
Alright.
Das wirft natürlich eine sehr interessante wissenschaftliche Forschungsfrage auf, die ich mir erlaubt habe, in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zu recherchieren:
“Does early exposure to different operating systems (macOS vs. Windows) correlate with differences in technological literacy and general problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents?”
The available research does not provide conclusive evidence that early exposure to different operating systems directly correlates with differences in technological literacy or problem-solving abilities among children and adolescents.
While studies reveal some interesting distinctions, the evidence is limited. Ronaldo Muyu et al., 2022 found Windows is more popular among university students (84.61% vs. 11.38% for macOS), suggesting potential usage differences. Shahid I. Ali et al., 2019 found no significant competency differences between Mac and Windows users in Excel skills. Cem Topcuoglu et al., 2024 noted that users’ perceptions of operating systems are often based on reputation rather than technical understanding.
Interestingly, Bijou Yang et al., 2003 found Mac users had significantly greater computer anxiety, which might indirectly impact technological literacy.
More targeted research is needed to definitively answer this question, particularly studies focusing on children and adolescents.
I did once have a Mac user describe the Bash terminal as “it looks like breaking things.”
Had to ssh into an orange pi I set up with emulation station to transfer some roms. Dude who I thought was tech literate was in awe and even described it as “hacking” a few days later recounting it with another friend.
Also was the hbic at a Dave and Buster’s, had to update the six person halo game, which runs on Linux, people started gathering around with their oooo’s and awe’s, with one kid saying it was like the movies. People by and large are pretty fucking
stupidignorant.Edit to not sound so harsh.
I mean idk. I know it’s simple once you know but not something I would expect the average person to be familiar with. To be fair if you’re hacking you’re probably are using ssh at some point. But also I wonder if some have a hard time accepting their own accomplishments. If we never allow ourselves to see our own advancement then we just see others who have not achieved as less. Give yourself some credit bro and by extension give these onlookers a break. What you’re doing is kinda cool. Is that not what draws you to these types of activities in the first place?
That’s a very solid outlook. Thanks for the perspective.
I think early exposure to several different OS’s means you’re at least not too poor, and lack of money does correlate a lot with illiteracy of all sorts.
I think you misunderstand: the question is not about exposure to different OSes, but about the correlation/causation of a given OS to later cognitive (and other) abilities. Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
The point I’m making is that I believe that people who have mac skills will need to also learn Windows skills just because it’s so much more commonplace.
Just like lefties can be more empathetic on scale, because they have to face the disappointment of things not being designed for them (us, but I’m more mixed-handed than pure lefty).
It’s not about the orientation of the hand, but the phenomena surrounding having to orient your hand / use a certain hand in a certain way.
Just like I don’t believe that Mac as an OS is inherently changing the kids significantly.
Please do apply adequate scientific rigor here!
And to be fair, I don’t really know anyone who’s only ever used a mac for those exact reasons. We had a few kids in graphic design school be like “well I mostly use Mac as my personal computer is a mac”, so they weren’t as used to using Windows, since they hadn’t done it since school.
Like if you compared the linguistic capacity of people in the US, I’m pretty sure that no matter what you choose as the primary language, those kids will still know English (as we’re talking about USA here), and if they know English, then they’re at least bilingual, which has a lot of cognitive benefits. But you wouldn’t be saying that specifically speaking some specific other language makes the kids smarter.
Some languages might give certain advantages, like say some aboriginal language which doesn’t have left/right but always uses cardinal directions. Due to them doing that it’s insanely hard to confuse their inner sense of direction, even if you chuck them if a van and drive them around blindfolded.
So I’m not saying using Macs can’t have some such small specific advantage, but I doubt it, and think it’s just general adaptation skills, which do correlate with positive cognitive development.
honestly i think part of the reason i’m a computer tinkerer now is my formative years were spent trying to run specific minecraft launchers, n64 emulators and other stuff on the family mac
Yeah the mac or pc part doesn’t really matter if youre curious and like learning. You can do a lot with mac. However on the surface I would say its a little more simplified.
First computer I used was DOS.
Also DOS. Now I’m a digital plumber, keeping the pipes and tubes of the Internet from getting backed up with all the things happening commercially.
Remember, the Internet is not something you can just dump something on, it’s not a big truck.
Also DOS, the single button on the Mac mouse was a whole new way of using a computer.
Mine had 3.1 on it, but most of the games had to b3 run through dos prompt
So I started with a DOS machine that my dad had at work, then my school got a few Apple Macs in the library so I played Oregon Trail on the green screen, them the first computer we had at home that I was able to spend hours on was windows 3.1.
'98 myself. But I got a vivid memory of being at my aunt’s when her computer guy was there and he hated windows describing it as for the lazy. I was really young att but remember playing some kinda dig dug type game that had cartoonish CPUs as the collection goal. I also remember figuring out how to launch it on a dos system.
Linux didn’t exist when I was 12. 😑
I was around 13 for my first Linux install. Good times. Think pad 600, what a classic.
If I could have that exact same machine, with modern specs, I’d be hard pressed to use anything else. The nostalgia alone… So good.
Ibm had fallen off a cliff. I remember having one that had a dock for it’s cd reader and such. Things was God damned bullet proof! I got an IdeaPad recently and aside from the metal shell, it’s pretty much garbage. Like I don’t really know what they’re doing with their bios, but I just installed an m.2 drive with a Linux install and it takes almost the exact same time to boot as it did from the fucking platter hdd!
they haven’t been made by ibm for years and years
I was 8 when Linus posted on that Minix Usenet group about his hobby that won’t be big at all.
Same. Didn’t show up until 3 years later.
At 7yo my family got our first home computer. I had no idea how to use it properly, so I was constantly bricking OS on it which lead my father to constantly call in his friend to fix our computer. I bet constant ass whooping made me quickly learn how to undo my own mess. At 10yo I could reinstall win98 though floppy with NC
Or he could have spent that time teaching you instead of just…child abuse.
He is tech-illiterate and knows jack shit. And ass whooping is very common in our culture unfortunately. Luckily, it sped up my computer learning.
Hey, this is how I learned the ins and outs of W95 / XP . Oops, bricked the main (and only) PC again, better fix that before parent finds out. Now where is that install CD?
I started with windows 95, although we had a monochrome pc someone gave us, but couldn’t do much with it. Used floppy floppies, the big ones.
I was ecstatic when we finally got a real pc, with 16bit colors!
A flawed hypothesis. LOGO and Hypercard > Lotus notes.
“Discluded”?
Thank you! This meme is reposted often, and that non-word always jumps out at me.
