Are Mack drivers as snobbish as Mac users?

[jon daly]

This is just something I was pondering recently.

[jeffandnicole]

WTF?

[formulanone]

The bulldog logo is better than Peterbilt's and Navistar's.

[jon daly]

WTF?

I thought that it was a straightforward question. Back before smartphones were popular and folks used desktops and laptops more often than they do now, Mac users had a rep for looking down on their PC brethren.

I was wondering if there was a similar dynamic in the trucking world.

[Ned Weasel]

I thought that it was a straightforward question. Back before smartphones were popular and folks used desktops and laptops more often than they do now, Mac users had a rep for looking down on their PC brethren.

I was wondering if there was a similar dynamic in the trucking world.

Maybe when it comes to Peterbilt.

When I was in trucking school, different companies came to try to recruit students.  A representative of TMC said something like, "There's Peterbilt, and then there's everything else" (maybe not verbatim, but that was at least the gist of it).

[kphoger]

Mac users had a rep for looking down on their PC brethren.

Then they gave in to the fact that they were all suckers for paying 2½ times for their product what everyone else did, owning a product nobody knows how to work on.

[jon daly]

I thought that it was a straightforward question. Back before smartphones were popular and folks used desktops and laptops more often than they do now, Mac users had a rep for looking down on their PC brethren.

I was wondering if there was a similar dynamic in the trucking world.

Maybe when it comes to Peterbilt.

When I was in trucking school, different companies came to try to recruit students.  A representative of TMC said something like, "There's Peterbilt, and then there's everything else" (maybe not verbatim, but that was at least the gist of it).

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Peterbilt with "Ain't Nothing As Sweet As a Long Nose Pete" painted on it. But Mack would work better as the It truck for comedy purposes so I was hoping it be hip and diesel.

[jp the roadgeek]

[Max Rockatansky]

Buying a Mac used to be a prestige thing, I don't think it is anywhere on the same pinnacle it was once considered to be.

[KeithE4Phx]

Buying a Mac used to be a prestige thing, I don't think it is anywhere on the same pinnacle it was once considered to be.

Apple used to have the best quality hardware, whether or not people liked the OS or their worse-than-Microsoft attitude toward its customers' files (especially music).  I don't think their hardware is any better or worse than the average PC anymore.

I have a 2013-vintage Mac that my significant-other gave me because she never could figure out how to use it.  The hardware is fine (get a 3rd party full keyboard and 3-button mouse, though), but OS X sucks rocks.  I run Linux Mint inside VirtualBox on the thing, and it works great.

[Max Rockatansky]

Buying a Mac used to be a prestige thing, I don't think it is anywhere on the same pinnacle it was once considered to be.

Apple used to have the best quality hardware, whether or not people liked the OS or their worse-than-Microsoft attitude toward its customers' files (especially music).  I don't think their hardware is any better or worse than the average PC anymore.

I have a 2013-vintage Mac that my significant-other gave me because she never could figure out how to use it.  The hardware is fine (get a 3rd party full keyboard and 3-button mouse, though), but OS X sucks rocks.  I run Linux Mint inside VirtualBox on the thing, and it works great.

The attitude goes WAY back even to the mid-1990s.  The Apple OS was superior to most DOS and Windows systems but you couldn't customize them anywhere close to what you could with a PC.  I usually had one PC and one Mac for decades, I always usually ended up preferring the PC given I could do more with it.  The Mac was almost always more reliable with that said.

[KeithE4Phx]

Buying a Mac used to be a prestige thing, I don't think it is anywhere on the same pinnacle it was once considered to be.

Apple used to have the best quality hardware, whether or not people liked the OS or their worse-than-Microsoft attitude toward its customers' files (especially music).  I don't think their hardware is any better or worse than the average PC anymore.

I have a 2013-vintage Mac that my significant-other gave me because she never could figure out how to use it.  The hardware is fine (get a 3rd party full keyboard and 3-button mouse, though), but OS X sucks rocks.  I run Linux Mint inside VirtualBox on the thing, and it works great.

The attitude goes WAY back even to the mid-1990s.  The Apple OS was superior to most DOS and Windows systems but you couldn't customize them anywhere close to what you could with a PC.  I usually had one PC and one Mac for decades, I always usually ended up preferring the PC given I could do more with it.  The Mac was almost always more reliable with that said.

I've never had OS X crash on me, but it's still too much of a pain in the ass to use.  It tries to hide the "raw" aspects of the OS (which, to its credit, is UNIX-influenced, like Linux) while making it available to power users at the same time.  It falls flat in that regard IMNSHO.  As a consumer-grade OS, which Linux-based operating systems certainly are not, Apple systems are a poor 2nd to Android, and in my opinion, are even worse than Windows (at least through Win 7 -- forget 8.x and 10).

[ClassicHasClass]

Buying a Mac used to be a prestige thing, I don't think it is anywhere on the same pinnacle it was once considered to be.

Speaking as a Mac user off and on since 1987, that's because they suck now. I've probably bought my last one (MacBook Air I use for work); I've moved to Linux on a Talos II as my daily driver.

[hbelkins]

My introduction to the world of personal computing was when I went to work for a newspaper in 1987 that had embraced the desktop publishing way of outputting copy for pasteup. Instead of using a Compugraphic phototypesetting machine, which required expensive supplies and cumbersome font strip changes and smelly chemical development, you printed out the copy on sheets of plain paper, then did the layout and paste-up in the conventional way. I used a Mac Plus with 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB external hard drive. Our "fancy" machine, used for production of ads, had 2 MB of ram and a 40 MB external hard drive.

When it came time for me to buy my own personal computer, in 1993 or 94, I chose a Mac because that's what I was familiar with, and I had access to software and fonts.

Changing jobs in 1995 and going to Windows with its 8:3 naming conventions, was a giant step backwards.

[ClassicHasClass]

My introduction to the world of personal computing was when I went to work for a newspaper in 1987 that had embraced the desktop publishing way of outputting copy for pasteup. Instead of using a Compugraphic phototypesetting machine, which required expensive supplies and cumbersome font strip changes and smelly chemical development, you printed out the copy on sheets of plain paper, then did the layout and paste-up in the conventional way. I used a Mac Plus with 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB external hard drive. Our "fancy" machine, used for production of ads, had 2 MB of ram and a 40 MB external hard drive.

When it came time for me to buy my own personal computer, in 1993 or 94, I chose a Mac because that's what I was familiar with, and I had access to software and fonts.

Changing jobs in 1995 and going to Windows with its 8:3 naming conventions, was a giant step backwards.

I know under the hood that the classic MacOS was a disaster area (NJRoadfan will no doubt show up here soon ehough) but the way it worked was just well-thought out. Even if the guts were rotted, the front end was easy to work with. I know things like "spatial Finder" and "Fitt's law" are probably overdiscussed on computer boards but attention was paid to the OS and how it should relate to the user. If I could do everything in Mac OS 9, I probably still would.

OS X at least sort of started that way, even if it transplanted some unwelcome NeXT-isms, and I could still run all my old software at least until 10.5. And the G5 under my desk has been running pretty well for 14 years now (it just needed a CPU swap since it was one of the liquid cooled units). But now build quality is suffering, 32-bit apps are marked for the dustbin, there are all sorts of weird bugs in the OS and Apple makes more phones than computers. It's just not worth it sticking with the Mac.

On this Talos II, I came up with a modified GNOME theme that's like 10.4, my personal favourite version of OS X, and a background hack to ensure my Command key muscle memory still works, so I've made the jump to Linux and I'm not looking back.

[jon daly]

I thought that it was a straightforward question. Back before smartphones were popular and folks used desktops and laptops more often than they do now, Mac users had a rep for looking down on their PC brethren.

I was wondering if there was a similar dynamic in the trucking world.

Maybe when it comes to Peterbilt.

When I was in trucking school, different companies came to try to recruit students.  A representative of TMC said something like, "There's Peterbilt, and then there's everything else" (maybe not verbatim, but that was at least the gist of it).

I am not an expert on the trucking industry, but I did read a couple of books which touched on the topic. Today, I remembered that the pecking order is based on what you haul rather than what you drive.

At least that's what I read. Someone here may be able to confirm or deny this perception.

[SteveG1988]

Peterbilt/Kenworth (Paccar builds both) are seen as the "cadillac" of modern trucks. that is what everyone considers to be the best

Volvo is a good truck but has the "not american" stigma

Freightliner has the "fleet truck but not built dirt cheap" stigma

International (Navistar) has the "it's a fleet truck through and through, and is built like crap" stigma

and Mack... "used to be good, but now is just a volvo"

The guys who have the superiority complex 100% is anyone who owns a Marmon. 1997 was the last batch of the hand built trucks, all are pre-emission and pre Electronic logs.