Yet another newspaper article overlooks Macs

[simX]

*sigh*

This really gets me annoyed.

An article in the San Jose Mercury News talks all about how setting up a wireless network is very hard to do. Of course, guess which technology it conveniently ignores? AirPort, from Apple, of course.

This guy ended up spending $249 (if you buy a Pentium 4 laptop) for the setup fee for the wireless network. That fee jumps to $299 if you buy some other Gateway PC, and to $499 if you just want the wireless network.

I guess this guy deserves to part with that money if he can't look at all of the options.

Here's the URL to the article: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_technology/3363171.htm

The author's e-mail is sdiaz@sjmercury.com . I would suggest that everyone that has 5 minutes to spare should e-mail him enlightening him to the wonders of AirPort.

If you'd like, you can use my letter as a base. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Diaz,

Your article about setting up a wireless network was very interesting. Why? Because when I installed my home network, setup was a snap, and I was up and running in less than 10 minutes.

Why? Because I used a Macintosh, and I used Airport.

Yet again, it seems that another article just ignores the company that makes computers easy to use. I am sorry to say that you have just helped support the myth that wireless networking is hard to do on a computer. The truth? It's hard to do on a Windows PC.

Apple's Airport networking hardware – it's base station and it's wireless cards – are very easy to set up. The cards can be installed on any Mac – they ALL have built-in antennas and slots for the airport cards, so you don't have anything sticking out of the side of your computer. It's all seemless.

Setup is a snap. You simply boot up your Macintosh, and then, whether in Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X, you open the Airport Setup Assistant. It guides you through the steps, and all you need to know is the settings for your cable modem, DSL modem, or dial-up modem. You can feed the Airport connection through any internet connection – including AOL.

All of this takes, at max, 15 minutes.

I'm sorry that you had all of that trouble setting up your wireless network. Of course, you could have avoided all that trouble had you wisely chosen a Macintosh for your computer.

Next time, why don't you look at ALL the choices for wireless networking, or whatever piece of personal technology you look at next. It pains me to think about all of the readers that have been misled by your article, when they could have easily set it up themselves with a Macintosh – and with the money they saved from the installation, it would more than make up for the cost difference between a Mac and a PC.

Thank you for your time.

-- Simone Manganelli

 

[dricci]

Very good letter. I'll have to read over the article and write in to the author. If we make ourselves heard to the media, then maybe, just maybe, they'll listen.

 

[scruffy]

Good letter. I wish someone would write something that coherent to my local paper... Not being a reader of the San Jose Mercury News (or even a US resident) I probably wouldn't be justified in writing to this guy.

However, please let us know if you get a response, or if there's a sign in something he later writes that some of this sunk in.

 

[simX]

I got a response today, which was a nice surprise because the last time I wrote an e-mail to a person who overlooked Mac software (the woman who wrote about streaming software and didn't look at QTSS), she didn't respond.

Here's the letter he wrote. Seems I was kind of construing the article:

Simone Simone Simone...

I feel like a child, scolded by someone who didn't know the whole story. So please allow me to clarify a few points.

1) I own a Mac at home. A G4 running OS X.

2) My colleague just wrote a piece about networking a Mac wirelessly about a month or so ago. We were looking to hit the PC users with this story. I was not trying to ignore Mac users.

3) Regardless of how great Mac users think Mac computers are (and I'm one of them) the fact remains that Mac only has less than 10  percent of the market. PCs, by far, dominate the market. And it's true that wireless networking with a PC is way tougher than networking a Mac.

I'm sorry you were disappointed with the article. It's funny that for every one e-mail scolding me, I get 10 from others who found it useful. I guess that mirrors the dominance of Windows PCs in the home versus Macs. I'm not saying it;s right or wrong... that's just the way it is.

Thank You for writing. I'm slowly lifting my head up again out of shame.

Sam Diaz

He kind of made me feel bad, but I still maintain that he should've mentioned Macs SOMEWHERE in the article. This is what I wrote back:

Sam --

Thank you for your prompt reply. I guess I missed the article about wirelessly networking the Mac. Could you point me to a URL online?

I still maintain, however, that it would have been better if you had at least mentioned the fact that you had covered the topic for Macs earlier, and/or that networking Macs is easier. Despite the fact that Windows PCs dominate the market, it doesn't mean that Macs should be relegated to the back burner. Some people don't realize how easy Macs are to use and that they can save a lot of time, effort, and hair by using one, even if it is a greater initial cost at first, and so they need to be educated on this fact.

Again, thank you for writing back. I'm glad that you actually aren't oblivious to everything out there.

-- Simone Manganelli

Then he wrote back:

Simone...

This is some great input. I appreciate it.

The Merc's free archives on the Web only go back seven days so I'm including the story from our internal system pasted below... Enjoy.

Thanks again for writing.

Sam

I didn't attach the article because it was long, but it turns out that I had actually read this article before. However, it talked about making a homogenous network with Windows PCs and how that didn't work out too well, so I didn't immediately think about it when I read his article.

Nevertheless, I still maintain that he should have mentioned that Macs are SO much easier to setup, even in this article directed towards people who use Windows PCs. Like I said, it may be a fact that more people use Windows, but it doesn't make it right to keep them oblivious to other options, because they might have skipped over the other article since it was directed at Mac users.

It's good to know, though, that he is a Mac user and is not one of the blind reporters out there.

 

[voice-]

Long posts is the way of this forum, attatch the article so they can be compared...

 

[jocknerd]

It costs way too much. I bought a D-Link wireless router for $157 from buy.com. It works great with my iBook. Plus my two PC's connect to it by ethernet at speeds of 100mb/s. I'm waiting for 802.11a to come down to the prices of 802.11b. Speeds would go from 11mb/s to 54mb/s.