Another rebuttal to Rich Brooks

As you might expect, Rich Brooks took some heat over the editorial he wrote in the Herald Tribune and that marginalized the Mac in the classroom. You can read his response here. That, of course, generated a rebuttal which I e-mailed to him this afternoon. I also submitted an edited version of this to the Letters to the Editor section of the paper. Here was my response:

"Dear Rich,

Sorry to hear you got attacked by people you termed the “Mac cultists”. I am one of those people who wrote you. However, I hope my e-mail to you was one of those you called “polite and well thought out”. It was meant to be.

However, your response to those e-mails seems to demonstrate your close-mindedness about the Mac platform. It really is quite unfair to blame the platform for the excesses of a few. People who will attack others when they disparage the computer they are using exist on all sides of the fence and underneath every platform. Believe me, I know. About two years ago when I posted some analysis demonstrating that Apple’s G5 CPU’s had largely closed the performance gap between Athlon XP processors, I got a similar tirade from people using the PC. My name was not only dragged through the mud but posted on websites around the world. That comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

Secondly, some of your second response made me wonder if you read my response to you at all. I would point out to you again I have a Windows XP PC running MacDrive that can read Mac disks. One step. (Attach drive.) I didn’t mention that my Mac can read floppies using an external USB floppy drive. One step. (Insert floppy.) So, your argument about floppy drives, which some PC manufacturers do not include on their systems any more, is irrelevant.

Actually, I still feel you’re the one missing the point. If every school system in the country adopted your approach of buying only the platform that is in the widest use, then the school systems will forever be behind whatever technology is being brought forward. The kids in school today are more likely to be using Linux or Mac OS X or some operating system that hasn’t been invented yet as they are Windows. Note that both Linux and Mac OS X are Unix based operating systems, and many computer pundits have said that Mac OS X is already what Linux aspires to be. I believe the future of computing lies in a Unix not a Windows base, and that’s one thing you’ve shown no awareness of at all.

Thanks for your time."

I really don't expect to hear from him. My feeling at this point is nothing anyone is going to say is going to get him to consider he might be wrong or that he really doesn't know much about what is happening in computing today. I'd like to be wrong. Time will tell whether I am or not.