The Picard ManeuverA study on tech literacy
kibiz0rCan confirm. Started on a Mac. Was using terminal, hex editor, resource forks, and squirrel basic to modify my Catz installation before I was 10. Windows peers seemed to think computers were made of rainbows and unicorns
MechanismaticWeird. I was thinking the post was saying Mac kids were less digitally literate because of the whole “it just works” culture. When I ran a help desk, the Mac users were definitely less adept. The pattern seems to continue with iPhone and Android users I encounter today.
Well, now I really want to see the results of such a study. My hypothesis is that it actually has more to do with the activities each computer is used for rather than the actual OS. As in, gamers (Windows) are more likely to be tech literate than authors (Mac), or graphic artists (Mac) are more likely to be tech literate than office workers (Windows).
Yeah, that is a pattern I’ve seen. I grew up having to troubleshoot stuff offline just to get a modem on PC to work on dialup to get to a BBS or CompuServe or editing mods for computer games, whereas my Mac friends were mostly playing with artistic programs on Mac. I also used artistic software on PC but that too required more skill. I don’t recall seeing them deal with a command line interface whereas most of my earliest games ran in DOS.
Who knew?Anecdata: everyone on the film set in 2009 except for the studio accountant used a Mac, and the account was a Thinkpad Guy.
XatolosAnecdata: Some artists I’ve known told me they bought a Mac because when they went to the store, and when they asked what they should look for/get they were told “Artists use Macs”, so they said ok, not because they wanted it, but told that’s what they should use.