Bitchy editorial - comment at my own risk:


Do Mac users live on an island? Do they have no friends or neighbors?
Are they anti-social, or just lazy?

On two occasions recently, I've offered help to users of Mackie hard
disk recorders in the form of a self-extracting file that will create
a floppy disk that they can boot in their recorder and possibly solve
their problem. The thing is that it's an EXE file and it takes a
Windows PC to extract it, and the replies have been along the lines of
"I only have a Mac."

I figure that these days anyone who wants to help himself can find a
PC to use for three minutes without going too far out of the way.
Chances are a neighbor has one, or there's one at a library, or they
can go to a computer store, pretend to be shopping for a computer, and
do the deed there. But no, they own a Mac and that's the end of the
story.

Now I suppose I could be accused of being PC-centric and not seeking
out a way to make a second version of what I want to send them that
will self-extract on a Mac, but hey, I'm the one who's making the
offer to help here. I don't have a Mac and my neighbor who has one
doesn't know a thing about self extracting files or utilities. I'd
like to be able to offer this but geez, I wasn't even successful in
finding someone who could give me any better info than I'd already
found on creating a self-extracting file for a PC.

Should I feel guilty for my lack of Mac knowledge or sympathy, or
should I just say "OK, here's what I can do for you. Take it from
there or find another solution."?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo