I have been assimilated

AsSiMiLaTeD

First off, there's no real point here I guess, I'm sorta just rambling and we'll see if anyone else has a similar experience with a product or company.

So I was re-arranging and organizing all my computer stuff yesterday (pulled an old headless server out of the mix, replaced with a NAS, ran network cabling all throughout the condo and hardwired devices where possible, swapped in a couple of the newer TiVo boxes, pulled out the gaming PC that hasn't been turned on in almost a full year, and replaced our last Windows laptop with a new Macbook Air). I had a very productive weekend, and yesterday was possibly the most productive 12 hours of my life.

Anyway, as I'm doing all this yesterday and putting everything back together I realize something, basically all my computer stuff is Apple. Crap, I have been assimilated!!!! I'm looking around, and I own almost every product that they make:

27" iMac
13" MacBook Air (this is the one we just bought on sale at Best Buy)
Mac Mini (although about to sell this one as it's no longer used)
Multiple iPads including 2 of the third gen models
Multiple iPhones
Multiple Apple TVs
Airport Extreme router
iPod Classic 5th gen with Wolfson DACs (just bought this actually)

Historically, I've not been a big fan of Apple, and that's putting it mildly. I've basically spent the last 15 years or all of my adult life hating them and everything they produce. There's evidence of that on the forum in older posts like THIS and THIS. I had several issues, but they mainly boiled down to three things: I felt that their products were generally inferior and over priced, I hated the 'Apple fanboys' who loved their products and thought everything else was crap and said things like "Macs don't break" and "Macs don't get viruses", and finally I had a philosophical issue with their closed platform,

Starting with their products, I didn't (and still don't) believe that to be a matter of opinion. At that time, their products simply were inferior in terms of specs and more expensive than the other options out there. I never factored design or OS into that equation because frankly I didn't get that far, as in I could never get past the spec limitations such that I'd spend enough time with a product to form any opinion on design or OS. So in reality those older machines could have been just fine, I'll never know because I've never owned one and never will. The products they make today though (with the exception of the Mac Pro IMO) are competitively spec'd and priced. When buying my iMac, I purchased it because it was the cheapest option (and probably still is) that had everything I wanted.

As for the fanboys that's still the case today, nothing has changed there. You still have guys that say absurd things like "Macs can't get a virus because they're on Unix", even though that's obviously not true. At some point though I realized that letting the actions or opinions of other people drive my behavior is just as idiotic as the guys who are overly and blindly in love with their products.

Finally, and please forgive the aside as this is where things HAVE changed a bit, is the philosophical difference in opinion. Apple is firmly in the camp of providing an end to end solution. They believe that the hardware and software should be made together and by the same company and that this company should wholly control what goes into each category, whereas other companies like Microsoft and Google believe in separating the software and hardware.

Apple's philosophy results in a 'closed' platform as we all like to call it. Only THEY make the hardware and only THEY make the software and THEY get to decide what features you do and don't get. They make those decisions on features and options based on what they can do technically and what they think people want. Most of the time they get those decisions right, sometimes they don't (and when they don't the whole world knows about it, the Final Cut Pro X fiasco is a perfect example of this). The downside to their approach is obviously that as a user you're limited to their design choices (or have to resort to jailbreaking their device), the upside is a device that's typically simple to use and integrates well with other devices they make.

On the other side you've basically got the opposite results. You get tons of customization and you invite lots of companies into the mix in terms of making devices and such. What you give up in return is quality control and consistency. Note I didn't say you get worse products or that quality control is better or worse than Apple, I just said that you give that up to a certain extent. What you tend to end up with is a mix, some companies like Lenovo put out great products and some other companies like eMachines not so much.

I don't think either is better than the other, they're just different. As a user you just have to decide if this is even an important factor to you, and then which approach you prefer. Both are proven models, the open model worked great for Microsoft back in the 90s (anyone remember their stock and market cap), and the closed model seems to be working fine now for Apple. I preferred the open model for a very long time and then about a year ago started changing my mind.

I think what changed my mind was when I started to see the interaction between the devices. I started with an iPhone then an iPad, then the Apple TV and then the computers. When I started being able to do things like mirror my iDevice screens to the TV, share my media across every room in the house, and control my computer with my iPad (I like to sit down with my headphone rig connected to the iMac and read a book on the iPad while listening to music and be able to do that while not actually sitting in front of the computer with the screen on) I started to see more and more benefits of their approach. I'm not saying this isn't possible with other platforms, I just prefer the way it works on Apple stuff.

I can see where the fanboys get their enthusiasm for the products, where we part ways is in thinking that everything else is inferior. The stuff they make is beautiful and how they interact with ease really is cool. I tend to be very enthusiastic about most things and I make no exceptions here, I REALLY like my Apple stuff. HOWEVER, and this is key, I do realize that everyone has different priorities and tastes, not everybody likes what I like.

It's funny really, on the computer side of things I've made the transition from piecing things together and mixing brands and all that to basically just moving to one brand with Apple. Yet on the home audio side I've made the change (several years ago) from where I'd only buy Polk to where I started trying out other speakers and now to where most of what I own is NOT Polk.

So, like I said, no real point here, there's not even a moral to the story. I'm curious if others have had a similar experience with a company or product and if so what ended up turning you over to 'the dark side'?

EndersShadow

I have slowly started the same assimilation. Lots of it due to the fact that NON Apple accessories just honestly dont exist much anymore. I LOVE MY ZUNE but there aren't any accessories to hook it directly to my stereo and control it with the remote (dont get me started on the Kenwood KIV models because they lie and dont work at all).

So my iPhone is nice. I have similar experiences to you as well with their end to end experience. I still DO NOT own a Apple PC and probably wont ever due to the want to be able to add and subtract parts as needed and thats a totally WINDOWS experience.

mrbiron

Friendly's ice cream is truly the only ice cream i will buy. Sure i've ventured out and bought Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Haagen Daz but they didn't work for me. The way it assimilated with my belly/digestive system was like no other. I AM a FRIENDLY's FANBOY!
Although there was a local chain (jeremy's micro batch that almost ruined everything for me) but they has since gone belly-up do to poor marketing??

About the same with all the crap clothing companies vs. Carhartt!

We buy what works and to hell with the rest!!:cheesygrin:

Strong Bad

Like you, for the longest time I was a Windows fanatic who swore that Apple computers were silly little overpriced toys. My biggest mistake is that in all those years of saying such things, I had not touched a Mac since 1995. I had ZERO interaction with OSX and anything Mac since that time, from around late 1995 up to late 2009. I based all my hatred towards Apple and the Mac...from a Windows Fanboy perspective. In early 2009, I started working with some downright brilliant IT folks, who just so happened to be huge fans of the Mac platform. The VP of our division was probably the biggest proponent of them out of anyone I worked with. He had Mac Pro's in his office and a couple in our network monitoring room. I then attended a huge photography expo with a coworker and the thing that struck me was all the Macs being used there to run various editing software for demos. Literally dozens and dozens of vendors, including Nikon and Canon, were using Macs to demo software and photos. My Windows PC was always getting slow and needed reloading. It had it moments of crashing when I pushed Photoshop too hard. Thats when I decided to give up Windows and move to the Mac.

I've never EVER regretted once with moving over to it. I bought my current 27" iMac back in December 2009 and it still runs like the day I bought it. It just runs and runs and crushes anything I throw at it. Of course I moved on to an iPhone (started with a 3 and now have a 4), the Extreme Router, iPod nano, iPad (had the 2 and now have the 3), 15" Macbook Pro and the latest Apple TV.

Apple's closed system works VERY well to their advantage. They mate hardware with software in a beautiful package that works great. The trouble with the PC world is you have too many vendors all competing and undercutting each other for sales. I had someone on another forum make a comment to me that his $350 PC is just as good, if not better than my overpriced Mac. Thats the kind of thing that hurts Windows. Those cheaply priced machines are just thrown together with low grade parts, then people **** how Windows sucks when it doesn't run right.

if you like to tinker around with building PC's with swapping parts and such...stick with a PC. I could care less about that. My iMac sits and runs flawlessly. I also love how seamlessly all my Apple products work together.

Strong Bad

mrbiron wrote: »

Friendly's ice cream is truly the only ice cream i will buy. Sure i've ventured out and bought Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Haagen Daz but they didn't work for me. The way it assimilated with my belly/digestive system was like no other. I AM a FRIENDLY's FANBOY!
Although there was a local chain (jeremy's micro batch that almost ruined everything for me) but they has since gone belly-up do to poor marketing??

About the same with all the crap clothing companies vs. Carhartt!

We buy what works and to hell with the rest!!:cheesygrin:

No one does Butter Pecan like Friendly's! I tried others, but none could compare!

cnh

Interesting history and bit of a tirade. Don't disagree with much. I still DISLIKE how itunes tries to assimilate everything you own and reconstitute it so I don't use that. But to be honest, I started out on the MAC platform, mostly because my physician sold me on it in the late '80s. So my first computer was a MAC. Then I got my first teaching job and the entire college was Mac based. So NO choice there. They provided the hardware and supported it.

It was, of course far easier to use in those early days than anything else. The real problem was that back then Mac was sort of the Ultimate Yuppie machine. The one that cost more than anything comparable and had this "status" attached to it. Pricing was NEVER competitive till many years later. And that also irritated me even though I continued to use them up until the late '90s when they were declared TKO-ed and ready to 'fold'. So back comes Jobs with a "vengeance" and they start churning out all kinds of new products and even the prices get a "little" better. That's not to say some Apple things are still not overpriced with huge "margins".

During that comeback I moved, briefly, to an institution with absolutely NO Mac support! They actively "discouraged" their employees from even thinking about using a Mac! And that was during the Mac will cease to exist period! So I bought an IBM Thinkpad (which I still have and it "works"--there's another tragic story that's now a division of the Chinese Lenovo!).

Currently I use an institution Dell (which I don't care for but it works) and this little ACER netbook. My daughter has a Mac laptop, an iphone, and my wife uses an iphone and ipad for somethings. As for me. I'm NOT due for an upgrade for a while and am always behind the curve these days. And as I'm not in a profession that requires that I have a state of the art cell phone. And REALLY don't like ANYONE calling me who I don't KNOW, I use a cheap pay as you go Samsung track phone. And "never" use that to access the internet. It's only for emergency calls or necessary ones!

Mac makes a decent product, but then there are the Foxconn problems, etc. But to be honest, how many companies don't engage in similar practices?

So Apple. It's OK. Was Jobs trying to assimilate everyone? I don't know for sure but maybe we should ask Zuckerberg; I think he knows! lol

cnh

obieone

I've never liked Apple, not because of their products, but their business practices remind me a lot of Monsters- Proprietary B.S.. Combined with the 'Moonie/zombie-like allegiance of the customers, they kind of turn me off.

That said.....I was in the Verizon store both days this wknd. and that Iphone/Ipad is pretty sweet to navigate:redface:.

I'm seriously afraid, that resistance might futile:frown:

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maximillian

Getting everything to just work is wonderful. I like to tinker with electronics and software, but as I get older and busier I want to keep it simple. Apple products offers simple, but not always the most flexible. And some of their lack-down approach to products makes things too limited for me.

One thing that really annoys me is iTunes software. The software annoys me to no end. I have lots of FLAC recordings and some mp3's. All of my music collection was either purchased from non-iTunes stores or ripped from my music collection. I find it a real pain to add the music to my iPod Touch. Here's an example... after I go through the hurdles of converting FLAC to ALAC, I try to drag and drop titles into iTunes software. My filenames typically are labeled "01 - song1", "02 - song2", "03 - song3", etc. iTunes messes with the order after drag and drop and I have to manually order them. Then after syncing some of the songs do not transfer for some reason. There ends up being multiple copies of the songs in the list and I have to delete the songs with an exclamation mark next to each non-synced song in iTunes. I have to find each song (again manually) and delete them. Then re-sync and other songs now have an exclamation mark. Typically this takes 2-3 sync attempts but I have had up to 5-6 iterations to get it right. I called Apple tech support about this and they don't have a solution. I've had this issue for a year now.

Then, as cnh already mentioned, iTunes's insistence on doing it Apple's way. If I didn't need folder support I would use Mediamonkey or some other software to sync. Contrast this with my Andoird phone. It is seen as a mass storage device and I can easily transfer songs manually or use some canned software to sync for me. Manually management is easier compared to iTunes. Too bad the audio quality of my Android phone is noticeable inferior to my iPod Touch, otherwise I would use the Android device exclusively.

As for accessories... sometimes it's hit or miss. It annoys me that some items are not compatible even though they are sold as such. I bought a Griffin AC-USB charger. It works fine, but the iPod cable it came with is flackey and sometimes doesn't work. This was even after a product exchange from BestBuy. If I use the Griffin with some $1 Chinese cables then it works fine.

Apple is too controlling with its platforms, or I might try to use them more. There's some functionality that I lacked with the iPod Touch that I had to jailbreak in order to get. It's the same experience with their AppleTV. It's a great device, but there is a lack of filetype support with a stock device. That's part of the reason I use a WD TV Streaming device.

Again, Apple products do just work which is great. It's great that all those in this thread have found a method to use their products that they are content with. However, I need more to a device than what Apple offers out of the box. And I getting a little tried of jailbreaking devices to get this ability. I am not trying to put down their products as junk, I just wanted to share that many of my experiences with Apple products has been less than optimal.

DMara

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

13" MacBook Air (this is the one we just bought on sale at Best Buy)

I've just bought an Asus UX31A-DB51 for my wife, cheaper than the MacBook Air, also better specs all around :razz:

BlueFox

I love my Classic iPod and Wadia 171 iTransport. I have been praising it for about three years now as a great, inexpensive music server. I recently bought an iPad, which I am using now. Other than those two items, I do not see myself buying other Apple gear.

AsSiMiLaTeD

DMara wrote: »

I've just bought an Asus UX31A-DB51 for my wife, cheaper than the MacBook Air, also better specs all around :razz:

I'm glad you enjoy the Asus. I looked at that one as well and I was impressed by the screen. The specs are basically on par with the Air though, not significantly better. The Engadget tests have it performing slower than the MacBook Air on both PCMark and Vantage tests. So it may spec out better, but does it perform as well? Benchmarks favor the MBA, but that's more a rhetorical question because realistically either device would have enough performance for me. The Asus is about $60 cheaper than the MBA on Amazon right now (1079 vs 1139) with the same configuration.

Ultimately at that level price 60 bucks wasn't a huge factor, and I don't care for the styling on the Asus (that lid looks fine in pictures but I didn't care for it when I saw it in the store), so I went with the Air.

DMara

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

I'm glad you enjoy the Asus. I looked at that one as well and I was impressed by the screen. The specs are basically on par with the Air though, not significantly better. The Engadget tests have it performing slower than the MacBook Air on both PCMark and Vantage tests. So it may spec out better, but does it perform as well? Benchmarks favor the MBA, but that's more a rhetorical question because realistically either device would have enough performance for me. The Asus is about $60 cheaper than the MBA on Amazon right now (1079 vs 1139) with the same configuration.

Ultimately at that level price 60 bucks wasn't a huge factor, and I don't care for the styling on the Asus (that lid looks fine in pictures but I didn't care for it when I saw it in the store), so I went with the Air.

The major plus on the Asus is the 1080p resolution of the IPS screen. Also I bought it from B&H for $1049 with free shipping and no tax (Amazon charged tax to our state now), so it's significantly cheaper, to me.

DMara

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

The Engadget tests have it performing slower than the MacBook Air on both PCMark and Vantage tests. So it may spec out better, but does it perform as well?

Would you please share the link that shows the above comparison?

mrbiron

I thought this thread was about a product(s) or brand(s) assimilated into your daily life....not a thread about APPLE?
If i wanted to read about apple products i'd go to Apple.com.:cheesygrin:

Or maybe i am way off the reservation and assumed that is what Assimilated was looking for?

AsSiMiLaTeD

DMara, I think you've missed the point or 'spirit' of the thread, and I shouldn't have even responded to your first point because then I got sucked into the debate, so I'll just concede your original point that your machine has better specs overall and was cheaper. To directly answer your question about the benchmarks, it's on the Engadget site in the review for the 2012 MBA.

That is part of the point I was trying to make though. I'll buy a product with 'lesser specs' or pay a little extra for the overall experience if I'm on board with how they do things. I'm not an idiot though, I'm not going to pay alot more money for something that's vastly inferior. That balance for everyone is different though. Some people will buy everything strictly based on specs and features with little or no brand loyalty (buy whatever is best at the cheapest price regardless of who makes it), and I fell in this category for a very long time. Then you have people (and these typically fall into the fanboy category) who buy blindly based on brand loyalty regardless of how bad the product is. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, and in something like the case of the MBA where the two products are reasonably close I'll gravitate towards the brand. It's the same with Polk, I've been with them for years and if something they make is comparable to something from a company and even if it gets edged out a little I'll still go the Polk route.

Neither way is right or wrong, they're just different.

THis thread wasn't intended to be an Apple discussion, though I knew it would invariably turn into that since I did have so much explanation in the OP. I was really hoping more to have a discussion about people who had similar experiences, where you'd gone from disliking a company to moving over to 'the dark side' and embracing them, or the other way around actually (I've had that kind of experience with AT&T lately but decided not to share that experience as it's overall negative and I'd end up brand bashing).

DMara

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

DMara, I think you've missed the point or 'spirit' of the thread, and I shouldn't have even responded to your first point because then I got sucked into the debate, so I'll just concede your original point that your machine has better specs overall and was cheaper. To directly answer your question about the benchmarks, it's on the Engadget site in the review for the 2012 MBA.

Sorry but in our Clubhouse threads tend to move sideway all the time :razz: Throughout all the posts you made involving Apple vs. others lately, I kinda believe you made your mind before even getting into the store :biggrin:
By the way the comparison you mentioned listed the Zenbook UX31 and Zenbook Prime UX21A, not the Zenbook Prime UX31A: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/18/macbook-air-review/. From other reviews such as laptopmag or theverge, the UX31A beat the 2012 MacBook Air PCMark07-wise. I had to ask since you made the bold statement.

PrazVT

I think if the features available on the devices you're using are enough for you and work well for you, there's nothing wrong with gravitating towards a single brand. Apple has made some effort to allow their products to interact with each other and the interfaces are similar - being intuitive is a good thing.

In my case, I doubt I'll ever progress past owning an iPod and perhaps an iPhone. I tinker too much and find some things limiting in certain apple products. But since I'm a bit of a techie, I don't mind the extra effort in making disparate devices work together.

Just depends on your comfort level and patience.

mrbiron

I will have to say, i started as an all american car kinda guy. Yes, i do see the irony in that statement. My first 4 cars were either Chevy's or Fords. I had always hated the thought of owning a foreign car of any type especially Toyotas...Which to this day i will never own because they brought the Prius into this world. (Worlds #$^@ ^&@ ^* #&!****^ &%$& *(&*( ^&*! Car!) God i hate that thing. I'll probably write it one more time at the end.
So then comes the day when i graduate from College a few years back and i decide with a new job comes a new car. I did the usual Chevy and Ford routine and thought nothing else of outside the box. After being disappointed with financing and lack-there-of features i turned to Nissan. Never thought i would go down that road but i entertained them. After a couple of days of haggling with both a Nissan and Chevy dealership, low and behold, a brand spankin new 07 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab was waiting for me at the dealership. Well, i figured that i would only be driving this truck for a couple of years until i got a raise or two so that i could buy my Crew cab GMC Sierra. Well those days have come and gone and am still driving this truck. Love her to death. Ask me 10 years ago if i would be buying from a foreign company and you'd get a big "Hell NO!". Ask me now and i will tell you sure, why not.............as long as it's not a Toyota, especially their *Fugly, D-bag driving Prius!


*To all Prius owners on the forum. I am sorry if i have offended you in any way. It's not my fault you made the mistake of buying a Prius. :twisted:

** and No, you all are not D-bags. Only Prius drivers from RI are D-bags!

The moral of the story, don't buy a Prius!...Thank YOU!

cnh

Ok, then let's talk about something besides Apple!

mrbiron, from your text above I don't quite understand why you bought the Nissan. Was it just a better deal and then you grew to like it? But without driving a comparable American make how would you know that you would like it "better" than that. Is it just that you're, now, comfortable enough with your Nissan that you don't think about that? Even though you certainly could if you wanted to!

cnh

AsSiMiLaTeD

DMara wrote: »

Sorry but in our Clubhouse threads tend to move sideway all the time :razz: Throughout all the posts you made involving Apple vs. others lately, I kinda believe you made your mind before even getting into the store :biggrin:
By the way the comparison you mentioned listed the Zenbook UX31 and Zenbook Prime UX21A, not the Zenbook Prime UX31A: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/18/macbook-air-review/. From other reviews such as laptopmag or theverge, the UX31A beat the 2012 MacBook Air PCMark07-wise. I had to ask since you made the bold statement.

I already conceded that your machine is better spec'd and cheaper, why are you still beating it to death? You win, yours is better spec'd and cheaper, game over.

You can presume to know what I'm thinking all you want, but you don't. You're missing the whole point here and the point of my last post. Try reading ALL of post #16 again and see if it clicks this time, focus on the second paragraph.

In this particular instance the Air and the Asus were close enough in specs, performance and price that I allowed other factors into the decision such as integration with my other gear and the brand loyalty that I have established with Apple.

FWIW, the better model that you have was NOT in any of the 5 local stores that I visited (Micro Center, 2 Frys locations and 2 Best Buy locations).

AsSiMiLaTeD

I used to be brand biased when buying cars, and for the longest time automatically leaned towards Toyota. However, in that instance I placed too much emphasis on brand. Toyota didn't do anything that set themselves apart other than make a reliable car, and in reality their cars probably weren't THAT much more reliable than the other options out there and yet that was the reason I cited for buying Toyota (alot of that probably stems from me having such bad luck with Chevy and Jeep).

In that instance I relied too heavily on brand loyalty when I could have bought something else that had comparable quality and potentially had more features or a lower price. Now that approach never failed me, as I was always satisfied with my Toyota purchases, but I will admit that along the way I immediately ruled out otherwise good options because I was in automatic Toyota mode (because their cars reated my so well over the years). I do still own Toyota (2010 4Runner) but also have an Infiniti FX now and it's the best vehicle we've ever owned.

mrbiron

mrbiron, from your text above I don't quite understand why you bought the Nissan. Was it just a better deal and then you grew to like it? But without driving a comparable American make how would you know that you would like it "better" than that. Is it just that you're, now, comfortable enough with your Nissan that you don't think about that? Even though you certainly could if you wanted to!

Don't you drive a prius...i was hoping you wouldn't read that:redface::redface:

I was always an america car guy and hated the thought of driving a foreign car. I had planned on trading in the Nissan for a nice "American Truck" because that is the right thing to do in my mind. I have since grown fond of my current truck and have no desire to go back to the Chevy's or the Ford's. I am, the Japanese Truck Driving Guy now.

Look, im just trying to get this thread back on track from the Apple debate that it wasn't supposed to be!! :cheesygrin:

AsSiMiLaTeD

Your car story sounds exactly like my Apple experience. That's the kind of discussion I was hoping for. I got caught up in defending (because someone attacked) my purchasing decision on a specific product and that's not where I wanted this thread to go, so that's totally my fault.

mrbiron

I don't think you can derail your own thread...:biggrin:

AsSiMiLaTeD

It is interesting how strongly people feel about the Apple debate, gotta be right up there with the Chevy / Fod debates...

In fact I think that if you could pack a few people into a single room and start discussions around Apple, Ford vs Chevy, Emotiva and whether or not cables make a difference you might create a rift in the spacetime continuum that would result in the collapse of the universe

cnh

mrbiron wrote: »

Don't you drive a prius...i was hoping you wouldn't read that:redface::redface:

I was always an america car guy and hated the thought of driving a foreign car. I had planned on trading in the Nissan for a nice "American Truck" because that is the right thing to do in my mind. I have since grown fond of my current truck and have no desire to go back to the Chevy's or the Ford's. I am, the Japanese Truck Driving Guy now.

Look, im just trying to get this thread back on track from the Apple debate that it wasn't supposed to be!! :cheesygrin:

Actually, my wife drives the Prius. so we're good. I tool around in a Chevy Impala. That's not to say that I don't drive my wife's car now and then. At this point I don't really have any brand allegiance regarding cars. When I bought my Impala, the primary concerns were, I wanted a car that could survive a decent crash, get good MPG on the highway, have reasonable "reliability" ratings, and seat six when necessary because I had my wife's parents living with us for a while and I HATE driving vans! Not a fan of SUVs either. I like to be closer to the ground. lol

cnh

mrbiron

It is interesting how strongly people feel about the Apple debate, gotta be right up there with the Chevy / Fod debates...

It's not that i didn't want to wade through another Apple debate but i understood what you were looking for in this thread and am putting forth the effort to get you to an end result. I got your back...

I like both chevy or ford but at the time, they couldn't offer me what i wanted and the economy had begun it's downward spiral. Maybe that has something to do with what i am driving now. If so, that you economy.

mrbiron

I HATE driving vans

That was my lunch break conversation today as it came up that my soon-to-be wife and i will be looking for a new vehicle to replace her Scion (she bought it without me knowing!!) because it's not a friendly car for car-seats. Vans aren't as bad as Prius but you wouldn't ever catch one in my driveway with my license plate on it.

I'd tell whomever owned it to park it in the back so nobody thinks less of me.

cnh

A Scion? You have my sympathies. I don't think there is an "uglier" vehicle on the road! No reflection on your wife to be. I know some people think these are "cute"!

cnh

mrbiron

A Scion? You have my sympathies.

At least it's an 06 TC and not the newer hunks of ****....hahaha....Still, pretty bad.

obieone

I'm sorry, no car is, or has been, as hideous as the Nissan Cube. Beyond FUGLY!

And yes, RI drivers are mentally challenged. GA is the same way. They're like the RI of Dixie.