Larry Bodine: Attorney at Flaw
October 14, 2006Last month Law.com had a commentary from a lawyer who chronicled his experience with Apple for his office. The crux of his argument:
Because Apple controls both the hardware and the software, all applications use the same conventions. For instance, access to the Print dialog window is always in the File menu of every application, which is always the second menu from the left edge of the menu bar at the top of the screen. The same keystrokes bring up the Print dialog in all applications. So when you learn one application, you already know the basic functions in every other program.
Like Microsoft’s XP, another benefit is that everything works easily and together. Plug in a new printer, your Mac can usually find the driver automatically. Same for networking.
Of course, there’s the issue of viruses. One of the best advantages of using Apple is that you can just about forget about viruses, because there aren’t many that can penetrate Macs. And OS X, Apple’s UNIX-based operating system, does a good job locking them out.
Also like Microsoft’s XP, Apple automatically notifies me about any security update to the system software. At my election, the Mac will download and install them automatically.
Notice how he balances both sides of the argument.
This month we have a sort of rebuttal from another lawyer. I wouldn’t comment on it except for some egregious errors. Evidence #1:
Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task.
Uh? Screen Capture (command+Shift+F3 for full screen capture or Command+Shift+F4 for select capture) comes built with every Mac and that feature has been offered with the same key strokes since Mac OS 8! Or even MacOS 7.2?
Evidence #2:
I didn’t even bother with the Mac’s iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address. Instead, I went straight to Outlook for Mac. A lot of the software for Mac — such as AOL for Mac OS X — was dumbed down and missing may features of the current PC versions.
Not true about the Apple Mail. No one needs a .Mac address to use Mail. I use it with Gmail – I refuse to pay for that stupid .Mac service. I have never used AOL for MacOS X so I cannot comment on that. I agree that Microsoft had not bent over backward to have same capability on the Mac as they do on the PC with Outlook. Or at least that was the way it was with Office X – the same is not true with Office 2004. Entourage works well with Exchange and other mail servers.
Evidence #3:
What drove me nuts was that I would open Word for Mac and couldn’t delete files while I was in Word. There is no File | Delete option. So the documents took up space on my hard drive, until someone told me I had to find the document in Finder and then move it into the trash from there. This seemed stupid to me; I just wanted to highlight a file and tap “delete.”
Yes, Command+Delete is more secure and prevents accidental deleting but it takes extra effort.
Evidence #4:
Word files transferred from the Mac were missing pictures. PowerPoint files transferred from the Mac would lose their formatting. PCs and Macs are not compatible, regardless of what they say.
True. Office is made by …?
Evidence #5:
Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser.
Whaa? This is news to me and my daughter who plays Flash games online all day. Also, there are other browser options: Firefox?
Evidence #6:
I scraped along with Internet Explorer 5.0 for Mac, and then discovered in 2006 that Microsoft would no longer support the Mac version. You can’t do WSYWIG on Typepad (where many folks create their blogs), which you can on a PC.
Well, actually IE support was dropped earlier than 2006, but yes, some sites require IE 5.0. Also, don’t forget those sites which use WMP 10 DRM’ed media which cannot be played using Flip4Mac. On the other hand, most of those sites also work with that other browser: Firefox. You can do WSYIWIG all you want on Typepad using Firefox.
In closing:
I think this is the main reason Apple targets technophiles, geeks, young professionals, and students almost exclusively. it’s a given that younger people can adapt to new technology faster and do not have any built-in preferences or resistance to change. Folks who are changing platforms after decades of Windows (ab)use, switching without having the time to invest in (un)learning some simple habits things can get frustrated. But its not impossible – for pete’s sake, geriatrics in my family have switched successfully. In Larry’s case, the evidence suggests that he just wanted a Windows experience from Apple. Well counselor, that is not how it works and no “Dummies” book can help you overcome that. Case dismissed.
I read his article, too. I hope his arguments in the courtroom are more persuasive than the nonsense he posted in his article. He’s the classic lemming. With the number of Macs that are in circulation, you would think that if even half of his “complaints” were valid, somebody else would have identified similar shortcomings. This guy is no expert.
It’s easy to be stupid, and it takes effort to use your brain. That guy was either stupid or lazy or both. I would hope he would feel like real moron when someone points out his ignorance, but he sounds too much like a fanboy of you know… coded by you know….
“What drove me nuts was that I would open Word for Mac and couldn’t delete files while I was in Word. There is no File | Delete option.”
This one killed me– this is a FEATURE– not a bug! This guy must be an idiot.
You got the key commands for a screen shot wrong. They are Command>Shit>3 & Command>Shift>4…no F3 or F4 involved.
In case you wanted all of them.
Take a picture of the whole screen
⌘-Shift-3
Take a picture of part of the screen
⌘-Shift-4, then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
To cancel, press Escape.
Take a picture of a window, a menu, the menu bar, or the Dock.
Press ⌘-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. Move the pointer over the area you want so that it’s highlighted, then click.
To drag to select the area instead, press the Space bar again. To cancel, press Escape.
Screen shots are saved as files on the desktop. If you want to put the screen shot in the Clipboard, rather than create a file, hold down the Control key when you press the other keys. You can then paste the picture into a document.
You can also take pictures of the screen using the Grab application (in the Utilities folder).
He also repeated the classic b*** sh** about a one-button mouse. You’d think that he would’ve got Apple’s Mighty Mouse with that $4,500 machine. It has two buttons and a scroll thingy… or he could’ve just gone cheap, like I did, and bought a Microsoft Mouse for $12 ($14 CDN)
I read that guys article too and was laughing so hard by the end I almost cried. For me it was typical lawyer speak – say lots and talk in circles and make it sound like you are concerned and lie about what ever you want.
I mean I bought my 73 year old mom an iMac after she used a PC for years as a bookkeeper in a local heathcare business. Yea she had a bit of trouble learning – took her at least 10 minutes – lol – guess she is a lot smarter than this lawyer.
This article reminded me of why this old joke is still so popular – What’s a thousand lawyers on the bottom of the ocean? A good start.
Thank God I changed my mind in college and didn’t become a lawyer.
Also screen shots can be taked by Preview – under the File menu
I wonder why the obsession with screen shots and print screen?!? What is this, 1980?
Oh, that’s right; Windoze can’t make PDFs from it’s print dialog box. Which kinda makes it difficult to make digital copies of files for your colleagues when they don’t have the same apps.
Poor smart lawyer can’t get enough facts straight to lie convincingly. Ends up looking like a lying… well lawyer. Too caught up in the idea of his own intelligence and self importance to realize he’s just a trained monkey. Trained by Microsoft. Imagine what law school he must have gone to…
My mother started using a Mac five years ago, at 81 years of age, having never touched a computer before in her life. Inside a month she was doing some stuff my power user friends who grew up on Macs hadn’t figured out yet. That after having suffered multiple TIA’s over the five years before taking up computing. In the smart lawyers defence my mother started with a 200+ IQ though.
One thing she has been doing is scanning, restoring, cleaning up, resizing and reprinting photos for the museum she helps run.
I typed into google: ” ‘os x’ screen capture”, and the very first entry at macdevcenter.com has the correct instructions on the sixth line. How did the author have the intelligence to find and download screen capture utilities, but did not think to do this simple web search? How did he not find out that iCal and Mail work fine without .Mac? What is a Finder “false hit”? He “only” used FireWire to transfer data to his hard drive? Isn’t that FireWire’s main use? If he switched to a Mac why were his web sites still optimized for IE 5.5 or higher? Why does he blame Safari when HIS web sites are designed for IE? In a column written as a fact-filled reality piece, he mainly reveals his inability to do simple research and the most basic learning. His column end says he is a marketing consultant. I don’t think I would want to be his client.
The fellow also oversimplified the process for creating a screenshot in Windows. You have to hit Print-Screen and then paste into an application that can handle the image, and save the image. A lot of WINDOWS users are unaware of how it works and just note that hitting Print Screen doesn’t appear to do anything.
Mailed to Larry:
Your absolute failure to make any effort to understand the new computer you had purchased ensured your absolute failure to be able to use it. Did you sit down at your first Windows based PC and use it flawlessly with no effort on your part? The Mac was a new platform for you, surely a little bit of reading was warranted. Almost every complaint you’ve made against that machine was based on ignorance. I won’t go through your article line by line because it was already done better elsewhere:
http://innerdaemon.wordpress.com/2006/10/14/larry-bodine-attorney-at-flaw/
What I find most interesting is your willingness to show what a knucklehead you are by publishing such drivel online. Heaven help your clients if this article is any indication of how you prepare for a public presentation.
People are stupider for having read your article.
It’s obvious that Mr. Bodine is the offspring of Jethro Bodine, that famous cultural icon from the sixties, known for his enormous appetite, his “goes-intas”, and his towering intellect.
I’m certain this isn’t the first time that Larry has heard this comparison, and apologize for the lack of originality. However, it would explain a lot if I had actually hit the nail on the head….
This guy is just trying to increase his website statistics. No one can be this stupid.
All he had to do was go to the Help Menu, enter Screen Capture and all of the instructions are clearly spelled out.
You can also take pictures of the screen using the Grab application (in the Utilities folder).
In all fairness, nobody’s going to consider Command-Shift-3 exactly intuitive, especially since there’s no key labelled command on the keyword – it’s the cloverleaf-shaped one. (Why do we call it command instead of clover, anyway?)
Anyway, I forget that keystroke all the time and just use Grab, which is in plain sight in the Utilities folder, with an icon of a sizzzors. Clear enough, no?
I think he bought his computer before the Mighty Mouse came out, although he could have plugged in any multi-button + scroll wheel mouse.
Really, he needed a bit more hand-holding than he got, and he should have bought from an Apple Retail Store where it sounds like about half an hour at the Genius Bar would have fixed most of his problems.
I’m totally baffled as to why he would have any trouble with Flash. Works fine on my system with Safari.
By the way, does anyone know why the problem with the missing pictures in Word documents come up? I got burned by that one once and maybe that’s why I’m a bit more sympathetic to his cause than you guys. Could he have converted the images into another format (readable by the Mac) before transferring the documents?
Still, if he goes back to Windows, he will get what he deserves. Anyone remember the Sircam virus? It would go to your documents folder and randomly send a document with the message “I’m sending you this file to get your advice.”
Not exactly something I’d like my lawyer to be exposed to.
D
I’m sorry isn’t it MS’s responsibility to make sure that applications that it sells are compatible? Adobe & others seem to have no issues with this. Why does MS?
Use Camino instead of Firefox if you have Mac. The program is smaller in size and thus uses less resources and downloads and displays pages much more quickly. And because there is suck a tiny percentage of people using Camino, they don’t have to worry as much with browser takeovers.
LOL. It’s simple, most of us attorneys are not technologically advanced. Good for you!
http://www.holygoodnight/wordpress.com
i am a lawyer in the chicago area where larry bodine is based. just so you now, larry is not so much a practicing lawyer as a technology consultant and authority on technology for the legal world. he is quoted liberally and his opinion matters in legal tech circles. in short, many law firms will never touch a mac because of larry’s position. it’s not a good or bad thing: it just ‘is.’
“…many law firms will never touch a mac because of larry’s position. …”
Now that is a scary thought.
Go to http://pm.typepad.com/professional_marketing_bl/2006/10/mac_aficionados.html#comments .
Before you comment, take a deep breath. Remember it’s Larry Bodine’s readers you want to appeal to.
After reading mhedayat’s reply I was suddenly taken with the idea that it’s entirely possible, nay probable, that Larry Bodine’s motives can be construed as something a little more insidious than just a guy with a closed mind and a big cheque book. If he truly is a character whose opinions carry a lot of weight in legal tech circles, he may be running his own secret agenda. For whatever reason, Apple’s computers have to be made to look like rubbish and totally unsuitable for any ‘practical’ purpose. There’s a million reasons why Larry may have an agenda such as this, but keep in mind the old maxim . . . ‘Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity!”
Okay, so Larry’s a high-ranking tech geek among lawyers.
Are we to assume that everyone else is dumb enough to believe him?
Not a bad article.
nocomment
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name!
For a more enlightened view, see Should Attorneys Use Macs in the current issue of Los Angeles Lawyer.
I’ve seen these folks speak before and he’s a Mac user from way back while she’s a Windoze user.
They also have an item on their own site about the Parallels Desktop for the Intel Macs.
He’s lying. He’s a scheming, lying marketing dweeb who thinks he’s going to make a name and get some notoriety out of all this. He’s right about that; he’s the Internet’s newest techno-retard. It’s funny that so many people want to give him the benefit of the doubt when the level of incompetence one needs to experience the problems he describes would prevent him from ever using a computer in the first place, much less publish a blog or running a website marketing company. Here’s to you, Mr. Bodine (that name’s great, too, Bo-deen, say it w/ a Southern accent and you’ll see what I mean), you’re now the laughingstock of the internets. Here’s a tip: if you’re trying to push a technical consulting business, try not to look like an utter boob.
Well someone did not do there research! And that someone would be Mr. Bodine! What were you thinking mr. bodine? Did you just pull your mac out of the box and turn it on play with it for 20 min with no research on how to use it then write this RETARDED article…cause thats what it seems like to me! Next time do your research before you go writing an article on something!