

Computing Schizophrenia and the Future of the Mac - vbsteven
http://opdebeeck.org/blog/2012/02/18/computing-schizophrenia-and-the-future-of-the-mac/

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JonnieCache
Sorry to be so pedantic, but schizophrenia is a terrifying psychotic illness
characterised by extreme paranoid delusions (lizards are controlling my brain
through my microwave etc), full-blown auditory and visual hallucinations,
broken speech and thought processes, and all of the accompanying social
problems that the above would obviously incur.

The metaphorical sense in which it is commonly used, and is being used here,
is a confusion with dissociative identity disorder, aka multiple personality
disorder. It doesn't help that the word comes from the greek for "split mind,"
but there is no aspect of multiple divergent identities in schizophrenia,
except in the sense that the symptoms will wax and wane over time.

Understand that I say this not out of needless pedantry or tiresome political
correctness, but in the interests of society having a full understanding of
these incredibly common mental health issues in order that they should be
viewed on an equal footing with physical ailments. Perhaps then we could
channel our anxieties around psychological health more effectively than we do
currently, where we mock the weak in public and chug pills in private.

Rant over...

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jwdunne
I completely agree and I don't think it's pedantic.

Such misconceptions and the projection of them are a massive reason why mental
illnesses are still stigmatised in modern society. It only stifles recovery of
schizophrenic patients and definitely doesn't help.

For example, it'd be totally ridiculous for someone to point at my left arm
and say that it's broken when the plaster cast is on my right arm. This is
almost the same as when someone points at someone else and says they have X
mental illness when their symptoms are actually more like Y mental illness.

This isn't just a problem with schizophrenia, though I'm sure it's the most
common misconception. I've seen big misconceptions when people reference
Bipolar and depression.

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f4stjack
That is interesting... On one hand, you have Mac series which have divided
mouseland and touchland(ew, that sounded gross) with an iron wall, on the
other you have windows 8 which tries to unify them.

I wonder why this approach had gained credibility, apart from the obvious:
More people had started to use tablets. But is that a valid reason to switch
everything over to tablet-like ui? Microsoft is doing it, Apple is doing it
and Linux (especially Ubuntu) is doing it too.

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dochtman
So: an iPad with a keyboard case (to make it a MacBook Air) and a dock with
Thunderbolt stuff to connect KVM appliances?

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geon
You wouldn't need any new hardware at all. The existing wireless bt keyboard
and mouse, combined with airplay video out gives you everything you need.

