let’s call this my Monday rant:
In the QuickBooks world, I often see new Mac owners and non-Mac users refer to the machines and OS as MAC. Just to reiterate what many have done before me…
MAC = Media Access Control. It represents an unique ID for each piece of hardware that accesses a network. Your computer may have one MAC address for the ethernet connection and another for the wireless connection. The router will have another.
Mac = Macintosh. An Apple model first introduced in 1984. Now bearing no resemblance to those early models, except for the shape of the apple logo and the distinctive bong during startup (and I know because my 11″ MacBook Air doesn’t even look like a cousin of the 512k Mac I had in 1984)
While we’re on the subject of proper Mac nomenclature, I’d submit that we abandon “Macintosh” entirely. Looking around Apple’s website, it certainly appears they have. Check product names, help documentation, etc., there’s nary a mention of Macintosh. It’s just as well as far as I’m concerned, what a mouthful that was!
I agree! Kind of like when we all stopped saying “cellular” – I could never get my tongue around that one. Echos of my childhood speech impediment with ‘R’ would surface. So relieved when it just became “cell”