My first computer was an Apple. Back then, Apple computers were clunky homebrew machines that you could crack open and shove a CP/M card into if you wanted to. They had a command line, and they were fun and easy to program.
When I outgrew my original machine, Apple had introduced the Mac, which cost a fortune, was next to impossible to upgrade, was underpowered, and well beyond my budget. So I switched to the PC.
My feelings about the new direction that Apple Corp had taken was summed up nicely by a poster at the time. It showed the perky Macintosh displaying its trademark "hello" in hand-written script. Beside it sat an IBM PC, with "Fuck off" displayed on its green CRT screen.
Today, there's a great rant about the Mac in the Guardian:
When I outgrew my original machine, Apple had introduced the Mac, which cost a fortune, was next to impossible to upgrade, was underpowered, and well beyond my budget. So I switched to the PC.
My feelings about the new direction that Apple Corp had taken was summed up nicely by a poster at the time. It showed the perky Macintosh displaying its trademark "hello" in hand-written script. Beside it sat an IBM PC, with "Fuck off" displayed on its green CRT screen.
Today, there's a great rant about the Mac in the Guardian:
I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.Now, I don't want to get into a religious war, but I too detest Macs. I've used them, I've programmed on them, and they are insufferably smug little pieces of crap*. And I really hate Apple. Think Microsoft is bad? If Apple had Microsoft's market share, computers would all cost about ten thousand dollars each and you'd get sued by Apple if you even thought about cracking open your computer and tinkering with it.
[...]
Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.
Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".
Anyway, that's a great rant. As it says at the end:
Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs.
* Well, of course they aren't crap. They're well-built powerful computers that work most of the time because there are more limited combinations of hardware and therefore Apple can test devices to ensure that they are reliable. An open platform like Wintel can't do the same, so there's a trade-off between price and reliability and simplicity.
