Two, two, two tiresome feuds in one!
One of the Einsteins at Daily Kos manages to compute that “buying a Mac makes you liberal“, thus prompting 700+ comments from people who still care enough to have a stake in the Mac vs PC and liberals vs conservatives slapfights.
Well, as it happens, I know a lot of true liberals (like me) who are Mac owners*. But I still see merit in this remark:
I have never really grokked what makes Apple loveable to people - their style is attractive, sure, but it strikes me as very 50’s “modern.” And it all looks so identical, little rows of computers all looking exactly the same, little iPods all exactly the same, little stores all with exactly the same arrangement, etc. It all seems so mindlessly conformist, these endless plastic rounded boxes all in antiseptic white. It looks totalitarian.
But really, 700+ comments? As Doc Searls says, amazing.
*I use my Mac once a week, for a regularly scheduled videoconference, and run my router through it. Otherwise, the sterility kind of gets to me, and I mostly rely on my very lightweight PC laptop.
Filed under: Life, Technology
Ah ha! See? You are a true liberal! Wait, you use it once a week? Hooray for PCs!
Okay, I see your point on that. Not sure I’m amazed that 700 comments were elicited on such a popular website about the cross-section of politics and computers, though…
I’m a PC owner with a bias in favour of Apple, so was looking forward to my first taste of OSX last year. Really disappointed - if I said “Fisher Price”, would that make sense? Felt like a kiddies’ toy, at any rate, rather than a tool for adult use. Although, some of the pro-Mac comments both at Samizdata and (ugh) Kos would point to Apple aiming their products for the use of adult tools.
> it all looks so identical, little rows of computers all looking exactly the same
Would that not be true of almost any single manufacturer’s products in every industry except furniture, clothing, and art?
Besides, I have two Macs, and they look completely different: a new Macbook and a seven-year-old iMac DV, which looks like the front of a blue aeroplane. They change their style regularly.
> I have never really grokked what makes Apple loveable to people
The OS. It appears not to have occurred to the writer that there’s any difference between Macs and PCs other than the bodywork. I’m not one of those die-hard Mac fanboys who won’t hear any criticism of Apple and won’t touch Windows — I think that Windows XP is superior to OSX in all sorts of ways — but, overall, using OSX is a far nicer, quicker, more useful, more productive experience. I don’t much care for the current sterile white designs myself — much preferred the bright colours and bizarre leopard prints and things of a few years ago — but I still bought a Macbook a few weeks ago and I’m still sick of my much better-looking brushed-aluminium Acer.
Did I mention that I’ve got a new Macbook?
When I first saw OSX demo’d, I was instantly smitten. Somehow, though, using it is not as fun or efficient as I’d hoped.