The Dark Side

There's a old joke that goes something like this (told with a foreign accent, for some reason):

Three young boys are finding $5 each, and are wanting to have good time for themselves, yes?  Off they go, with goal of getting, how you say, most bang for the buck.  Back they come, like so: Dubravko has bottle of cheap whiskey.  Little Zvonko has dirty magazine.  But Savka, he has big box of Tampons.  Dubravko is not understanding at all.  "With my bottle I can get drunk and happy like soldiers at pub!  Zvonko can look at pictures of pretty ladies.  But Savka, what can you do with box of Tampons?"  Savka points at box with big smile.  "It says here, with Tampon, you can go horseback riding, swimming, sailing, rollerskating..."

I always think of this joke (complete with the accent, for some reason), when I see the ads for Apple products.  With an iPhone/iPad/Touch, they say, you can finally watch movies, and read books, and chat with your friends, and surf the web, and...

Apple's been waving its arms around like this for years, claiming to have redefined the way we interact with our music, our phones, our computers.  The reality, is that Apple has a way of redefining how we shop for these things.  They are masters of brand and marketing, which is no small feat, but what torques a lot of PC/Linux folks (myself included) is the way macolytes always seem to have just discovered iSliced iBread, when there's already a gadget in the kitchen drawer that does the same thing for a fraction of the cost.  (Or worse, the "new" Apple product is just another way to access the gadget you already have.  If you listen closely while I watch the iTampon commercials, you can hear me mumbling, "That's Skype... that's Facebook... that's any browser anywhere, that's Kindle, that's Hulu...")

Apple, with their smarmy, pretentious ads.  Apple, with their smug, superior users.  And Apple stores!  Have you been to one of these white vortexes of doom?  Apple's actually managed to redefine "service" too, and it looks a lot like what we used to call "contempt."

My moment of reckoning was straight out of a bad after-school special about teenage romance: There I was, watching Pawn Stars, logged into my Windows 7 laptop, when the TV screen went jet-black, and this ad came on for the MacBook Air.  "Look at that," I snarled.  "Apple figured out a way to make a computer with a hinge!  You can open it with one finger.  Revo-fucking-lutionary!  Look at us, we're all silver and thin and we only have one USB port.  Who do they think--"   My wife, who tolerates this rant all the time, interrupted.   "Why don't you just buy one already?"

So it was that I found myself voluntarily heading off to the whitest place on Earth, to join the dark side.  That's right, I bought myself a MacBook Air, for no other reason than that the fact that they look cool.  And now I'm one of Those People.  Or at least, Those People have claimed me as one of their own.

It's too early for me to render my judgement on Mac-vs-PC.  But three days in, I offer the following observations:

• Those Mac friends that you have?  They're way more into their Macs than you suspected.  They know the stigma of being a Macolyte, so they keep it in check most of the time.  But when you buy a Mac, it's like dumping a girlfriend that everyone hated.  All of a sudden, friends come out of the woodwork to tell you just how much they despise Windows, and how much they really, really love Macs.  It's a conversation they've been dying to have with you, but were too polite to do so until now.  Be prepared.
• Carrying a Mac is a little like having a Steelers bumper sticker on your car in Cleveland.  It's really an invitation for crazy people on both sides to come up and identify with or against you based on one logo.  And you can't just claim to be impartial, or a casual fan, or driving your brother's car.  You got a Mac in your hand, you're a Mac Person.  Period.
• Switching to a Mac really is like joining a club: there are secret gestures to learn, new lingo for every little thing, different ways of doing common things.  Ostensibly this is in the name of usability, but I can't help but think some of it is just to maintain that sense of exclusivity: "Oh, in this club you have to tie your shoes with your left hand" kind of thing.
• Apple stores are getting more obnoxious as Apples become more popular.  Its as if they can sense that they don't really need to buy your love anymore.  I expect soon that you'll be met at the door by a genius who will kick you in the balls and walk away.  (And shortly after that, you'll need to make an appointment for your genius ball-kicking.)  

I do like my new laptop-- it's thin, it's sexy, you can open it with one finger.  Has it changed my life?  I'll get back to you after vacation: we're going horseback riding, and swimming, and sailing, and rollerskating...