I Hate The Macintosh

Let's get one thing straight. I once owned a Mac. I also used one (briefly) in college to prepare papers. Pretty early on, people realized that GUI was invaluable for cutting corners. The mouse (and that new fangled laser printer) allowed you to quickly modify the font size of your paper. For a while, the scam was this: if you didn't have enough text written to fill the required number of pages, simply adjust the font size up to say, 20 points or so. Voila. 5 page paper becomes 8. I think this kind of use of the Mac is at the heart of my distaste for it. It has become the computer of lazy people. Now, I know the old saw of the Mac cultists (by the way, what kind of computers did the Heaven's Gate people use?) is something akin to "I don't want to learn another language just to do my work. I want it to do the work for me." Fair enough, to a point. The problem is not in wanting to use the computer purely as a tool. The problem is in thinking that the tool will do the work for you. Macintosh users are inherently lazy, selfish people using machines that were once cutting edge but are now virtually useless.

The Coolest Thing About Macs-The 1984 Commercial Really well crafted advertising can salvage even a lousy product. Maybe not so much that you buy the product, but at least you will be intrigued by the schtick. Some current examples of dubious products with great advertising includes include Miller Lite (the "Dick" commercials-great print, TV and radio work for really, really, bad beer), and Saturn (the "feel tremendous personal satisfaction while driving an ugly American car" commercials). Chiat-Day's 1984 commercial for Apple's Macintosh is one of the few high points in the Apple advertising history. The anti totalitarian feel of the spot was the perfect fodder for our imagination. I can see baby boomers, terrified by the stark command line of DOS, eating this stuff up. Too bad the rest of their ads generally suck even more than their products.

So why am I kicking them when they're already down? The company is dead. Isn't this like shooting fish in a barrel? The Mac was actually a great computer at one time. Simplifying the use of computers to make them intuitively easy to use should be the goal of every designer and engineer. I'm also very pro competition. I'm tired of Microsoft telling me where I want to go today. I've suffered through plenty of installations for FreeBSD and Linux just to further the cause of the free market.

I actually don't hate the Mac as much as the Macintosh user. Mostly, it is because of the extreme arrogance Apple products seem to engender in their users. Have you ever asked someone for a file and have them send you a Mac file? Isn't this a little like sending someone you've never met an e-mail in Russian? A little presumptuous and a big waste of time. The fact that you can not easily share files defeats the open systems nature of the Internet. Granted, Apple products still hold some sway for graphics applications, but that dominance is just about over. So why do people still hold on to these archaic machines that have little or no hope for an upgrade? Perhaps they can not afford a new computer. That is about the only excuse that is acceptable. I assume that is why public schools still use Macs. I hope it is not because the teachers in these schools are computer illiterate, but I could be wrong. Most of the Mac users out there can perfectly well afford new machines. They hold on to them because they are comforted by the smiley faces and their known quantities. Their old fashioned software and ridiculous interfaces ("I'm trying to transfer a file and the dog isn't running back and forth. Help!") only serve to put the kaibosh on collaboration. I'm not proposing that you have to be some sort of computer genius in order to type your memos and e-mail. I am saying come on fossils, enter the year 2000. Or, don't send me stuff.