That Charlie Brooker Article
So a few days ago Charlie Brooker casually commented that he hated Macs, and Mac owners, and over the space of about half a day every single one of you sent me a link to the article, which leads me to believe that you’re hoping for some sort of response.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but you’re not going to get one; at least, you’re not going to get a point-by-point rebuttal; you’re not going to get a lengthy essay where I, a fully-paid up member of the Cult of Apple, push my black-rimmed spectacles up my nose, stick Twin Cinema on, and rant at length about how Apple introduced support for multi-button mice back in the first version of OSX actually. No, if you want that sort of po-faced, willy-waving argument, you can just read through the 750+ comments that the article generated — I warn you now though, some of them are actually people arguing about what OS Doctor Who would run, so do take care your brain doesn’t melt.
The reason I’m not going to respond in this way — aside from the fact that Brooker takes any form of rebuttal, reasoned or not, as further evidence in his favour — is because, in amidst his comedy venom, I think he does have a point.
His reasons for hating Macs can be boiled down into two groups: technical, and image. The technical considerations can be countered, but they’re all understandable as well; for instance, yes, Apple produce a multi-button mouse, and you can use pretty much any non-Apple USB mouse without problems, but they still ship that single-click mouse, and their laptops all have one button beneath their trackpad, so I can understand why someone unfamiliar with them would assume that the single-click function was still the norm.
The image, though, of Mac users being smug, is a real problem, and it’s exacerbated by the much-lampooned range of ‘Mac Vs. PC’ adverts. You probably know the ones; a boringly-dressed middle-manager type is the PC, a stylish, slimmer, hipster-type is the Mac, and they play out little comedy skits whereby the PC is revealed to be rubbish and the Mac revealed to be the best thing in the universe.
The problem I have with these adverts is that whenever I see them, I want to punch the one playing the Mac. If I was a PC user, I know exactly how I’d react to someone telling me how great their Mac was at making podcasts, organising their photo collection and making amateur home movies; I’d think they were a cock. If people want to spend their evenings messing around in iLife doing these things then fair enough, I’ve no complaints, but it’s the unspoken assumption on the part of these adverts that doing so makes you a better person that sets my teeth on edge. It’s the belief that anybody but you and your immediate friends and family gives a shit. They don’t.
I don’t fully understand why this subject provokes this sort of knee-jerk fury, not just in Brooker’s article but in the subsequent comments as well. I bought a Mac purely because I needed to test websites in Safari and other Mac browsers, not because I was trying to make a fashion statement. I then ended up using it as my main computer, because I preferred OSX to Windows and liked the Apple hardware. If asked for my recommendation, I’ll recommend Macs, but I’m not on commission and I don’t own shares in Apple so I’m not going to lose any sleep if people buy PCs instead.
You’re supposed to watch these adverts and aspire to be the Mac character; you’re supposed to feel a bit silly, and maybe a bit ashamed, if you’re more like the PC character. Of course, there are smug Mac users, just as there are smug Windows users and smug Linux users. The difference is, Apple actively encourages that smugness, so it comes as no surprise to me that people can think Apple users are equally smug.
It probably doesn’t help using Bono to advertise iPods, either.