It’s not like I’m objective here. The length and girth of my boner for Apple is a matter of public record. But come on:
I don’t like Apple products. And the better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them. I blame the customers. Awful people. Awful. Stop showing me your iPhone. Stop stroking your Macbook. Stop telling me to get one.
Really? Really?
It’s not insulting: down in Cupertino they can cry themselves to sleep on their pillows stuffed with hundred-dollar bills made out of pressed cocaine1, I’m sure; and as many of my paycheques as I’ve stuffed into the waistband of Steve Jobs’s jeans over the years2, I haven’t yet made “Mac owner” part of my personal identity.
But that’s the thing. I’ve never met one of these “eerie replicant Mac monks” Charlie Brooker is bitching about. I’ve never known anyone, online or off-, who considered a Macintosh purchase a “spiritual choice.” In fact, I’ve never once encountered an Apple zealot half as frothy-mouthed as the jackasses who jump on every opportunity to take cheap shots at Apple products and their users.
Charlie Brooker’s thesis is “I hate Windows, but I hate strawmen Mac evangelists more, so I’m going to marinate in my misery just to stick it to these imaginary fanboys. I’m unhappy and unproductive, and I’m going to stay unhappy and unproductive—that’ll show ‘em.”
Finishing the sentence “I’ll never buy a Mac because” with anything but “it doesn’t meet my needs” means you don’t get to accuse Apple users of making irrational purchasing decisions based on slavish adherence to an ideology.
In other news, it’s Monday morning and I have too much coffee and not enough work to do. Can you tell?
1 Note to self: There’s got to be a market for this. Look into it.
2 Note to self: Ew.
