Tag: apple

Charlie Brooker on Mac Fanboys

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I’m a full-on Windows user. Not because I think it’s particularly brilliant, but just because – for me – it works. We use it in the lab, I use it at home, my friends use it and my family use it.
And yes, occasionally there are flaws and stuff, but (literally) 99.9% of the time, it works.
Which beats my car, my swimming pool pump and my burglar alarm – to name but a few.

Another reason that I use Windows rather than a Mac, is Mac users’ constant and nauseating insistence that I must use Mac products if I want to be a “real” computer user. And yes, perhaps if I was a silver Loerie-winning, arty-farty Ad Wizard or a graphic designer or something, then maybe it would suit me to use a Mac. But I’m not, and it doesn’t.
So why would I want to shell out 2½ times the money for a product that I don’t want and I don’t need? Because it looks nice? Because it will make me appear “trendy”? Big wow.

The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker knows exactly what I’m on about and sums up everything I want to say in the first two paragraphs of his piece on this issue – the rest is certainly worth a read as well.

I admit it: I’m a bigot. A hopeless bigot at that: I know my particular prejudice is absurd, but I just can’t control it. It’s Apple. 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.

Seriously, stop it. I don’t care if Mac stuff is better. I don’t care if Mac stuff is cool. I don’t care if every Mac product comes equipped a magic button on the side that causes it to piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead and make holographic unicorns dance inside your head. I’m not buying one, so shut up and go home. Go back to your house. I know, you’ve got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There’s a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute MONSTER.

And he’s right, because the only people that this issue really matters to is the Mac Fanboys. If it mattered to me, I’d do something about it. But it doesn’t, so I haven’t and I won’t.
When I’m at a braai enjoying a drink, I don’t expect someone to repeatedly badger me about my choice of beer; telling me how their imported-from-Tibet Lèopard du neige bèvèragè is made with water from Himalayan glaciers, which is then crystal-filtered through the Dalai Lama’s undergrunties. I like my Black Label – I don’t need your stupidly expensive alternative.

As Marcus Brigstocke quipped at the recent Edinburgh Festival:

To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!

All of which makes tweets like this, comparing that gadget to the achievements of space travel and automotive vehicles, seem a little absurd. Because it’s just a mobile phone, with a dodgy camera, prone to occasionally exploding – even if it has that annoying little fruity symbol on it. 

So Charlie Brooker is right. Microsoft Windows (in whatever guise) might not be the best product ever created, but it generally does what it is supposed to do and it generally does it very well.
Is Mac better? Maybe for you Mac Fanboys.

But then, as Brooker says: “I don’t care if you’re right. I just want you to die.”

Apple’s dirty secret…

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I love my iPod. Aside from my SEX1, it’s my favourite piece of kit and I use it every day.

Fortunately, it has never exploded, but if it did, I would never be able to tell you about it anyway. That’s because it has now emerged that Apple – wonderful, lovely, ethical, not-Microsoft Apple – are trying to hush people up when their iPods explode by forcing them to sign gagging orders if they want their money refunded. That’s nice. Friendly.

Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child’s iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company.
The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.
The case echoes previous circumstances in which Apple attempted to hush up incidents when its devices overheated.

Which – to me, at least – doesn’t look like the most friendly or customer-orientated settlement offer for a defective product which could potentially have seriously injured its 11-year-old owner (yes, I know she looks older) because it exploded.


Boom.

Much like the Trading Standards officials quoted in the article, I can completely understand why Apple want these incidents hushed up: Apple fans are generally hysterical, leftie drama-queens and wouldn’t want to risk damaging their freshly waxed legs by putting an iPod Touch in their Guess jeans’ pocket.

Fortunately for Steve Jobs, his brand remains safe. All he has to do is to add some feature onto an existing product – ideally a feature which should have been on the existing product in the first place (and maybe an extra letter onto the name) – and the blinkered Apple fanboys will go wild and bombard twitter with overly excited tweets that OMG! it’s going to be, like,  SO much better than their current Apple product and they CAN’T WAIT!!!!, helpfully forgetting that their current Apple product should really have done all that stuff already.
They’ll be so busy running off to the loo with pictures of the new over-priced phone/laptop/MP3 player that all the exploding iPod issues will be forgotten long before they go out and spend stupid amounts of money on the new device because it will impress their arty-farty friends; after all, it’s got that little logo on it and it may not explode.

Additionally, South African Apple fans will seek sympathy from similarly brain-washed individuals over the price of Apple products and how we only get the new stuff weeks after it is released in the US; crying about discrimination, while conveniently ignoring the fact that this happens here with every make, model and manufacturer of anything vaguely technological.

Yes folks, believe it or not (and some of you won’t) Apple is a big, ugly, capitalist company which is in business to make money. It doesn’t matter how trendy you think their products are or how cool it is to have the latest thing which looks exactly the same as the last thing does or did. There are very few people who find your chatter about memory size or connectivity exciting. They’re smiling and nodding just to be polite and because they’re waiting for the big bang when you play your next Jonas Brothers track.