Charlie Brooker on Mac Fanboys

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.”