If you buy a PC, you\u2019ve just bought a PC. If you buy a Mac, somehow you\u2019re a Machead, a cultist, an Apple fanboy or girl, you\u2019ve joined a religion, you worship Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive, you\u2019ve been fooled by the hype, you\u2019re trying to be cool, you think shiny is good, the list goes on.<\/p>\n
You hear much the same degree of jeering between football fans but at least with that there are fans on both sides. Who\u2019s actually fan of Windows PCs? But okay, if Apple is a religion, it\u2019s the Church of the One That Works.<\/p>\n
If Microsoft comes out with something, I\u2019ll probably hear about it at some point. I don\u2019t follow many of the techie news sites I used to when I worked in computers but I\u2019ll hear eventually. Mostly because it takes so long: a pretty standard spiel from Microsoft is that our new product will kill Apple\/Google\/Everybody as soon as it\u2019s launched in three to four years. And it\u2019s cheaper too, so there. Will be cheaper.<\/p>\n
There was a nice-looking tablet computer they did this about: if you saw the articles, you quite fancied this. It was a wee way off, they said, and now the other day they cancelled it entirely. <\/p>\n
In comparison, Apple loves making big announcements about fancy technology and ending with the words \u201cAvailable today\u201d. I\u2019m not sure whether you\u2019d call that smug or gleeful, but I think they earn whichever it is. The famous Apple secrecy up to the launch of a product has some unpleasant sides but ultimately where so many firms talk about what they\u2019re going to do, Apple tends to just do it first.<\/p>\n
Seriously first, too. They nicked the idea for a graphical computer back when there used to be any other sort. Microsoft nicked it from the same place an hour later. But where Apple took Xerox PARC\u2019s idea and made it commercially practical, commercially available, Microsoft Windows has been copying the Mac for nearly thirty years and it\u2019s still not there. <\/p>\n
You have a mouse. You wouldn\u2019t have if Apple hadn\u2019t done it first, or at least if someone hadn\u2019t, because Microsoft came late to mice. If you\u2019ve got a laptop, it has the keyboard pushed to the back so you can type comfortably and it\u2019s got a slick touchpad. Because of Apple. I was at the UK launch of their first PowerBook with that touchpad and they crowed about how they had patented it.<\/p>\n
Apple patents are plainly rubbish, but there you go.<\/p>\n
When Apple does come out with something new, I hear about it much, much faster because these days I\u2019m looking. I\u2019ve got a couple of Mac sites on my iPhone\u2019s newsreader and I\u2019ll read them not through fervour, not because they happen to update while I\u2019m bowing toward Apple\u2019s headquarters in Cupertino.<\/p>\n
I read them because of Apple\u2019s track record and how the firm thinks things through.<\/p>\n
One example. I hope this has changed in Windows 7 but it lasted for the first twenty years of Windows so it\u2019s a fair illustration of how the technology doesn\u2019t matter, it\u2019s the people behind it. Copy some documents to a floppy disk, if you can find a floppy disk.<\/p>\n
Windows gives you a nice, pretty graphic of paper airplanes flying between an icon of your hard disk and an icon of your floppy one. Until suddenly the floppy is full and it panics. \u201cError!\u201d it screams. I can\u2019t remember the unmemorably techie error message but its meaning is very clear: it\u2019s your fault. You\u2019ve got it wrong, not Windows.<\/p>\n
Do the same thing on a Mac and it looks first. Tells you there\u2019s not going to be enough room on the floppy. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s it, it\u2019s just sayin\u2019. <\/p>\n
Microsoft did the pretty icon fine, it just thinks that pretty is enough. Well, sort of. Windows XP has a very Fisher Price kind of look but Windows 7 is prettier. It\u2019s just that pretty is as pretty does, I think: Apple products have a shine to them at least in very great part because they work and work so well. Before the iPhone, no phone looked anything like it. Since the iPhone, no phone has been released that hasn\u2019t tried to copy it. That\u2019s design, that\u2019s thinking brilliantly. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s not trying to make a long list of features, that\u2019s trying to make the things useful.<\/p>\n
Not long ago I recommended that a friend did not switch to Macs because I felt he was so wedded to Windows and had so many applications that changing was a giant deal. He changed anyway. I\u2019m very persuasive. And for weeks afterwards he\u2019d phone me up laughing. Because he\u2019d buy some new software, new hardware, something, and he\u2019d read out the six pages of instructions for how you install them under Windows before delivering the punchline. For Mac, the instructions were always \u201cPlug it in.\u201d The End.<\/p>\n
I used to actually like computers. I enjoyed fiddling, I even had a fair enough career in computer magazines though I always felt I was a magazine guy more than I was a computing one. And all the friends I still have from there are nodding now. Possibly also nodding off, but.<\/p>\n
Today all I want is to work on a machine that works. Someone asked me recently how I could possibly enjoy computers so much. I had just repaired a ridiculous problem with his Windows Vista laptop but I swear we stared at each other as if across a gulf. I don\u2019t like computers, I like that I can talk to you like this, I love that I can do my work wherever I am in the world, I adore that right now I\u2019ve got music playing, that in a short while my Mac will record the Afternoon Play so I can listen in the car later. That BBC News channel is open on my right. That Twitter is updating in front of me. That the film I\u2019m buying off iTunes will be ready to watch in a second or two.<\/p>\n
And obviously I write. But for every advantage this Mac gives me for writing, it does offer a thousand distractions. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just that I\u2019m not distracted struggling to find a DLL, whatever in the hell that is, I\u2019m not interrupted by WARNING! VIRUS! YOUR FAULT! messages. And when my disk is full, I know I\u2019ve just been talking too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you buy a PC, you\u2019ve just bought a PC. If you buy a Mac, somehow you\u2019re a Machead, a … Continue reading