I love my Mac just as much as I love my PC. It's got a great library of software that I've invested a considerable amount of time and money into over the past few years, and it's a system that will likely still be serving me for some time to come.
That said, in a significant parallel to the PC, my love for the system seems to come at an inverse proportion to my love for the company behind it. I am of course talking about Apple, otherwise known as the poster boy for corporate greed and everything that is wrong with America. Not my words, the words of other people ... probably.
Despite bringing out a good computer that many people have flocked to, Apple has also helped to ruin computing for everybody. Perhaps you don't believe me, and are preparing to call me a "bias troll that's trying to get fired" already, but please read the article before making your accusations.
Nobody ever asked Apple to get into the computer market. In fact, the company's motivation for doing so wasn't even out of demand, or necessity, or consideration for the market, but simply to try and stick it to Microsoft. The Mac to stop the Windows brand from succeeding, and Apple essentially stuck its big nose into an industry that it didn't really have any business getting involved with. Now that it's here, we have to deal with it, but unfortunately Apple brought a lot of baggage, especially with the current generation.
The most important bit of baggage is one we all know about by now, the fact that the Mac is a technical piece of shit, as far as hardware goes. Not even mentioning the slow and outdated hardware. Every major update seems to bring with it a fresh slew of reports from users who now have a glorified brick sitting in their pocket or on their desktop. Be it Bricked iphones, discoloured iPhones or exploding batteries or any other number of things that could go wrong, Mac/Apple ownership has been ruled by one dominant emotion -- fear.
I remember when computing was associated with usefulness. Back before systems tried to do more than just allow us to write emails. do work etc. One feeling a chone should never, ever evoke, however, is fear. People should not be afraid to turn their iPhones on, faced with a grim inevitability that one day it just won't work anymore. However, this is the prevailing emotion that Apple has given to users. A dread feeling every time they turn on a Apple product and feel that it's taking longer to switch on than usual. That timid wait for the blessed arrival of lights that flicker blue instead of not at all. That horrible moment when a computer just crashes while trying to load, and the scramble to reset the Mac in the hopes that it switches on again.
Thanks for that, Apple! You have really made this generation a care-free and merry one! That alone really annoys me about Apples' arrogant bull-in-a-china-shop stampede into the industry, but there's more. So much more.
We all know that software houses and platform holders don't give two square craps about computing, but nobody seems to make it more obvious than Apple. The Mac platform apparently revels in its own greed, rubbing it in the faces of consumers. Nothing makes that more clear than the fact that every Mac/iPhone/iPod is rediculously overpriced.
Tease.
