There are people starving, others dying of disease and many millions who are oppressed and victimised, but if there’s one thing that people seem to give a shit about it’s technology. I’m utterly at a loss to explain why.
This isn’t the grumbling of a marginalised old-timer, I should point out. I may (dimly) remember playing original Space Invader machines in arcades, but I worked in IT for nine years, in the games industry for more than six, and have been a technology journalist for three and some.
I can form a dispassionate view about whether something is worth buying and why, or whether it deserves the coveted and unofficial Landfill Award, reserved for that significant minority of products which are so inept or pointless that it makes me want to harm myself. And others.
I know some smart people, of which I’m far from the smartest. Still, having reviewed a hell of a lot of computers, printers, MP3 players and headphones, I know that they often exceed or fall far short of your expectations. One of the things that astounds me is the degree of loyalty that brands command, even when it appears to fly in face of the facts.
Mac owners look away now
A frequent area where this crops up is regarding anything Apple. The company’s image is so carefully crafted that it seems to attract an enormous amount of goodwill not normally extended to huge and highly profitable computer corporations such as, oh, Microsoft say. Understand, I’m not suggesting that Macs or iPods are inferior to anybody else’s products, and in many ways they’re doubtless much better, but the suggestion that they might be anything other than perfect can attract a bewildering amount of flack.
Anyone who has used both PCs and Macs can offer ways in which each is better than the other, and probably has an opinion on which is best overall. But take someone whose first computer experience was a Mac and somebody else who started out on a PC, lock them in a room and they’ll kill each other with their bare hands.
Agreed. I’ve come across people whose criticisms of Firefox seem totally uncalled for. :0
[…] 1st, 2007 by handolio What got me thinking about Mac vs PC deathmatches was a weekend spent researching and writing a How it Works article on games […]