This week, as Steve Jobs and his ill-fitting jeans, were holding a press conference to launch the i-Pad 2, members of staff at a major broadcasting outlet were standing round a telly, watching and applauding.
Imagine for a moment, this behaviour was triggered by the appearance of Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola or Tommy Davis, leader of the Church of Scientology. Wouldn’t it be regarded by most folk with a mixture of discomfort and horror? After all, aren’t major corporations and powerful organisations supposed to be viewed with at least some suspicion or even contempt. Particularly by the free minded, intellectual media classes. So what on earth is happening here?
What is happening is ‘the cult of Mac’.
Since IBM, Microsoft and Apple MacIntosh peeled away from
each other in the race to perfect a micro-computer for the mass
consumer market, Apple has always been the one to deviate from
the expected path. They were first with the mouse, which incredibly
was widely dismissed at the time, they also used graphics as buttons and drop down menus when the competition was concentrating on glowing green text. However, far from bringing them huge and immediate success, Apple came very close to insolvency as this new technology found it’s level and the market settled. Indeed, had Steve Jobs’ firm not captured the graphic design audience so comprehensively, they would probably have succumbed to Bill Gates’ dominance in the same way IBM caved.
Instead, they sought to drag the computer out of the mathematics lab and into the world of interior design and objects of desire. From the PowerMac to the i-Book, they did this with considerable aplomb and when MP3 showed itself to be future of recorded sound, the pulled off the same magic with the mighty i-Pod.
It is not for me to scoff at the achievements of this corporation and, in fact, I believe they have a remarkable flair for building very functional and rather beautiful kit – albeit using Chinese low-wage, non-union labour. No, it’s their disciples that leave me bewildered. And ‘disciples’ is not too strong a word.
Quite what inspired a section of 21st century society to fall in thrall to a range of metal and plastic boxes filled with wires and circuits, I can’t begin to guess. Do we ever meet people who evangelise about a particular dishwasher, at length, at dinner parties? Or come across folk who sneer with superiority at your choice of calculator? Of course we don’t. But we all know individuals prepared to take such stances on the subject of their computer or music player.
An Art Director of my acquaintance once told me he believed his Mac had a soul and PCs were just toys. All other evidence suggested he was a reasonable and rational fellow, but he was quite serious when describing these emotions and ascribing them to his machine and screen.
I’m a PC user by habit. Nevertheless, I have no inclination to defend Microsoft Windows and am very happy to admit is quite badly designed and prone to cause frustrations from time-to-time. But, on the whole, it works, delivers the functions I ask of it and does so at fairly reasonable price. To that extent, it’s no different from my fridge.
The Mac adherent, however, is liable to extol the virtues of the device and its operating system in much the same way a street preacher would recommend a particular route to salvation. That is, without exception, without question and with a slightly scary zeal.
Not only is this not a healthy relationship to have with a company which sees you as little more than a revenue unit, it is a rather sad attempt to assert some kind of techno-exclusiveness in order to belittle the non-believer.
Naturally, Apple is more than happy to exploit this unwavering devotion. The firm is delighted to continually re-release its products with slight modifications, in the knowledge there is an immense army of devotees only too happy to bin the previous model and fork out another several hundred pounds for the new. Lest they should slip from grace and be black-balled from the club which gives them so much status and self-affirmation.
The OED defines the psychological term ‘fetishism’ as:
‘A form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object’
That is what Mac lovers are indulging in – a fetish. And like all fetishes, it only really arouses a certain kind of person. For various reasons, I’m actually writing this on a MacBook Pro. Sadly I remain entirely unmoved and notably flaccid.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
Imagine for a moment, this behaviour was triggered by the appearance of Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola or Tommy Davis, leader of the Church of Scientology. Wouldn’t it be regarded by most folk with a mixture of discomfort and horror? After all, aren’t major corporations and powerful organisations supposed to be viewed with at least some suspicion or even contempt. Particularly by the free minded, intellectual media classes. So what on earth is happening here?
What is happening is ‘the cult of Mac’.
Since IBM, Microsoft and Apple MacIntosh peeled away from
each other in the race to perfect a micro-computer for the mass
consumer market, Apple has always been the one to deviate from
the expected path. They were first with the mouse, which incredibly
was widely dismissed at the time, they also used graphics as buttons and drop down menus when the competition was concentrating on glowing green text. However, far from bringing them huge and immediate success, Apple came very close to insolvency as this new technology found it’s level and the market settled. Indeed, had Steve Jobs’ firm not captured the graphic design audience so comprehensively, they would probably have succumbed to Bill Gates’ dominance in the same way IBM caved.
Instead, they sought to drag the computer out of the mathematics lab and into the world of interior design and objects of desire. From the PowerMac to the i-Book, they did this with considerable aplomb and when MP3 showed itself to be future of recorded sound, the pulled off the same magic with the mighty i-Pod.
It is not for me to scoff at the achievements of this corporation and, in fact, I believe they have a remarkable flair for building very functional and rather beautiful kit – albeit using Chinese low-wage, non-union labour. No, it’s their disciples that leave me bewildered. And ‘disciples’ is not too strong a word.
Quite what inspired a section of 21st century society to fall in thrall to a range of metal and plastic boxes filled with wires and circuits, I can’t begin to guess. Do we ever meet people who evangelise about a particular dishwasher, at length, at dinner parties? Or come across folk who sneer with superiority at your choice of calculator? Of course we don’t. But we all know individuals prepared to take such stances on the subject of their computer or music player.
An Art Director of my acquaintance once told me he believed his Mac had a soul and PCs were just toys. All other evidence suggested he was a reasonable and rational fellow, but he was quite serious when describing these emotions and ascribing them to his machine and screen.
I’m a PC user by habit. Nevertheless, I have no inclination to defend Microsoft Windows and am very happy to admit is quite badly designed and prone to cause frustrations from time-to-time. But, on the whole, it works, delivers the functions I ask of it and does so at fairly reasonable price. To that extent, it’s no different from my fridge.
The Mac adherent, however, is liable to extol the virtues of the device and its operating system in much the same way a street preacher would recommend a particular route to salvation. That is, without exception, without question and with a slightly scary zeal.
Not only is this not a healthy relationship to have with a company which sees you as little more than a revenue unit, it is a rather sad attempt to assert some kind of techno-exclusiveness in order to belittle the non-believer.
Naturally, Apple is more than happy to exploit this unwavering devotion. The firm is delighted to continually re-release its products with slight modifications, in the knowledge there is an immense army of devotees only too happy to bin the previous model and fork out another several hundred pounds for the new. Lest they should slip from grace and be black-balled from the club which gives them so much status and self-affirmation.
The OED defines the psychological term ‘fetishism’ as:
‘A form of desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object’
That is what Mac lovers are indulging in – a fetish. And like all fetishes, it only really arouses a certain kind of person. For various reasons, I’m actually writing this on a MacBook Pro. Sadly I remain entirely unmoved and notably flaccid.
Magnus Shaw, March 2011
