People who question Apple or hate Macs would have had a ball in my Japanese class this morning. The instructor is a Mac user, but although she is a very nice American who really knows her Japanese, she seems to be a bit inept with computers. Even Apple's ease-of-use philosophy cannot abate her minor havoc-wreaking, and she runs into many troubles when giving her computer-run presentations in class. Incidentally 90–100% of her problems occur within either Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint, but I won't go into that aspect.
Today she was telling us about how she had to reboot her PowerBook four times this morning, and she even did so once during class. With all of her "Now this isn't working" remarks and her Mac-operating shortcomings, she made Macs look like embarrassingly awful computers. I was embarrassed sitting there, to be very honest.
Even though UW has an unusually large population of Mac users, I'm sure that the majority still stands by Microsoft, and there were certainly some softened jeers as my instructor unwittingly assaulted the Mac image. It was bad.
A guy sitting near me said, half to himself, "That's because Macs suck!" as his iPod lay on the table in front of him staring innocently at the ceiling.
That was too much for me. "But you're using a Mac!" I said as I pointed to the iPod.
"Well . . . it's an iPod," was his response with a shrug.
I became indignant at that and ended the conversation because I knew that it would never go anywhere. Although a Mac is computer and an iPod is a music player, my point was quite clear. Both are Apple hardware running Apple software, which is exactly the combination of things that he was meaning to insult. There seemed to me to be just too much contradiction to justify his calling out insults.
We all hold contradictions, I guess, so I really have no right to point out this guy's in particular. For some reason the disputes over computer/gaming companies just matter to me a lot. The closest thing I have to a contradiction in that area (of which I'm aware) is not caring for the PlayStation while still liking Sony as a company. All I really dislike about the PSX/2 hardware is the controller design—otherwise it's just the nasty GTA and other games that make me squirm. And I don't think Sony is responsible for making those.
I do strongly dislike Xbox, but that stems from my distaste for the company that created it. So I don't really see a contradiction there, either. In all these debates over computers and gaming consoles and whatnot, since I am involved in them to some extent, I try to be consistent. But it's all so dumb, anyway, that I'm not sure it makes any difference.
The only comfort I can find in all of this is that none of it actually matters. Thank goodness.
"He is not a fool who gives up what he cannot keep for the sake of what he can never lose."
