And here you thought I hated Macs. But then, the British always do this sort of thing best:
PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.
Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn’t really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.
And here I was only addressing the techno-fascist design philosophy. Far be it from me to delve into the psyches of Macintossers…. Anyhow, I’m a gamer. So, of course I have no use for Apple products. What gamer does? If Steve Jobs ever works his magic and produces the Ultimate Portable Game Machine, then I’ll buy an Apple product for my own use, but probably not until then. (Full disclosure: there is a MacBook in the house. And an iPod. I don’t use either and my experiences with the former have not altered my opinion of Apple in the slightest.)
But if losing a button feels like losing an arm, imagine how good it would feel to gain 16 more arms! Okay, on the other hand, maybe that is kind of creepy.