Skewed Mac

Apple's Patience Rights

© 8-3-01 Dean Browell

Our life as Apple users is often an uphill battle without us picking new hills to charge up. The Mac fan base is pretty savvy, our credo of style and substance over bloat and blandness converts most who really give it a chance, and we're overall a pretty creative lot. So what happens when that famous Mac-user character starts to nibble at the hand that feeds it? At what point does our famous curiosity become notorious critique? Among our ranks, and using the instinct we employ so fruitfully with our Apple computers, I feel we need to pick our battles a little more carefully.

Mac fans and users are a fickle, curious bunch and I largely like them. Some of us are "power" users which sometimes sounds silly. Are there "power" users of Gateways, oxymoron aside? Not that we need equivalency to justify the existence of our power users, but I wonder (or maybe hope) that this means I'm a "power user" of my digital cable TV box? What about my old Atari 1200XL? Or that old Spider-Man Game Boy game I was so good at? (And for those of you too young, that was a Game Boy game in *GASP!* black and white- er, green and white...and turning the volume up drained an entire set of batteries...it was horrible, like the depression...back in my day...). At any rate, my point is we sometimes skim the pretentious sidelines. It used to be that a "power user" was anyone who could empty the trashcan folder without using the mouse. Gosh with OS X I suppose we have to let in a whole slew of "power users" from another tribe: the Unix-savvy crew. What will our lunch table do with all these new kids?

Sometimes I think we're too smart for our own good as Apple users. Umpteen PR reps rattled off to me how Mac users were "very smart" and proceeded to hand me a glowy or shiny thing to distract me so I remember their booth. Despite the tactics (which work by the way- I collected all my precious glowy shiny things and keep them in my Toon Boom satchel like Gollum) we probably do have a pretty smart user base, and at the very least we're afforded more time to be smart because we can accomplish tasks so much faster and with less frustration than our simian PC counterparts (uh-oh call Tim Burton, I made an ape reference!). In this movie of the Mac user's life we're the monkey (call Colin Lynch Smith!) who discovers fire because all the other chimps are off dying of some low-level, common virus they didn't bother to patch- er, build an immunity for. The other monkeys imitate us and act like they made fire in their stories and since there are more monkeys that didn't make fire than those that did, they get to spread their version of the story. Gosh, see how fast we get bitter? Just talking about monkeys becomes a Windows smear-fest. Well, they threw poop first.

But I guess my point is we are so aware of the landscape and have to fend off/correct/proselytize at so many turns that we begin to turn that gaze at the maker of our tools, Apple. I'm reminded about a song by the police:

"My Daddy's boots don't fit me, because I'm bigger than him..."

-The Police, "Nothing Achieving"

I think we start to get ahead of ourselves.

It's not just the rumors I'm getting at here, but our expectations. It was encouraging to see so many non-Adobes getting their booth-on at MacWorld because they could get so much more attention without Adobe there. Yet many still lament and hem and haw over Adobe's absence and speculate why and point to the mysterious and totally unannounced iPhoto and.... it just gets to be a bit thick. I for one am glad Adobe wasn't there and can see the good in it, but I don't expect everyone to have the same opinion. I know that for some Photoshop is such an integral part of their existence that they just don't even think of switching or trying to find other, maybe even more creative, ways of doing things. For them, Adobe might as well just make the computers too. Heck, sometimes their vehemence and stubbornness starts sounding like the "why I stick with Windows" credo. I'm encouraged by the iPhoto news. Maybe it'll spurn Adobe to make Photoshop better, or at least trimmer I hope (gosh, can you imagine how large that Carbon installation will be with all the bloatware?). But I don't see Adobe's absence, no matter the reason, as a bad thing. Competition good, remember?

The MacWorld LCD iMac fiasco, on the other hand, shouldn't even be an issue. If we want what we feel will be this incredible machine so damn bad, then let's assume Apple has the brains to put it out when it needs to come out (on one hand we yell at Apple and say "We hope you learned your lesson with the Cube!" and then in the same breath we shake our fingers, "We want the new iMac now, your business sense be dammed!"). Everybody holds their breath on the favorite "and another thing" lines but when we stop fantasizing like it's Christmas Eve it just isn't the right time for some of our dreams, and we better hope Apple had learned about that now. "Bring back the Newton!" we shout, in front of up-to-the-minute coverage of the handheld market smoldering crater. It's just silly.

I love daydreaming, but when we let our impetuousness sneak into those musings we start spoiling the real world. I'd hazard to say the only real breach in protocol from Steve was that his (or our) second favorite phrase, "...and it's available now" was in such short order. Incidentally, everyone's least favorite phrase from now on is, "...and now, to explain the megahertz myth...". Preacher, choir. Choir, preacher. Perhaps you've met?

All in all, I'm not suggesting that we don't have anything to gripe about. And I'm not saying, never complain because it causes "bad vibes" or it "brings everybody down, man". What I am suggesting is that we think twice and be a bit more careful with our trigger finger. We need to have more patience (I won't say trust, but that might help too) and ensure that the company we have chosen to side with isn't taken for granted based on our expectations. Armchair quarterbacks are cute for about ten seconds, but pretty soon they're that jerk that won't shut up during the game.

Let's ensure that our complaints are heard when they really matter, lest some stop listening at all.

Dean Browell