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Skewed
Mac
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(Apple)
Lust For Life
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© 7-2-01
Dean Browell
Apple's uniqueness is less about being
elite, and more about cultivating the moments we like
best. I do like Steve Jobs' more recent push to dub
Apple as the BMW of the computer market by running
that market-share comparison in interviews, I really
do. But I'd like to go a bit further past the market-share
and look at the more cosmic angle.
An Apple makes you stand out. However
using an Apple is not just unique because of the computer's
relatively small presence in the market, but also
because of the experience it can give. My wife and
I spent a portion of the weekend playing with our
new digital camera (Kodak DX 3500
) and I had switched to OS 9 on our iMac to install
the non-OS X software (everything went well). Just
to check, I flipped back to OS X to see if any of
it would run in Classic (but I didn't bet on it).
When we plugged in the camera, the Kodak-specific
software didn't budge to do anything automatically,
but a camera appeared in the dock and Apple's native
OS X Image Capture software leapt to action... I was
totally surprised; I had forgotten about it and moreover
just didn't think anything would be so readily configured.
It was a nice moment, and to our relief we found that
we won't have to reboot into OS 9 to grab pictures
(or wait for Kodak's new drivers, but the Kodak picture-fiddling
software worked well in Classic). It was a sweet,
"neat" moment, maybe not all that unique to computer
users as a whole, but as an Apple user, it made me
smile.
Life is full of these little bonus
rounds, like a memorable encounter with a particularly
eccentric person, totally attuned to your tastes and
ideas that it makes you thankful you met them and
their receptiveness. These special moments are so
delicate that they are almost too simple. The band
Travis, at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival ("... the
first sunny Glastonbury festival in years.." said
bassist Andy Dunlop, in an interview with Guitar.com
) began to play the sweet fan favorite song, "Why
Does It Always Rain On Me?" and for the only moment
in the whole multi-day festival, it rained. That's
the kind of moment I mean. It's a cross of coincidence
and curiosity that makes you smile if you're a partner
to understanding how unique the moment is.
I'll give you another example: Sometime
in the last month or two my wife had cleared this
mini-flower bed of weeds. Left without any noticeable
leafy enemies, it sat untouched through the recent
suns and rain, and nature took its course. That course,
of course, was to fill back up with the same weeds
all over again. Except within this overzealous patch
also grew a plant that hadn't been there before and
that we hadn't planted: A sunflower. Now I imagine
this is of no surprise to some people, but there was
something really sweet in the act of natural recourse
that brought a beautiful sunflower within a rather
frustrating set of weeds.
Ach, let me stop before I get too romantic
and clarify what I'm getting at. I'm not suggesting
Apple is the sunflower... I think it's the soil. Apple
doesn't make some of these special, unique moments
happen directly, they allow for them to take place.
"Luck favors the prepared mind" my father has said
for years, and I think the meat of that statement
is the Apple experience, the "prepared" part.
Fact: Computers are full of bugs and
nothing like the future of flying cars and thought-starting-toasters.
But Apple just feels like more fertile ground for
some of these great things. And pulling back from
the picture and pointing at our small market share
only seems to prove the point. We stand out because
we aren't like the others. We're the Invisibles. We're
the Hunter S. Thompson's. We're the green M&M's.
All we can do as Apple opinion writers
is make everyone feel a little
bit better about being the kid in class that stands
out, or maybe shirks the norm. Not to assure us we
won't get beaten up or taken out of the game, but
to let us know that the eccentricity that may limit
our ability to assimilate also affords us our freedom
for potential. While we editorialize about what may
be good or bad or special about an industry that takes
more turns than an Italian road map, we provide at
least one essential feeling: That
as a Mac user you are not alone. We help connect
the dots. One by one, in hopes of making something
out of them that others can take away.
And I'm glad to join a group
known for drawing some of the best pictures.
Nice to meet you here,
Dean
Browell
