Sorry Steve Jobs, I'm Giving My Soul Back to Microsoft I wrote a screenplay today. I didn't intend to write one, it just sort of came to me while I was driving, so I jotted it down. It's a pretty timeless story of love, deceit, betrayal, and jealousy. It is a screenplay about movie cliches, except the characters chosen to play the leads are actually electronic devices such as laptops and media players. Confused? I'll explain.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: my old PC was a piece of crap. It was ugly and bulky and slow, and it wasn't without the occasional freeze-up, but I knew it was junk, and it never tried to pretend it wasn't. For the most part, it did what I wanted it to, and when it got too full of spyware and malicious processes started to overwhelm its capabilities, I broke the seal on some free internet system tools that didn't do a great job but kept me running. It never wanted to be in the audio-visual club, or in a fashion show, but it could run four screens of party poker at a time if I wanted it to.
My Mac, on the other hand, is the opposite. It's pretentious and showy, and intimidates people at the coffee shop into thinking I've got John Lennon playing on iTunes, or that I'm about to open-mouth tongue kiss Hermann Nitsch and than drive off in my Toyota Prius. What they don't see is that my Mac was actually the child of a single parent who was too busy with work and forcing accomplishment on his/her son (my fictional parent needs not be gender specific) to go throw a baseball or teach him how to grill a steak (my fictional parent just became much more gender specific). He/she wasn't too busy to tell him that the smoke from fat dripping into open flame increases the cancer risk, or to make a sizeable donation to get him into an Ivy League school. Basically, my Mac looks the part, but doesn't offer much in the way of qualitative difference between it and my old desktop. Furthermore, it's more infuriating when it does break, because it shouldn't due to the structural advantage it enjoyed. Yes, my Mac freezes occasionally, the battery life sucks, it never really ran that fast (I mean, c'mon, in my analogy it is a privileged white kid from Connecticut, who can't really run without tripping over his Burberry scarf) even though I acted like it did. The worst part is when it does crash, the arrogant pricks who designed it didn't include any tools I know of for a quick fix. It's the Titanic of the digital age.
When my PC locked up, I just hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, closed some non-responding programs, shut down a few processes that sounded like they weren't important, and got back to looking for pictures of Jessica Alba. When my Mac freezes, I don't have such options. It wants me to Ctrl-Click the program icon down in the dock, or click on the Mac logo in the upper left corner, but I can't, BECAUSE MY FREAKING MOUSE CURSOR WON'T MOVE (i.e. the definition of a computer freeze). I've got to hold the power button down and start over. Granted, it may not lock up as often, but it shouldn't, and I don't expect it to, so when it does, it's much more frustrating.
As for my iPod, it suffers from the same defects. Here I am running Apple proprietary software (iTunes) on my Mac laptop, connected with a Mac issue cord to my Apple iPod, and my iPod still locks up. It probably does it at least once a week. The battery isn't low, I didn't leave it out in the cold, I didn't throw it down a flight of stairs or take it scuba diving with me. I listened to it at work, put it in my pocket, walked down to my car, took it out of my pocket and *BAM*, the screen is locked up. Can I reset it? No, there is no button to cut power, and the battery isn't removable. I have to take it back and plug it in to my laptop and hopefully it will reset, or wait for the battery to die on its own if that doesn't work (what I'm doing right now and hoping it works).
Do I care that my electronic devices occasionally don't work? Not in the least, they're complicated, and fragile. What does bother me is the fact that I pay a premium for their supposed quality, watch their smarmy television ads, and listen to every Apple-phile (present company excluded in terms of my ill-will) tell me how flawless Apple technology is, and how ignorant everyone else is to go buy a PC that will do everything a Mac does for 2/3 the cost.
Sorry J. Morgan, Redhurt, Mair, Standingout and whoever else told me to get a Mac. I tried your Kool-Aid, it tastes like expensive piss.
Now- more pictures of my condo.
For the lead role, that of the hard working boy from the wrong side of town, growing up disadvantaged, raised by foster parents, and with some sort of emotional disability as a result, I've chosen my old PC desktop. For the arrogant, upper class prick, who dresses in ultra premium denim and attends the finest boarding schools, I've gone a different route. For this upper crust asshole, who eats lobster and shits in gold toilet boils (figuratively of course), I've chosen my Mac Powerbook G4, and for his slightly less good looking stooge, who ends up being twice as mean to Johnny Try-Hard (played by my desktop), I've chosen my 60 Gig Video Ipod. Don't get the symbolism yet? You will.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: my old PC was a piece of crap. It was ugly and bulky and slow, and it wasn't without the occasional freeze-up, but I knew it was junk, and it never tried to pretend it wasn't. For the most part, it did what I wanted it to, and when it got too full of spyware and malicious processes started to overwhelm its capabilities, I broke the seal on some free internet system tools that didn't do a great job but kept me running. It never wanted to be in the audio-visual club, or in a fashion show, but it could run four screens of party poker at a time if I wanted it to.
My Mac, on the other hand, is the opposite. It's pretentious and showy, and intimidates people at the coffee shop into thinking I've got John Lennon playing on iTunes, or that I'm about to open-mouth tongue kiss Hermann Nitsch and than drive off in my Toyota Prius. What they don't see is that my Mac was actually the child of a single parent who was too busy with work and forcing accomplishment on his/her son (my fictional parent needs not be gender specific) to go throw a baseball or teach him how to grill a steak (my fictional parent just became much more gender specific). He/she wasn't too busy to tell him that the smoke from fat dripping into open flame increases the cancer risk, or to make a sizeable donation to get him into an Ivy League school. Basically, my Mac looks the part, but doesn't offer much in the way of qualitative difference between it and my old desktop. Furthermore, it's more infuriating when it does break, because it shouldn't due to the structural advantage it enjoyed. Yes, my Mac freezes occasionally, the battery life sucks, it never really ran that fast (I mean, c'mon, in my analogy it is a privileged white kid from Connecticut, who can't really run without tripping over his Burberry scarf) even though I acted like it did. The worst part is when it does crash, the arrogant pricks who designed it didn't include any tools I know of for a quick fix. It's the Titanic of the digital age.
When my PC locked up, I just hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, closed some non-responding programs, shut down a few processes that sounded like they weren't important, and got back to looking for pictures of Jessica Alba. When my Mac freezes, I don't have such options. It wants me to Ctrl-Click the program icon down in the dock, or click on the Mac logo in the upper left corner, but I can't, BECAUSE MY FREAKING MOUSE CURSOR WON'T MOVE (i.e. the definition of a computer freeze). I've got to hold the power button down and start over. Granted, it may not lock up as often, but it shouldn't, and I don't expect it to, so when it does, it's much more frustrating.
As for my iPod, it suffers from the same defects. Here I am running Apple proprietary software (iTunes) on my Mac laptop, connected with a Mac issue cord to my Apple iPod, and my iPod still locks up. It probably does it at least once a week. The battery isn't low, I didn't leave it out in the cold, I didn't throw it down a flight of stairs or take it scuba diving with me. I listened to it at work, put it in my pocket, walked down to my car, took it out of my pocket and *BAM*, the screen is locked up. Can I reset it? No, there is no button to cut power, and the battery isn't removable. I have to take it back and plug it in to my laptop and hopefully it will reset, or wait for the battery to die on its own if that doesn't work (what I'm doing right now and hoping it works).
Do I care that my electronic devices occasionally don't work? Not in the least, they're complicated, and fragile. What does bother me is the fact that I pay a premium for their supposed quality, watch their smarmy television ads, and listen to every Apple-phile (present company excluded in terms of my ill-will) tell me how flawless Apple technology is, and how ignorant everyone else is to go buy a PC that will do everything a Mac does for 2/3 the cost.
Sorry J. Morgan, Redhurt, Mair, Standingout and whoever else told me to get a Mac. I tried your Kool-Aid, it tastes like expensive piss.
Now- more pictures of my condo.
posted by Justin at 8:27 PM 
5 Comments:
Are those bagels or melted candles or did you let Dali design your coffee table?
"Ahh!! Blasphemy!! My ears!!"
Now that we got that out of the way....
Try Option+Apple+Escape. It let's you force-quit any programs that aren't responding, exactly like alt+ctrl+delete. It doesn't restart your computer -- for that you do need to hold down the power button, which is really the same thing.
Also, this will help you identify which program is screwing your computer up. All I'm saying is, while there are far fewer viruses for Mac, PornoSurfer 4, which I saw you get from the shady guy in the back of Lenin's last week, isn't exactly a vitamin for your harddrive.
Lastly, you should remember that you bought a refurbished G4. That means, not only was your processor disgustingly outdated when you bought it, but your computer was, at one time, broken. Some kid Apple hired in Uganda said he fixed it, but apparently he didn't.
If you buy a new macbook pro, I guarantee you you'll enjoy it a lot more than any Vista laptop you're going to get from Dell in the next century. And maybe you don't need everything a macbook offers, and maybe it's too much money - fine. Just remember that you bought a crappy old low-end mac, and not the paragon of apple excellence.
Finally, I'll sell you my dell laptop, if you're interested. It works fine, but it's clunky, and I can't deal with it anymore.
Melted bagels designed by Dali actually. One he bit, and there is an overly waxed mustache hair hanging from the bite mark.
As for PornoSurfer4- that's a program made specifically for PC. I actually downloaded SmutTourGuide 2.0 as a Camino Toolbar. It just takes normal google searches and throws the word "naked" in.
You *can* reset your ipod: try holding the center and bottom buttons together for more than 5 seconds. (If that doesn't work, try center+top)
Redhurt-- if your dell isn't more than 3 years old, I'll take it off your hands.
I've tried that. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I usually just have to wait until the battery dies and then plug it into my computer...
Post a Comment
<< Home