Seniorwritist 6 Apple Computer
Be warned,
this entry may seem snarky. It is about
Apple Inc, a company about which I have embarrassingly found myself uncontrollably,
even angrily, hypercritical over the past ten or so years of general apparent Apple
fervor and worship. I have often, even
among friends, exhibited unattractively irrational and peevish behavior when
the brand was positively evoked. That the eponymous apple was the object of
temptation in the garden of Eden made perfect sense to me in regard to the
Apple phenomenon, with the embrace of the promise of access to all knowledge
leading to the downfall of all humans.
Not that I buy into the biblical version of anything, nor do I want to
be seen in any way as supporting such theism, but I mention it to illustrate
that by even evoking it, how far I
myself can fall. (For the sake of
accuracy and the reputation of the forbidden fruit, I reluctantly point out, at
the urging of my girl friend Amy who is my informant on a number of items old
testimonial and most new, that in the Hebrew bible, the evil edible was simply a piece of
fruit. She claims that is only the bad
pr and luck of the apple that has given the tempting tasty malevolent overtones
in our moral and literary imaginations. ) I would even, when going full bore, censure
Apple for stealing the name Apple from the Beatles, and, with it the allure and
cache of that beatific brand. (Apple records, did indeed, feel impinged upon
and sued Apple Computers for copyright infringement. I don’t know the exact result of the
suit—probably sealed—but obviously that worked out OK for Apple C.)
I do understand
that much of my antagonistic attitude toward Apple originates in a thrifty and
insecure-about-her-judgments person’s resentment of instruments, in this case laptop
computers and smart phones especially, that are affordable in a broad sense but
whose utility advantage, aside from bragging rights and possession of the newest
thing, is uncertain. I mean, I am a
person who felt compelled to sell her reluctantly purchased in the first place second
hand BMW when her partner also had a BMW (eagerly purchase, I might add). I was unable to bear the, to me, stigma of
the two “high performance” cars symbol of prosperity, acquisitiveness, and
bourgeoisness (all of which Amy claims to embrace, aside from the
acquisitiveness.) I tried, I really did, to enjoy the vehicle
without guilt, but finally I sold the Beemer and bought a Prius, which, while
admittedly also an image car of considerable
power, represented a consumer
with a conscience rather than an elite consumer consumer.
But perhaps
more at the core (sorry, I had to do it) of my issues with Apple is this cultish,
Teflonesque adoration of all things Jobs and Apple. (I
have always appreicted the term Teflon applied as an adjective to describe a
person or phenomenon that all the negative, however well deserved, simply
slides off of. This use originated, according
to Wikipedia, with Pat Schroeder, the then Congressional representative from
Denver. In the wiki version, Schroeder,
while frying her breakfast eggs in a Teflon plan, was struck by the resemblance
between the slippery eggs gliding over magically
coated pan and the lies and broken laws that slid off the then President Ronald Reagan.
I appreciate Schroeder’s evoking of her own domesticity and culinary
experience in this matter, thus somehow both rejecting and accepting that a
women’s place is in the House but, it also sounds a bit calculated to me. Not that I don’t think Pat Schroeder fried
her own eggs. BTW, as in interesting
aside, did you know that Schroeder started college as an aeronautical
engineering major but defaulted to history when she was advised by her
professors that she, as a woman, would never get a job as an engineer? Fascinatingly, Margaret Thatcher, former
Prime Minister of Great Britain, was trained as a physical chemist, another hard
core math-based profession. What does
that tell us? Should we advise young
women who want to go into politics to study physics? Does familiarity with relativity, the uncertainty
principle, and the wave-particle dilemma hone the mind for success in dealing
with the rigors of the geometry and calculus of politics and social
challenges? Sounds good to me. ) This Teflon quality seems to have allowed Apple to make failures,
such as fuzzy phone reception, not only irrelevant but to be addressed peevishly as if the fault lay not in the
product but in the consumers who whined too much and/or did not buy reception
correcting cases.
On a more
personal Teflon and magical thinking level, I was puzzled by the praises of
friends and acquaintances who exalted their Apple personal computer (yes, a Mac
is a PC in spite of its efforts to label itself as some other species
altogether) over all others. It is not that my friends are among those who
camp out overnight to be able to brag that they were among the first to get the
next new bright and shiny Apple thing.
And I am not saying that Apple acolytes are unthinking followers. Don’t get me wrong. Well, all right. I can’t help it, but I often
think of Germans and Hitler veneration when multitudes fill auditoriums, web
sites, and consumer electronic stores to worship and purchase new Apple products. OK. OK—too extreme. Still, when perfectly intelligent people exalt
that their computers are able to perform tasks unheard of for a dumber machine
like mine but which, somehow, my PC had managed with little effort or
imagination to do, I am a bit dumbfounded.
Also irritating is the claim of the ease of use and intuitiveness of
these machines even as my friends struggle with them. In one particular case, a friend labored with
the installation and connectivity of her new Mac for hours such Apple electronic
installations are not supposed to consume. After a much labor, she tried phone support
but found no satisfaction with the myriad phone agents she spoke to. Finally, she resorted to returning to an
actual store, though she knew that without an appointment at the genius bar to
speak to a technician, her wait was bound to be long, which it was. (Why, I have asked myself, is so much genius
assistance necessary for machines that are supposed to be so easy to use?) Finally,
her problem solved, she returned home, not admitting to any flaws in the brand. The belief in the superiority and
infallibility of all things Apple still gleamed in her eyes. How had, I asked myself, folks whom I
generally and deeply respected became prophets in this new church? Was a flaw in understanding the use of an
Apple a flaw in themselves so not admissible?
Or was it simply that, having paid the Apple brand surcharge, they had a
financial and status incentive to love their new machines uncritically?
Even then, though, with all this familiarity
with the frailties of Apple, the extremity of the cultural confirmation of the
superiority of all things Jobs wormed its way into my consciousness. It created a niggling, insidious doubt in my
belief that much of the extreme love of Apple was superficial trendoidism and
that the true difference in function between the Mac and PC was in affect
rather than effect. So while I was satisfied
with my PC, at least as satisfied as anyone is with these electronic tools
whose idiosyncrasies, imperfections, and
frustrations we accept as we do in no other pieces of equipment we use daily, I
kept wondering if there indeed was a golden, yellow brick road to easy negotiation
of the great, complex world of computing.
I wondered if I was denying myself of this privileged access for churlish
reasons. I longed for an opportunity to
try a Mac and thereby perhaps resolve my angry uncertainty, insecurity, and
ambivalence toward the product without the expense of buying one. I was willing to accept that maybe I was wrong. So, I was secretly thrilled when I was loaned an Apple MacBook Air by my
college (Pasadena City College) for my sojourn as a faculty member for a
semester abroad program in Oxford, England.
Let me just
tell you here and now after a first month or so of use, I was sure I WAS NOT WRONG. Even though I pride myself on some computer
fluency and am not afraid to try experiment to figure things out, I experienced
a great deal of frustration with my machine.
IT WAS NOT AT ALL INTUITIVE! It
would freeze up. I was never was able to
figure out how to turn on the Skype video camera or sort my photos. Figuring out how to find and sort other files was
an aggravation. I even had to call
computer support at my institution to understand why it would fall asleep and
not wake up. But, then, one day as I
looked at the screen at what I had written, I noticed that I had way fewer
misspelled words. OMG, I thought. I was wrong.
Apple is wonderful.
Yuh,
sure.
