Nerve Endings Firing Away

What is the deal with Macintoshes? Everyone who is remotely connected to computers seem to dole out praise by the dozen for the Macs. I understand that Apple has made cool looking computers that seem to outdate your desk by more than a million years. It is almost like placing a fiber-glass I-section on the Stonehenge. But I surely hope there is much more to a Mac than the futuristic looks. People connected to the graphics field will not touch anything other than a Mac. This, I find understandable having personally cursed Windows for crashing out on my 3D Max rendering at the 95% mark. My geeky friends working on Macs never learnt any swear words. But fortunately for them, they did have to drive back home on Mumbai roads and did end up learning the swear words after all.

But for the love of god, do we really need a Mac for checking your hotmail account and writing drab reports on MS Word, which incidentally is the defacto standard for word processing and is unavailable (incidentally, it is…*sheepish shrug*) for Macintoshes. I know, you may consider yourself to be on the cutting edge (Does it hurt?) but your Jurassic client still will use “highly impotent” MS Office. You have to swallow your geeky pride and agree with him that MS Office is indeed a gift from within the Pearly Gates. Until the advent of the Internet, the PC lobby could successfully tout the inaccessibility of software for the Mac. The high price also deters the first time user and effectively loses out on brand loyalty. Mac users will not dream of working on a Windows-based machine whereas Windows users will not only dream of working on a Mac but will also love to do so. But in reality, will buy a Windows and install products like Aqua Dock to get a backdoor entry to the Mac community.

Then, there is the crashing issue. Windows will crash but Steve Jobs will not loosen his grasp on the Mac monopoly, which even my Mac-enthusiast friend will admit is a worse monopoly than the infamous firm in Redmond. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a wide choice of Mac machines available at every mall? But then it would be shorn of its very aura that sustains its image. Remember what happened to Wrangler when they flooded the already inundated Indian denim market? So is the Mac hype based primarily in its marketing and the image that it so fiercely guards?