The last Mac vs. PC inanity in which I will ever indulge
The dorkier among my largely imaginary readership may have noticed this Penny Arcade strip, which hilariously fictionalizes the real-world fact that both the writer and artist of that high-profile comic have just bought Macs.
The astute reader will note the absence of the term “switched,” there—both because, as high-profile gamers, they will not be constraining themselves to a platform as hilariously devoid of games as the Mac, but also because the notion that one can use one and only one operating system is pretty stupid.
Nevertheless, there is something important going on here. Lots of people are buying Macs. It’s really a post-OS X phenomenon, but now with the switch to Intel, one of the last perceived barriers has come down, and with the malware miasma that is a literal plague on uneducated Windows users, there are lots of reasons to consider alternatives.
And slowly, finally, the received wisdom—that Windows is the real world, and Macs are for weirdos—is starting to crumble.
I shouldn’t be feeling this validated. It’s a little wierd, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But it wasn’t me that started this fight, Windows People. It was you guys. It was one of you who first introduced me to the schism when I said I liked computers, and you asked, “what kind do you have?” and I said “Oh, it’s a Mac Classic,” and then came the mocking, the neverending derision that taught me the way of the world, that this choice somehow said something about a person’s character. And I bought it completely, and from then on have had more than my share of asshole moments, acting like the random fact of my computing preferences made me somehow culturally superior. Madness. Preposterous. I’ve been complicit in a monumental folly of collective assholery, and for that I apologize to anyone whom I’ve dragged into this ridiculous fiction.
So now would be the time to offer the olive branch, now that the other side’s ship is starting to sink. And so I will do that. I’m publicly declaring my intention to avoid tiresome Mac vs. PC crap from here on out. And here is why: the argument is over.
Unless one plays games or runs highly specialized software, I think it is clear that there is no reason not to use a Mac. I’m sure many people would disagree with that statement, but most of them are wrong. I say this not to issue a challenge or start an argument, but rather to explain this odd feeling, this lightening sensation, as though the burden of proof had been lifted. And that is indeed what has happened. If a person evaluates both platforms and comes to a different conclusion, then our criteria for how to choose computing and communication devices are so different as to be mutually unintelligible, making any attempts to explain our respective positions laughably pointless. And I think such people are few.
In all honesty and seriousness, sit down behind a Mac for a couple of weeks, if you get the chance. It’s pretty nice over here—not perfect, occasionally maddening, but pretty nice. And I promise not to be a superior prick ever again, no matter what collection of bits a person prefers. Because—and it only took me 14 years to realize this—it doesn’t matter.