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The Cult of Mac
The form and structure of the book is a cross between a Wired magazine (for which Kahney has long written on Apple) and a coffee table book. There are great pictures of people, machines and art to appeal to the eye. Some pages are all pictures, while others are primarily text -- most are a combination of the two. The layout is always attractive. If this were a book from Apple, the style would be cleaner and there would be less emphasis on the past; this book is from and for the fans, though, so the style is more edgy and chaotic.
The book is divided into five large sections. The first covers the Macintosh itself, its users, its evangelists, and a little of its history. Including, to my amusement, but not surprise, its connection with pot, which occupies three pages. Wozniak is covered lovingly, and Jobs is painted with the same awe, love and hate brush that the community uses. Leander even covers the TV and movie Macintosh spotting, where the good guys always use Macs and the bad guys always use PCs.
Section two takes us into the MacWorld phenomenon. The secrecy, the crazy crowds, the keynote -- the whole shebang. We also get a look into the Mac phenomenon in Japan.
The final three sections are the most interesting to the hardware lovers. Section four covers modifying the Macintosh, futuristic designs, and the variety of things that have been built from dead Macs. The fourth section is about collecting Macintoshes; there is an excellent image here of a reception desk built entirely of old Mac Classics. Some attention is also paid to the devotees of Apple tsotchkes -- the shirts, the pins, the shoes, and other logo-branded novelties.
The final section is all about what comes next. Here Leander covers the iPod and its subculture, as well as the ongoing cultural battle between Microsoft users and the Mac world. The author even goes so far as to associate the construction of the swivel head iMac to that of a newborn baby to justify our attachment to it. And that makes my Powerbook a what?
There is a lot of great material in this book just to flip through, or to sit down for an enjoyable read. For the technically minded, there is nothing here to help you write better code or get more out of the operating system. This is a book about a culture, its icons, its people, and its ideology.
I can't recommend this book for a PC person, Unless he's interested in learning about the phenomenon or becoming part of it, I doubt there is much he'd interesting in this book. A PC user uses his machine to perform a task and thinks little of the machine itself. A Mac, on the other hand, is a key component of an integrated lifestyle. If you don't live the lifestyle and you care to know more about it, then check out the book. Otherwise, you might as well skip it.
As a Mac enthusiast myself I really enjoy this book. I started programming on the Macintosh with the first 128K machine, took a hiatus on Windows for a couple of years, and switched back with OS X. I've been to a MacWorld and seen some of the phenomenon first-hand. But it's nice to see it catalogued here in such an attractive, nicely constructed, well-written book.
In the early days of Apple versus Microsoft we had a real culture war, command line versus GUI. Windows won. Which is bad because Mac is, IMHO, better. But the Windows victory does allow us in the Mac camp to revel in our own individuality. This book is a fun way for new and old Mac fans alike to share in the common insanity which is our somewhat unrealistic love for this computer and it's company.
I'm certainly glad this book came out before Christmas. Now I know what I am going to give a couple of my fellow Macaddicts.
Reviewer Jack Herrington authored Code Generation in Action, and edits the Code Generation Network. You can purchase The Cult of Mac from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Once you join the Mac Culture, you really have stepped into the Truman Capote Show. Or is it the Harry Truman Show? Either way, it's not reality, it's a marketing world.
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Yeah, Mac Snobs are assholes. When I built my latest computer from scratch, I put more love, care and design thought into it than went into either busted arm flatscreen or overheated mini-ITX cube. I have to use an eMac at work 2 days a week and it is like riding a big wheel, awkward, slow and limited in capability. Hell even my defiant usage of an ergonomically designed, 3 button, scroll wheel mouse indicates that I care more about my machine(and my wrist) than the imbicile that designed that hockey puck disaster. As I sit here gazing into the plexiglas window of my PC, my room illuminated by the endless whirring of a nest of orange LED fans, I can't help but feel sorry for Mac users.
>No Mac user I know talks about how much OS X sucks... yet, with Windows, it happens all the time.
Pleased to meet you. I own a mac powerbook, and I'd like to tell you how much OS X sucks. Why?
- Only one mouse button. Thats really debilitating. Sure, you can get a USB mouse for a desktop system, but on a laptop you are stuck having to hit the keyboard and the mouse button every time you want to right click. Not that there are ever any usefull funcitons in the drop down menus anyway - Mac applications are designed for people who can't use computers very well to be able to use. Those of us who want more functionality from their applications are stuck.
- Window management is rediculous. You can't maximize a window without jumping through hoops. And those pretty eye-candy window control buttons in the tilte bar are way to small and easy to miss.
- The Finder is lame. Windows Explorer is crap too, but you can get a lot more functionality out of it if you know where to look.
- Crashes just as often as my windows PC. I bought the thing for stability and have been very dissapointed.
- Safari is way better than Internet Explorer on Windows, but far, far the inferior of Firefox
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows sucks too, and I do appreciate the OS X command line. But OS X's much ballyhooed GUI interface runs a far second behind windows in terms of actual utility.
So to anyone who is considering the switch, I say, dont. Take the extra money you would blow on a powerbook and buy yourself a nice Sony laptop.
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