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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.
ok, i've never heard of this, but the first google search came up with this page
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Mac's need to stick to serving burgers!!!! It's actually surprising what some of the technology Apple has been pushing out the door in the last few years. Apple seems to be more geared to specific aspects of computing and do it very well. I have a hard-core Linux co-worked who is seriously thinking of purchasing a MAC for a media PC. Either the marketing is getting better or the options are. Good job Apple.
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.
Being someone who spends equal time all day on a PC and Mac (G4 and G5), I can tell you that a Mac in no way is a "key component of an integrated lifestyle". It's a computer that happens to run an alternate OS and have a good marketing department, which is nice if you don't like windows or you are a drone consumer who cares about what is 'cool'.
WTF? Certainly PC users don't care about the machine.
Fucking Mac snobs.
It doesn't get much more main stream as far as Apple products go.
I got the joke, but I thought it was rather stupid. :p
Let's not forget the Apple Newton fan club.
This reminds me of Saturn (at least when they first came on to the scene). Here was a company that did things differently, even in an off-beat way, and was rewarded with the type of customer loyalty that gives Harvard MBAs wet dreams.
Such companies define the "niche" market that everyone seems to talk about these days. It's the narrow market that captures the imagination and excitement of its customers.
Of course, one cannot manufacture this. I think its formation is a rare combination of vision, guts, luck, and a willingness to task risk. Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies today have none of this, valuing things like "vision statements" or "world class (insert skill)" over creativity and audacity.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
This is where the culture comes in bringing in a sense of loyalty to the product you use. I don't feel like PC users have that same phenomenon and maybe if they understood it they wouldn't rant and piss and flame on here about price differences and single mouse buttons.
Sounds like a good read; I enjoy studying the social aspects of our industry.
.bashrc file.
Having touched my first Unix system back when I was 9 years old (actually it was a Silent 700 terminal, built-in acoustic coupler modem, dialing into System III) I've been fanatical about the command-line, anc always views Macs as a curiousity more than anything else. Worthy of derision most of the time, and of a nod now and then.
I then got stuck on the Windows platform for the longest period of time, and it was partially my own choice. I was doing Java development at the time, and the JVM from Sun was better than the early JVMs for Linux. That, and the fact that I kept getting more and more Micro$oft-based attachments that when edited with the early Star Office would be mangled beyond hope when I sent them back.
One day last year my wife let me play with her PowerBook running OS X. It had a really nice JVM that ran Java apps with blazing speed. (Yes, "Java" and "blazing" in the same sentence!) It ran Micro$oft Office programs, and in most cases, with more reliability than their Windows counterparts. It was infinitely more usable than Windows' best user interfaces. And best of all, you could fire up a shell and run vi on your
I went head over heels.
Now, I still have Linux systems (and even a FreeBSD system) in my server room, but my desktop and my laptop are all Mac OS X, and I've never needed to look back to Windows again. Am I a "fanboy"? Probably. (I even got an iPod.) But I'm a fanboy because of what's under the hood now, not because of the path Apple took to get here.
A good comparison would be against VW, which has a very similiar cult following in its own right and as such even casual VW drivers are somewhat more fanatic than say your average ford driver.
As a mac user, btw, I'd like to say that there are so many stereotypes that are simply not true about many Mac users.
I'm constantly amazed by how many stereotypes there are of Macintosh users, and it's actually quite offensive sometimes. "Oh, you're a MAC GUY, I see....our PCs aren't GOOD ENOUGH for you" is what invariably follows. Most of the time, I politely side-step platform-preference questions now, because of the assumptions and image people place on me when they learn I'm a mac user are just so goddamn tiresome.
Please help metamoderate.
I met Leander about a year ago down at TechTV for Mitnick's "back online" show and was impressed with how down-to-earth he was. While other media folks were working to impress each other with accomplishments, he did his job quietly and turned out a good article afterwards.
While some people might see this as cheerleading for Apple, the same can be said for some Windows-favoring and Linux-favoring journalists. The difference I found with him was how *normal* he seemed, compared to other journalists that I have met.
Apple is having a special get together in Jonestown, Guyana. They are even giving away Koolaid! Hope you can attend
I support the 2nd Amendment, the right to keep and arm bears!
X _ X
\
0F0064
I'm curious if there is a picture of my cube fishtank (http://home.comcast.net/~jleblanc77/cube/) in the book. The author and I exchanged some emails about it. Has anyone seen the book yet, and know if it's in there?
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
(Arguments that its Xerox's GUI, some people use a command-line, There's a command-line in Mac OS X now aside.)
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
Compared to Grand High Emperor Linus and his Linux empire! He's aided by Arch Supreme Bishop Stallman and his army of F/OSS programmers!!
But these things will make you into a trend-humping fashion lemming.
Apple's core product isn't computers or electronics. It's elitism.
poeple will talk about "The cult of the mac" vs "the drones of MS" vs "zealots of Linux".
:)
Sort of like Moonism vs Mormons vs Scientology.
But steve got the best dibs on a prophet name and story..err "myth".
Think about it, JOB.
Founded the religion, got "crucified" by "betrayors"; only to later "resurrect" in the religion dying throes.And "protelyzing" it to new hights
Oh yeah, BSD is heathen*run away*
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
A Powermac is not an entry-level system; it is a workstation system for people who really need the power. An entry-level system is what you buy a kid or grandparent, such as an eMac ($800) or iMac ($1,300).
Similarly:
Dell Dimension desktop: entry level
Dell Precision workstation: professional
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Ah, the classic "get a life" business. What kind of life do you have in mind? Passions are what make life interesting. Some people obsess over sports, some over Macs, some over Star Trek, some over toy trains-- they have lives. People who obsess over other people have lives too. People who go around criticizing any show of exuberance as juvenile...well, I'm not sure about them.
Planning on making a trip to Boston this weekend, to tell everyone here how they should "get a damn life, it's only a baseball team, they're not a church or anything"?
I think the term you are looking for isn't "User" but rather Bigot . I use a Mac at work. I even like it. I even didn't mind adding Mac troubleshooting skills to my Windows and Linux skills-- it wasn't that different. I would even go so far as to say that I prefer doing 90% of my Real Work at a Mac. (Games are another story.) But I while I think the iPod is kinda cool, I'm not planning on replacing my Archos Jukebox 20 until it keels over dead... which, incidentally, won't be due to the batteries. I have better ways to waste my money than donating to the Church of Steve.
I'd also disagree slightly with the assessment of the review. Based on what's said, there may be some interest in the material to anthropologists (amateur and professional) who study computer nerds. If I see the book at Barnes & Noble, I might sit down and leaf through it for an hour or two. I might check it out if it hits the local library. I wouldn't spend real money on it, though.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Brilliant post .. would mod you up (Insightful) if I could.
I too wonder why certain interests (obsessions) are societally acceptible while others are not. Football = ok, Star Trek = FREAK!!!!! Oprah Winfrey = ok, computers = GEEK!!!!!
What makes liking football "better" than liking Star Trek?
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Not to start a flamewar, but....
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.
The Mac may or may not be better; that's certaintly debatable. What's not debatable is that it's much, much, MUCH better that Microsoft won. If Apple had won, how long would we have been saddled with proprietary hardware with proprietary software? A LONG-ASS time, and Macs would have been far more expensive. The only reason that a Mac is "only" 50%-2x the price of a PC is because PCs are so cheap. Without PCs, we would be totally at Apple's mercy, and they don't exactly have a good track record of not gouging their customers.
Microsoft may have its flaws, and they may charge too much for their software (although, I could argue that you get a lot of technology for a measly $129 retail), but at least they never tried to come out with a "Microsoft PC" with proprietary hardware.
What's amazing is that Apple is still too stupid to realize that the money is in the software, not the hardware. It's really mindblowing when you think about it. If Apple had won, then they WOULD have been a petal-to-the-metal monopoly that would have had to be broken up.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
However cult-ish you think Mac users are, or ever were, the Amiga users were zealots for their machines on a scale you probably will never truly comprehend unless you were there, a part of it.
Oh sure, Mac users love their machines.
Amiga users went beyond love. They worshipped their computers, fought for them, spent money they didn't have to keep the companies who sold Amigas and Amiga-related soft- and hardware in business. You wanna talk hardcore, you look at the former Amiga communities. THAT will forever define the meaning of the term hardcore for me, and nothing I've seen yet comes close.
Even now, a decade after the platform basically folded up, there are large groups of people who want to revive the spirit of the Amiga.
Mac users may think they're a cult, but they're just a pale shadow compared to Amiga users.
Ha ha ha.. too funny.
Not all of us think a computer is some life-changing gee-golly piece of technology. It's my computer. I do stuff on it. That's it. Buying a mac doesn't change your life, or more accurately, it -shouldn't- change your life.
What level of change though? Aren't computers supposed to be able to help you do things you couldn't otherwise - is that not a example of change?
I'm pretty happy using a Mac desktop at home because I don't have to constantly clean the system or upgrade things all the time like I used to with the Windows system. That is a change, and it's damn positive.
Another change that's possibly even better is having family members (like my mom) have Macs. That means almost no support work at all. That too is a lifestyle change, as it frees me to spend more times with them as family and less as tech-support guy.
All computers change your life. Not earth-shattering changes to be sure - but change nonetheless. A computer allows you access to the internet, to play more games, or what have you and those are all examples of things that do change your life in subtle ways.
I'm not Mac or nothing either. I use LINUX and Sun servers. I use a PC at work. I am in agreemnet that Mac users are far too typically sterotyped, even though I probably fall closer to that sterotype than most.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know you can get cheaper Macs[...]but one does have to wonder if the outrageous prices reflect the target audience
How can you complain about outragious prices on one hand, and admit they have cheaper models on the other?
Should PC's be lambasted as crazy expernsive just because you can buy a $7000 Alienware?
Macs have products in a good range of prices at this point. I don't think you can really call the prices outragous anymore.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No PC user on this earth is more rabid than the devoted PC gamer. Rabid in many good ways, to be sure. But part of that then is probably the huge expense they sink into systems, like $600 video cards.
Paying a little bit more for a Mac over a PC does not look nearly so extreme compared to that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I personally think there is a far deeper cult around people who hate Apple, and hate Apple users. These are people that seem unable to acknowledge very real benefits from the Apple systems like ease of access, good ergonomic design, and thoughtful OS design.
For many Apple users the computer is not aboult style, but about ability. Apple haters cannot see beyond this however, and have an overly simplified equation for life where functionality decreasing in direct proportion to looks. So which is more cultish, the group of people that like well designed products or the people that fanatically dismiss anything that is produced by the company as "Trendy" and "Elitist"?
Look past the glitz and take another look.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mac users are a cult. I propose that they're actually more like sheep than Windows users. They're the stupid kids that get a peircing 'cause it's "Rebelious" only to eventually realize everyone's got a piercing. Idiots.
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My company distributes a product that is not compatible with Macs. Not our fault, we tried to work with Apple to get them to raise their standards in some specific areas, but they're not interested right now. No big deal. Since Mac users can't use our stuff, we don't want them hounding our sales people about it, so we don't let them on our website.
I've been collecting some of my favorite responses to this policy....
Wed Sep 08 17:00:52 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
support mac you idiots!
Wed Sep 08 18:18:54 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Support Macs, you assholes. you suck.
Wed Sep 08 20:24:38 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Thanks for being lazy dick heads for not supporting Mac. Please Die.
Wed Sep 08 21:55:34 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Support Mac OS X you bitches
Thu Sep 09 00:10:53 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Eat shit you miserable pricks.
Thu Sep 09 02:31:32 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Fuck you if you don't support Mac.
Thu Sep 09 03:19:32 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Support mac u dix
Yours truly
Thu Sep 09 10:57:56 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
As a Mac user, you suck!!!!!
Fri Sep 10 00:37:38 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
You people just fucking suck. Write your site to some damn standards and don't lock out a sizeable percentage of internet usage. Fuckers.
Fri Sep 10 05:36:46 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
PS: Fuck you for not supporting other systems. Maybe I said that before. I'll say it again. Fuck you.
Fri Sep 10 16:39:28 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
why not support mac? afraid that life might get simpler? lazy bones!
Fri Sep 10 21:03:53 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
You guys are real smart to ignore Mac users, afterall it's only 30% of the market. Keep up the good work!
Idiots!
Mon Sep 13 19:19:54 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Screw you for not supporting Mac. I hope you fail.
Tue Sep 14 23:20:52 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
support Mac you assholes!
Your missing out on millions of users
Wed Sep 15 02:35:39 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
Fuck you for not supporting the mac.
Thu Sep 16 19:07:21 GMT 2004
An anonymous user provided the following Customer Feedback
fuck you for not supporting macs
Then you are not a Mac User, your just happen to use a Mac.
If a Mac user is not someone who uses a Mac, then what is one?
I use an iBook for both my work stuff and my home stuff. I have an iPod. I got the free subscription to MacWorld. I have all of the accoutrements of the Mac User subculture.
I got the iBook because it does what I need it to do. Because it runs on top of BSD and GNU, I can get it to do a lot of other things. I got it because it revolves around my life. My life does not revolve around it.
In fact, it is that very thing that caused me to "switch." With my Windows box, I had to diligently upgrade it, monitor the many hardware components to make sure they were working together... I spent more time getting it to work than I spent working on it. My life revolved around the PC.
I dedicate as little time as possible to maintaining my Mac, and the question in my mind is always: What have you done for me lately? The day it stops serving me, I will drop it. This is not a lifestyle choice. This is merely: Do what I need done efficiently, or I'll find something else that can.
The Mac has been a better experience than the PC for me, but that has more to do with having the proper drivers and a pre-assembled machine than anything "Mac"-y about it. I might have had an equal experience buying an Inspiron or a Vaio if I used the OS as installed by the manufacturer.
I've got a life. An iLife.
Most of the comments seem to center around the Question wheter Macs are good at all, wheter the community is acceptable/credible or even if it is good to be a fan.
Well, of course I have an oppinion on those questions too, but I'd like to make a comment about the book. About a month ago I browsed through some pages of a book with the same subject, at first I thought it might be this one, but I cant remember enough details to really make sure.
The book I was browsing seemed rather unsatisfactory to me. The author was seemingly fascinated about some of the Mac-users he interviewed. Unfortunately the way they are presented distorts to a carricature.
While it is true that Mac-users love to talk about Macs and their benefits (maybe due to the ignorance of their peers), they are not funny in general.
The book I was browsing didn't care about that and It didn't provide too much background about the company.
There is no "Cult of Mac". There is a community, much like the Linux-community or the C# enthusiasts. Of course the image is different. It's a strange topic to write a book about, but if you enjoyed a book about bikers and Harley-Davidson-clubs, you may like it, no matter if you hack DOS or push rectangles all the time.
Kahney is a religious zealot when it comes to the Mac. In fact when I wrote him once to ask him about an obvious bias in a Mac article he wrote for Wired he told me he likes posting stories with a twist that pisses off PC users even if the story doesn't need to.
This is one of those slashdot posts that gets crazy people from MAC vs Windows (NOT PC) camps out of bed and all wet.
As one of the posters said, hardware is the same. This is a neverending battle between people who like one thing and people who like another. You can't argue about peoples tastes adn choices, they are always going to be different. What is better for one is bad for another, some Mac users don't like pcs cause they don't look as good as macs. PC users don't like Macs cause the advertising is too annoying or they don't run new game.
I think you use what you like and what you need. I like to think that most people use a certain type of machine/software because that is what suits their needs and not because it looks cool.
"is this thing on?"
I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't buy a Powerbook to be cool. Believe me, using a Mac you have to develop a thick skin very quickly, as everyone who sees you using one will accuse you of being a crazy evangelist or snobby elitist. (Case in point.)
If mac users tend to congretate it's for the protection that a herd offers. There are two factors at work here. First is the need to enforce conformity that so many humans feel. The kids who beat the shit out of the kid with glasses because he has glasses. When they see a Mac user they feel the need to berate him for being different.
Second is the insecurity that many PC users feel. At some level they know that Windows 95+ is a Mac rip-off that's been historically crash-prone and reboot-happy and if they're paying attention they've heard that their Windows systems are insecure and Macs aren't. Some of them also know they're supporting a convicted monopolist. So, they have to excuse this irrational/unwise behavior. The easy answer is that Mac users are weird, cultists, and like ethnic food. They feel justified in not being that way so they therefore justify their continuing use of Windows.
Then there are the introspective, enlightened lot. We call them "switchers".
Interestingly enough, I don't see these behaviors from people who use their computers for an essential Windows-only app. They tend to treat their computer as an appliance and not get emotionally entangled with it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Some of us just don't like Windows much -- though I personally use Mac and Windows both...as well as Linux, though due to reliability issues and the presence of a good version of Word I use the Mac for all my school stuff.
;)
Though I will confess that I do tell others to get a Mac -- though mainly when they complain about their Windows PCs. Then they'll shut up about Windows, I have enough trouble with Windows on my Windows boxes at home, but also have a geek reputation and therefore have to take up some of the aspects of the Rabid Mac Zealot (but not the tattoos!) in order to sort of get people not wanting me to fix their Windows machines. I'll still help them to the best of my ability, just mention the Mac while I do it -- and that position may change if and when Longhorn starts turning up, because I'm probably not going to be getting too familiar with it. Plus, I like my friends to not have as many computer problems -- the actual emotion at the heart of the much-touted "evangelism." Yeah, you heard it here; plain old altruism for your friends' nerves, spouses, and pocketbooks, of the sort that has existed since time immemorial, is the reason some people tell others to get a Macintosh.
The actual Mac lifestyle, if there is one, is actually the lifestyle of there not being a Mac lifestyle, but rather just a state of not having to worry so much about whether the computer will work (unless it's particularly old, of course). As has been said in this thread, there's actually a bigger problem with the need for a Windows lifestyle...and has been recounted, the Windows zealots who will treat those who choose to use a Mac as pariah.
There are those who go to conferences to see Steve Jobs and stuff, and if it were convenient for me to see Jobs I'd probably do it for much the same reason I'd go see Clinton -- an interesting speaker discoursing on an interesting topic, worth attending for the sheer oratorical value of it. Cicero and Clay are dead, someone's gotta fill their shoes.
But you know, I think I've just wasted a lot of time yammering -- let me check MacRumors
Because if the group doing the integrating decides you dont need it, you dont get it.
Unless the group doing the integrating decides, on a lark, to join, embrace, and even contribute to the open standard/software movement. 'Cause then you might be able to still decide what you want or need.
But that couldn't possibly come from some over priced, consumer-electronic excuse for a computer, now could it? No way.
Just keep doing yer thing, man...
Now, I own three macs, they're great machines, but they are just that.
Mac Cultists really creep me out. I remember one past NAB tradeshow, watching this group of 5-7 mac people walking together. From behind, you could see that all of them were wearing IDENTICAL jackets with "Think Different" across the back. Ironic? or just creepy?
At any rate, everyone knows that there is only one computer that is worthy of religious devotion, and that is the Amiga.
Thank you,
The Wheeze
Its that Picassoish light bulb. People ask me what it is and I tell them its a symbol for good ideas that no one knows what to do with.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.