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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.
WTF? Certainly PC users don't care about the machine.
Fucking Mac snobs.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
I agree Mac is doing a good job these days. I was a die hard PC person for the past 20 years and I admit i hated Mac and it's entire user base, but I couldnt' explain why. Years later I just think I hated Mac/users because they were different and it didn't make sense.
Now Apple embraces open standards such as Unix / BSD and throws their beautiful GUI on top of it. I personally enjoy using the Mac whereas when I used my PC I didn't enjoy it, I just used it. Plus after using PC's for so many years you come to release everything keeps repeating itself (better 3d cards, more RAM, faster CPU's, etc) however in the Mac world things do get quicker like PC's however they veer off into the 64-bit RISC world which most PC fans only dream of.
You people can make fun of me, but it comes down to you get what you pay for. You spend $50 grand on a Porsche and you get high quality, and you don't have to question "do i like this". Same goes for PC's. People have their hobbies and like to invest in what they believe in. Nothing wrong with enjoying Macs for their raw performance, logical architecture, and open source standards.
I dig Mac in a big way and anybody who disagrees, go and try using a Mac for a bit if you can. You will find you enjoy computing again.
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'.
Maybe I'm just in the minority of Mac users, but I don't consider OS X an "alternate" operating system. Alternate to what? Linux, Solaris, Windows, or FeeBSD, or insert OS here?
I use a Mac because it is a great computer in terms of its hardware and software. Its not perfect, but there is no other computer that I could buy at any price that I would want on my lap right now. I'm a computer professional, and have spent years working with a number of operating systems and hardware platforms in development and administration, and its refreshing to have a personal machine "that just works" so I can do my work.
I require an OS that has a nice windowing system and a functional command line interface. My Mac with OS X, in my opinion, is the only system that even comes close to my expectations. The screen is high quality. The keys are backlit. USB and Firewire peripherals work fine with it. Multiple displays work good. Safari is an excellent web browser, and with PithHelmet I don't see any web ads, no popups, or any of the stuff that was common years ago. The Terminal appication is the best of its kind that I have ever used. Expose is a very uniqe and useful feature. I can dump anything to a PDF file. I can use the same dotfiles from my cvs repository that I use on Linux and Solaris. I can take my laptop and easily drop it into my many environments in terms of networking and printers with no problem, and putting it into a new network is simple. Installing and uninstalling software is excellent either from the GUI or from the commandline via fink or even from source for many standard OSS packages. I still find new things that I like about my Mac. I rarely find things that I don't like, and I'm picky. I could go on, but its not some laundry list of features, its simply a pleasant computing experience. I could not imagine having to settle for anything less at this time. Maybe another vendor will surpass what Apple has achieved at this time, but right now, I simply believe that its the best thing that I have ever used in my lifetime, and from what I see its only going to get better.