Zealots

2009.01.28   prev     next

I’ve been an Apple user ever since I bought my first computer, an Apple II+, when I was a teenager. Apple was more-or-less on top then, but very soon after was eclipsed first by the IBM (MS-DOS) PC, then later by the Windows PC.

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, I privately thought that reasonable, impartial people bought Windows PCs, because it just made sense to use what 80% or 90% of everyone else was using. My friends and relatives knew I used Macs, but I was always very careful not to evangelize the Mac in their presence. As much as I wanted Apple to succeed, I just didn’t see any way it could overturn the momentum of Microsoft. And I didn’t want people to view me as one of those weird, pro-Apple zealots. So, when asked, I would admit to using Macs, because “I like ’em,” but I would never say that they were better than Windows PCs, or tell others to buy them.

I also didn’t want to wind up in a debate over which system was better, knowing that no matter what points we each made, I would lose the debate by default, because when we finished arguing and went our respective ways, Windows still would be handily winning and Mac still would be wallowing in a 4% or 5% share of the market.

Secretly, I wondered if I wasn’t irrationally devoted to Apple just because they were my first choice, and because I didn’t want to make the switch to Windows. Also because I wanted to win. And because I wanted upstart rebels to steal the soul of computing from heartless, drudge-work businesses like IBM, and shameless rip-off artists like Microsoft. Reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that yes, I probably was such an individual, and feeling that way was — at least partially — my reason for using Macs and ever-hoping that the people at Apple would find a strategy to overcome the staggering odds against them.

Secretly, I also wondered if being mature, if becoming a normal, well-adjusted person, meant ditching the Mac and getting a Windows computer. I wondered if the 5% Mac share existed mostly to cater to people like me, who just didn’t want to grow up.

And I Thought I Was the Zealot

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wonder these things all my life. In the late 1990s miracles started happening at Apple, and before I knew it, Apple was booming once again and stealing the thunder from every other computing-related company. Majority personal computer share? No, but seriously climbing out of 5% for the first time since I-don’t-remember-when. And of course selling fantastically successful, majority-share handheld products, and showing them off in a wonderful line of its own, pro-Apple, retail stores.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, something else happened that totally snapped me out of my “I need to just grow up” worries. As soon as Apple started becoming a threat — nay, as soon as Apple so much as cleared the category of “companies that might die soon” — then suddenly a whole slew of pro-Microsoft, anti-Apple zealots were exposed like sore thumbs. People who seemed reasonable when dismissing or predicting doom for Apple during the ’90s, suddenly looked very foolish making similar predictions for Apple products that were succeeding wildly.

So then I knew what I didn’t know before: The Windows PC users and promoters in the 1990s were not all reasonable, impartial people who used Microsoft’s products because that was the only sensible thing to do. No, many of them were irrational zealots of an intensity that I couldn’t match with any of my past pro-Apple sentiments. These were people who, unlike me, had no desire to even seem reasonable to others, and wanted nothing more than to find any way to interpret Apple as a failure or soon-to-be-failure, no matter what was actually happening in the market.

And their reasons for doing so were pettier than any grudge I ever held against IBM for casually shoving Apple out of the personal computer market with what really was a stodgy, ’60s-throwback computer design. Or any grudge I held against Microsoft for indeed ripping off the entire Mac UI, repackaging it as a shabby layer-over-DOS kludge, then having enormous success with that. My motives for resenting companies that dominated over Apple were sensible and reasonable compared to the current resentment of the anti-Apple pundits, which, as far as I can tell, is based primarily on falling in love with the idea that computers should be stodgy and boxy; they should be opaque mazes of mysterious functionality. Look at any sci-fi movie or TV show from before the Mac existed (or even many after), and computers are typically portrayed as boxy, chunky, tank-like devices with banks of switches and blinking lights, that would be both difficult and downright dangerous to try to decipher by trial-and-error.

I’m not faulting movie-makers for not knowing in advance what computers and phones would look like today — how could they? But I do fault anyone who grew up with those movies (as did I) and is so in love with that image of computers as opaque mazes of buttons and blinking lights — and perhaps even more in love with their own status as gurus who understand those switches and blinking lights — that they would openly despise, and nakedly attempt to drag down, the one company that really wants computers to be modern, transparent, every-person tools. The one company that wants computers to grow up.