If Jason Calacanis is against Apple, who can be for it?

I read this blog post a little while ago and, bizarre as it probably is considering the subject matter, it did get me to thinking, mainly I suspect, because I dislike any form of unjustified elitism and I regard the whole Apple thingy as just such an unjustified snobbery.

My first thought is about just how expensive Apple actually is .... for everything ... even for music you buy from them nevermind their PC's, operating system and laptops.  Yet, people seem to be more than happy to pay to buy what seems to have effectively been brainwashed into them as a sort of cool form of hippie elitism.

I find this amusing actually.  Anyone who knows anything about real hippies knows that they are rather shabby and against the flow sort of characters but Apple, by it's profits, is neither of those things.  People, however, continue to buy into the comeback story of the poor orphan child which floundered two decades ago and has "miraculously" recovered.  I too find this tale touching, but not when it is to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars to get something a good few other cheaper devices can do for me - that seems to "ring" false somehow.

My husband had bought into the hype though and bought an INCREDIBLY expensive, top of the line, best of the best, Macbook Pro three years ago (he really is an elitist :))  Said "Pro" has been through 3 batteries now - two of them actually expanded with heat and have warped the casing  and one just upped and died for reasons which remain unknown.  Said Mac has now been given to the child - yes, the child - which is sort of wasteful and sad if you think about it and is most definitely not elitist or hippie-like.

I have to give it to the Apple folks though, they know how to market, o boy o boy but they do!!  I am regularly astonished at the fanaticism one evinces from a closet Apple fan by ranting about an exploding battery and about how much mental power is exerted to justify such things nevermind the energy devoted to demonizing PC's and that demon of computing, Microsoft, when said closet elitists defensively respond.

To me, this is a car type debate.  Being a woman, I just want a car that is reasonably priced, safe, reliable and not like a tapeworm ridden dependant with regards to gas - I feel the same way about computers .... clothes too believe it or not and yes, I know this makes me somewhat of a rarity.

Labels do not maketh the man and nor do the car or the any kind of machine and so this whole business of setting oneself up, backside exposed so the jeans label can be seen, or feet in the air so the colour of the sole can be seen or my favourite, and the most pertinent to this post, in the window facing outward so that the make of your laptop can be seen in any given dingy coffee shop.  I find all of those behaviors sort of tacky and purpose defeating most especially when for example Apple, holds itself up to be the very antithesis of that sort of thing.

I drove a Toyota and I loved my Dell.   I would never move from Windows to Leopard and by God, I think Office is a magnificent set of pieces of software. I have never had a Dell battery explode nor have I paid what I consider to be a small fortune for any software or music that I own (though I do indeed have an IPod).

That typed then, guess which side of the fence I fall on which brings this particular little tirade to a close :)