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 :)

DELAYING CHANGE

I proudly, o SO proudly, purchased my refurbished and most beloved Dell laptop three years ago and have, like a benevolent and beaming mommy, been through battery, charger and memory chip (due to overheating of the battery because of the charger) crises and survived them one and all. I have not only survived with my Dellie in fact, my adoration has increased over the years. Imagine my horror therefore, when it began it's flagging and gasping a weak ago. I pressed my fingertips to it's fevered battery location, it ran a temp, I placed my ear to it's innards, it hummed just a little too loudly. All in all, Dellie was indicating that he/she was once again ailing (we call vehicles and boats she - what do we call PC's?). I begged, I pleaded, I scolded, I nagged ......for a week ..... my pleas fell on the selectively deaf ears of my husband and Dellie hung more and more and for longer and longer and the reboots became more and more frequent.

Finally, in a moment of pique on Thursday last, I hovered anxiously yet slightly irkedly over him/her as he/she sluggishly rebooted FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME and drank a glass of water to soothe my tortured soul (one would not want to eat and put weight on ON TOP of one's angst about the failing Dellie). As the internet connection FINALLY came "alive" and I flung myself into my chair to send some mail, I actually, despite YEARS of care, knocked my glass of water onto the keyboard and Dellie DIED - and I mean INSTANTLY! I phoned my bored engineer husband, I googled wildly on his laptop, I dug through all of our books -I desperately sought advice on how to resurrect.

Turn it upside down and fan it was the main line I discovered and that is precisely what I did. Dellie lay in state on the dining room table,upon the best and fluffiest towel in the house, being fanned gently like an Egyptian pharaoh for the 48 hours all sources had indicated was obligatory if even the slightest hope of resuscitation was to be held. Of course, I fretted over the dearth of work being done and the amount of e-mail that was probably building up but I knew that I had to do whatever it took to bring dear Dellie back to life.

It all worked!! Dellie was reborn, just as slow, just as hot and, just as overworked and hangy as ever. I sighed, I clutched myself and eventually, after an absolutely ENORMOUS nag, prevailed upon my husband to dig out his old desktop (old as in not as speed of light fast as his current one) and put it together for me. My teen wailed and wept of course as she had been in possession of it before and it had been removed until her disgusting grades improved -which hasn't happened as yet of course hence the availability.

We set it up, we plugged it all in, I began to move things onto my removable hard drive and became deeply concerned about transferring my e-mails which were in excess of 3 gigs of data which the transfer wizard couldn't handle. We finally bought some special transferral software and received the activation code on Monday morning whereupon I rushed to complete the transfer. I finalised it all by moving my Foxmarks and Outlook settings over and lo and behold, a new child was born.

What can I say? Years of unfaltering loyalty, of devotion, of doing WHATEVER it took to keep Dellie alive and now, I have speed, no hanging, so much productivity that I literally blaze a trail of light as I work. What I wondered, possessed me to cling so fiercly to that laptop that had been slowing speedy me down to slug pace? I suspect it has been about the known and fear of the unknown - the usual reason to be clingy.

The lesson or moral of the story? Blind loyalty is always .... Always..... ALWAYS stupid because it prevents one from even trying out the new often. I am downloading e-mails in a tenth of the time. I am able to run 20 apps at once. I can sit on more than one website at a time and last but not least, I have 250 gigs to play with instead of 40 with a buggy removable hard drive extension. I sincerely hope I've learnt my lesson and won't be so hopelessly devoted next time!

Last but not least, the disgustingly graded teen sits with the paint dryingly slow Dellie - a fit punishment to be sure!