Early Adoptoritis.
Nov 06Readers, friends, bedfellows lend me your ears for I am at a point where I would lovingly set off into the mother of all rants. Well, not the mother , but perhaps the aunt, or the niece or something. In any case : I’m annoyed enough to turn a slight shade of purple. My peeve ? Nothing more then "early adoptoritis" Over the last two weeks we have seen the release of Apple’s new OS and of Gutsy Gibbon. My grief is more directed towards the former then the latter, only due to the fact that Macheads just love to express themselves where Linux people are a bit more timid. Over the last fortnight I’ve been inundated with press about leopard. Leopard this, Leopard that .. there have been more on-line countdowns going down towards the release date then with an average space shuttle launch. So when Friday night 6pm rolled around the trusty apple fans where standing in line to pick it up. I walked by the Apple store that evening (we where going out to dinner) and decided to pop in for 10 seconds just to see what it was all about. I got jumped by the store clerk who wanted to explain to me what was so great about the product. I decided to let him do his song and dance. Bad idea ! The kid was beaming with enthusiasm about what was so cool about leopard. I thought for a minute that he had just gotten the news that his girlfriend decided it was time to have a threesome with her best friend and that he could come over and play. But no ! The guy was completely whoop-daddy about the little reflective dock, the blinkin’ lights underneath the programs and .. TIME MACHINE ! Ok Ok !!! I wanted to cry. I get the freakin’ picture..But is this worth getting all worked up about ? A look around the store confirmed this fear: All around me Apple-fans where patting each other on the shoulder and talking about "How Steve did a great job with this OS" WTF ? They act like they KNOW the guy who is ridiculously rich thanks to these guys who will throw an ridiculous amount of money at apple every time a product is announced. I mean : Macheads have been crapping the crumbs from Vista saying its a lot of fancy blingbling but nothing underneath the cover. Although they might be right (I’m sure they are) they go completely bonkers over the "cosmetics" in leopard. I mean : HELLO !!! Any scepticisme home ? ? ? ?
When listening to The Tipical Mac User Podcast live show a few days later I’m at the brink of losing my lunch over all this "enthusiasm". About people talking about their "buying experience" getting leopard like its some fracking PRIVILEGE to stand in line in front of a store and throw money over the counter ! They are the freaking customer ! Apple should be offering up free dinners and give them a neck massage to sell them their products, not the other way around. No wonder apple charges insane amounts for their hardware: With this kind of consumer-devotion towards the brand you can get away with everything.
But then it gets even worse : First we had to listen to them praise everything that comes out of Steves holy butt hole, NOW its time for them to whine. They install a first gen product (Leopard) that has been released towards developers FAR TOO LATE , is filled with eye candy and has some functions that could be called experimental (time machine). Now they start to whine : This doesn’t work with leopard, THAT doesn’t work with leopard. And you know what ? they blame the third party developers ! Not the fact that these poor people could not get a hand on a copy of the OS soon enough to make a stable product. NOOOO ! Apple Inc stands far above any suspicion. Not in the least do they consider that there might be some "growing pains" that are inevitable when you buy a 1-day-old OS. (while they bitch and moan that all Vista users should at least wait until service pack one) God forbid they even turn a sceptical eye towards leopard itself (they dare not admit they have started to hate the little blinkenlights in the dock after 10 minutes) I even dare to predict that the first user who says leopard is bling in a box with nothing underneath will get clubbed to death by these fan boys. And time machine ? What the frack is so new about that : It backs up every file you ever made ! Wow .. that’s like a D-minus on use of storage space and timesaving backups. If you are a litte computer savvy you’re doing this for years already. It takes half a brain to backup everything you have every day. It takes some smart programming to backup everything you need without eating away terabyte after terabyte of external hard drive space. Oh please !
My point ? Macheads are as Fanatical as Windows zealots and as narrow minded as linux – purists. They hate everything that is different (no problem there) but worse is : they are so fanatical in their "love" that they forget to be critics, turn sceptical eyes towards the people who sell them. They love to be "overcharged" for hard and software.. just because they love the products. In the end it think us sliders are the ones to save the planet.
