Gaining my religion: seeing the light of Mac
Stephen Evans pens a fun article for BBC News about the
‘Cult of Mac.’ He explores what lies behind the ‘mundane
functionality’ of the Apple Macintosh that gives its users a sense of quasi-religious devotion (and damn if Steve
doesn’t look particularly priestly in that photo at right).
Evans lists the primary strengths of the Macintosh computer as being usability and good looks. Both are absolutely
true and yet, both are also so often used as arguments *against* the Mac, which is portrayed as losing a war in which
the only salient metric is functionality. Usability and ‘style’ are seen as secondary considerations when in the market
for a personal computer - as if packing more and more difficult to use features into a dull, utilitarian box is the
only way to the top of the heap.
This is absolute hogwash, as the success of the iPod clearly demonstrates. It is a device that even a six-year-old can
figure out in five minutes. It doesn’t have an FM tuner. It doesn’t have voice recording. It doesn’t brush your teeth
in the morning - and nobody cares; they just want one. Because it’s hip? Sure. But moreso because it is so dead easy to
use that it feels more like an extension of yourself than like a cold, calculating machine. And that is exactly where
Apple’s marketing team gets everything right.
People are getting bored with lifeless boxes sitting on their desks. What’s more, we’re seeing a trend towards
ubiquitous computing that will not stand for devices that look like they don’t fit into the natural flow of our lives.
The ‘good looks’ and ‘style’ of the Mac are not simply superficial skins slapped onto technically complicated and
confusing innards: Apple’s explicitly stated goal is to make
complex technology easier to use. And design wisdom tells us that
beautiful things work
better.
When those things start to work so well that they feel more human than machine, it starts to feel downright
transcendent. Is it any wonder, then, that Mac fanatics approach their computing experience with what amounts to
religious zeal? Is there something to it? Is your Mac a spiritual machine?
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Not so much a religious machine as much as a tiny god.
Reply
CTracy said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Did anyone notice that the Mac Mini is a "dull, utilitarian box?" What fabulous style and design are we talking about? Apple could release white coffee cup with an apple logo on it and they would be called "innovative" and "groundbreaking." Hype, hype, hype. Someone needs to reality check the whole cult of Mac. They act like the mindless drones they accuse everyone else of being.
Reply
oceanplexian said 11:29AM on 7-14-2005
your wrong "ctracy" the new mac mini is smaller than pretty any pc out there for the desktop, and many times faster, as it sports the powerpc chip. not some intel crap with a longer pipeline. and its running os x, which totally kicks linux and windows's a**. the 32mb graphics card in my ibook is many times better than the 64mb "integrated graphics" chip in a typical pc. and the mac mini is only 499. yeah, sounds innovative to me. dont see many groundbreaking dell boxes, do you?
Reply
Jeff said 8:46PM on 9-26-2005
I've been using Apple computers since the S/E-30, so i'm about as much of a mac-head as they come... but i dont treat my loyalty to Apple like a religion... I simply give it the credit it's due. What is amazing about using a mac, and why it's users are so devoted to it, is simply because it's a computing experience that's top notch. Things work as they should, and that's more than i can say about any of the hundreds of PCs i use at work, school, home, and on the road. The exterior design matters very little next to the well designed human interface.
Reply