Ping: Episode 8

And I'd like to correct you, Max:

You CAN replace the battery yourself on a macbook. Granted that the 17inch which you speak of, you can't and the macbook air, you can't. However all other apple laptops, you can.

And in my experience, macbook batteries are just as cheap as batteries for "PCs"

Because why.

Here's why.

(Because.)

I don't like choice. I think choice is overwhelming and stupid. In every case, except those that really matter to me (boxers vs. briefs (boxer-briefs), etc.), I want a proxy of some kind. I want someone else to do the thinking.

You should want that, too. Every second my brain is occupied with things like whether or not a retinal-scan protection mechanism is really all that important to me is another second taken away from my potentially making the world a better place. I'd emphasize "potentially" with italics, but I'm using Safari (on my mavcintosishf computer), and I'm scared that the italics button is going to reject me. Not that it's going to ruin what I've typed, but that it's going to tell me that I need to "upgrade" to the latest version of Internet Explorer to be able to make my text all slanty (actually, I trust my people to have done a good job on the latest version of the channel-whatever code - my real beef is with things like Live Mail (or whvrvr it's called) that just don't work with Safari - it's bogus, man - it's way bogus - it's a plate of bogus covered in bogus sauce with grated bogus over the top and a side of minced bogus atop a steaming pile of bogus marinated in bogus juice).

My dad just called and I lost my train of thought. I don't want to reread what I just wrote because I'm self-aware enough to know that it's probably tedious and pompous and other -ous words. I'll just pick up where I think I left off, and I'm pretty sure I was talking about computers.

So, I like them. Basically.

But I have a Apple computer because, you see, here's the deal, Ok, I write iPhone software now. That's one of the things I do. I do other things, and I'm going to start doing other other things soon, but before doing those other things, I've had to familiarize myself with iPhone development. You can't talk to people about it if you isn't done learned it. You following me? Right on.

So, here's the deal, Ok, if you're ready.

iPhone development is the abusive lover - the one you called the cops on who's being driven away from your home in a car by a POLICE OFFICER OF THE LAW while you throw shoes at the car and scream, "I loooove you, honey... I looooooove you..." with that accent that you develop when you live in a home that can be towed and where everything smells like old ketchup and you inexplicably have a hot-tub AND a big screen TV even though your kids eat rats they cooked over an oil-drum fire and that they put old ketchup on and that they eat while watching "the wheel" as they squint while trying to figure out what a "vowel" is and whether they should save up to buy one, too.

Still with me? Awesome.

iPhone development is, I've recently propounded, the leading cause of Stockholm Syndrome among IT professionals. It's the batterer you love more with each passing closed-fisted pop to the kisser.

Do you laugh? Do you cry?

You do both. That's what you do. That's the only way to cope.

Is it becoming clear to you now? The answer? Do you see it? It lies before you, waiting for at least a nod - something that says, "Yeah - I see you over there - you're all right." An acknowledgment. A sign of acceptance.

It waits. But it is impatient.

It comes now.

It bursts forth from my soul like a cirrhotic liver sploded in a microwave.

The answer can wait no more.

The answer is this: when my brain is shutting down because I've been practicing the dark art of Objective-C on the iPhone with the oppressive rules and do's and don'ts spouted forth by the power-hungry keepers of the code at Apple, it (my brain) is in absolutely no state to select this computer or that computer.

Alls I know... alls I know is this. I'm going to tell you now what it is that is that which is alls I know.

Perpend.

If I have a two-thousand-dollar bill, and I go to the store with computers, I want to give it to someone who will then give me something good in exchange.

There are too many of the Dell. There are too many of the Toshiba. There are too many of the many brands out there that are too numerous to list to list here. Let us accept for now that I am correct in the matter of there being, I say, many-too-many kitchens turning out fresh, warm laptops every new morn across the land and sea.

When one enters into the Apple Store, one is set at ease because they frisk you at the door, pat you down, find your uncertainties, and store them behind the counter until you're ready to leave. After that, they do the same thing with your self-respect by out-cooling you with their hipster ways and tricks (except that, unlike your uncertainties, they don't store your self-respect behind the counter for retrieval upon exit, as there is nothing left to store).

Thusly primed, mind-narrowed and heart suddenly beset with a yearning to win the approval of the bespectacled hipster youth who "will be your Genius today," choice is made irrelevant. You are subhuman and unqualified to restore unto yourself those qualities which separate us from maggots and alarm clocks and other trivial bric-a-brac not commonly held in high-esteem (and for GOOD REASON, I say - yes I do - I say that - often).

Fortunately, there are oftentimes naught but three - perhaps four - choices for the laptop-seeking shell-of-a-former-human to decide among. Fortunatelier, you aren't doing the choosing. Your Genius - your Virgil, guiding you through this particularly uncomfortable level of hell - will simply tell you that, based on your one two-thousand-dollar bill, the Apple laptop computer you can afford to own is "this one."

What's inside it?

Who knows! Who cares!

You rest your hands on what people simply cannot stop referring to as the "sleek industrial design" of the Apple's hard exterior. Heat rises from its packed innards, and you breathe in the scent of holier-than-thou. This flirtation is a down-payment - a promise - on redemption. Oh, to be cool again... oh, to have that self-esteem, lost so many minutes ago, returned to this poor, forsaken shadow of a shadow...

You hand over your two-thousand-dollar bill. The Genius fidgets with a handheld Symbol-powered device that looks like it arrived in this century by way of a Delorean whose flux-capacitor heart tore a window in time that way Deloreans do when a heavy foot on the gas pedal increases the machine's heart rate to 88 miles per hour, resulting in two parallel lines of flames, about yea wide, mysteriously disappearing into a brick wall - a brick wall that was 1985 on one side, and 2009 on the other.

You're informed that your receipt will be emailed to the false email address you provided earlier, thinking you just wanted a computer and not a subscription to the Steve Jobs "Chief Visioneer Newsletter". You debate with yourself about correcting this information, as there is a great likelihood that, because Apples are boutique computers, yours probably has at least six- or seven-thousand dead pixels in its sleek industrially designed screen, and you might like to try to return it later for a properly manufactured specimen that more closely resembles the floor model you were shown earlier.

But you don't want to blow it. You got your computer. You got your box of cool. You got the respect of the hipster who now flashes you the secret sign of the Apple insider (a sign I will not describe here, lest some of your more unscrupulous readers flash this sign in public for to make monkey-business and for to make light of the holiest sanctum of the nerd).

This is why.

This is the because.

I'm a Mac.

I'm a Mac because I'm stupefied by the range of choices I have among orange-juice now. I can have pulp-free, low-pulp, normal-pulp, slightly-more-than-usual-pulp, and nothing-but-pulp-basically-just-pulverized-oranges-in-a-carton. To complicate the matter, various sellers of orange-juice offer in these confusing times similarly labeled products.

And I NEED orange-juice to survive. Perhaps you have heard of the condition known as "scurvy"? Of course you have. My question was ironic. What brazen idiot fool risks developing this "silent killer" simply because he is too proud to ensure he's consuming the proper amount of vitamin-C every day? Oh, no! No! He has NO idea! Oh, he is SO cool. Oh, I wish I could be reckless and James Dean and Joe Camel and Johnny Cash like that, but, alas, I value my life, and so I spend a great deal of time on a weekly basis frozen before the enormity of choices extended to me by the state of Florida between juices of varying pulpage.

I do not NEED a computer to survive.

Ergo.

The choice is simple.

1 + 1 = mfjcnactintosh computer company is good.

I have spoken.

I did spake here.

Spaken have I.

Go well. May the wind be at your sails, and may your sails be attached to some apparatus that connects them to the vessel you pilot through the tempestuous, cyclonic waters of the oceans of life.

I think I've made my point.

OSX is simple. Not Windows.

What can make Windows appear simple, is it's compatibility. 

And any other system can be functional and productive. So those are moot points.