Mac at 25: Why I still hate them

Smugness
One of the key reasons I hate Macs are their users. There's a certain kind of smug, snooty Apple user that makes me want to reach for the EMP cannon. Apple's fan base bears more resemblance to cults like Scientology than many would like to admit.

These people think that, because they paid vast wodges of cash for a machine, it must be better, and who buy into the whole advertising campaign malarkey that Apple has fed them, from the 1984 advert to assuming that they are 'Thinking Different'.

I urge those outraged by this to read Neal Stephenson's excellent essay In the Beginning ... was the Command Line, which skewers this issue better than I can.

This kind of Apple user thinks they are being a rebel by using a Mac, and are sticking it to Bill Gates. This ranges from the slightly annoying (abbreviating Microsoft to M$) to the utterly childish (Windoze etc).

Say what you like about Microsoft, but the company only wants to control all the software in the world. Apple wants to control the hardware, the software and anything else it can lay its hands on.

Another screed from this crowd is that Apple must be better because it doesn't get hit by malware. Macs are perfectly susceptible to malware as it turns out, but no-one is bothered to write it for them. Why would a profit-minded criminal try and infect only seven per cent of computers, when he could reach 90 per cent instead?

Now, I can explain all this till I'm blue in the face and the Apple fans just look at me pityingly and say: 'You just don’t get it,' usually adding the word 'Man' at the end. Either that or I'm accused of being a paid Microsoft stooge. But the fact is, I do get it.

And finally ...
Now, you may be under the impression that I'm hideously biased about Apple and shouldn't be allowed to carry on writing about them. You'd be wrong, although I do voluntarily ban myself from reviewing their products.

Actually, I think that a lot of what Apple does is great. The original idea behind the Apple computer did more to kick-start the industry in the 1970s than any other invention, and the Mac, for all its faults, created the desktop publishing industry that has employed me for nearly two decades.

When it comes to designing hardware that looks good and is easy for ordinary people to use the company is unbeatable. The iMac was and is a design classic, the iPhone and the iPod revolutionised their sectors (and I'm very happy with my iPod touch).

Steve Jobs, too, is one of the pioneers of the industry and has done much to change it. He's a far more interesting character than Bill Gates or Tim Berners-Lee, and a revolutionary thinker.

But, like many great people, Jobs is sometimes blind to other viewpoints. Had he played his cards right Apple would now be the de facto standard and Steve Ballmer would be a sales manager at a low level software company struggling to pay the mortgage.

A lot of Mac products were good, as our top 10 list will show, but when I look at a Mac I can't help but feel that they could have been so much better.