Mac vs. PC Redux
Comments: 3
Some clichés are always worth revisiting. zAmboni posts a faint Eco of Umberto’s famous “MAC vs DOS” column* on Ars Technica, wherein the metaphor sheds its vestments for more modern garb.
I guess it is now official. Mac users are the good guys and Dell users are the bad guys. OK…well on TV at least. Confirmation came at the end of this week’s episode of Fox’s series “24” when it was revealed the Counter Terrorist Unit mole was Nina Myers. When the mole was revealed my mind wandered back to a February Wired article outlining the Mac = good, PC = bad cliché used in movies and TV. Dean Browell, a Mac spotter, had noticed that the good guys (CTU personnel) were using Macs and the terrorists were using PCs. There was some oddities, one CTU agent used a Dell PC, but in an early episode she was found a traitor and then committed suicide.
* After almost an hour of searching, I’ll be damned if I can find a copy of this online, which strikes me as very strange indeed. It originally appeared as his September 30, 1994 “La Bustina di Minerva” column in L’Espresso, but their web site doesn’t seem to maintain archives back that far.
There are excerpts aplenty, but nowhere can I find in Italian, English, or any other language, a complete copy.
The salient quotation, in case you’ve never had the pleasure, would have to be:
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ‘ratio studiorum’ of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic:the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.
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Posted to Computers • 2002.05.15 (Wed) • 15:22
Comments
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens 2002.05.09, 12:08
Best In Show is pretty good, especially when Parker Posey explains how she met her husband in a Starbucks…he was in the one across the street…and how they knew they were meant for each other because they shopped from the same catalogs.
But I think his earlier movie, Waiting for Guffman, is even funnier. Done in the same pseudo-docu style. Also with Eugene Levy and Parker Posey.
Posted by Bill Zeller 2002.05.14, 10:32
Hey,
I saw this movie on May 10th (it was recommended to me that afternoon) and I thought it was very entertaining as well. It was totally not what I expected, and I wasn’t in the best mood for it, but I still enjoyed it. I think I’ll watch it again before I have to return it…
Will have to track down “Waiting for Guffman” if you think it’s even better. Can’t wait, although I wouldn’t be surprised if my local video store doesn’t have it. They’re extremely patchy in some respects and obsessive completists in others.
Parker Posey and her neuro-yuppie husband were just hilarious. I know a couple who are so similar. The part where he asks Pepper about threadbare jacket he’s wearing (“Is that L.L. Bean?” Let me just check.”) is this guy to a tee.
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