Dartblog

Normal, sensible people, who have adjusted well to the mores of modern day life, and who take care of their terriers and who have a beer every now and then but don’t overdo it, and who raise stout children who do well in school and serve their communities, think that Apple Computer makes crappy products. Drunkards and the sort of treasonous slime that congeals in San Francisco gutters think Apple makes really fine stuff. You can take your pick, but I prefer to caucus with the former. The trouble is that, every now and then, good people acquire a bit of dust in the eye. Just a speck—hardly noticible. In fact, they don’t notice it at all. What they do notice, because that speck blinds them to truth, is, Say, that iPod looks kind of swell. I know it isn’t right to purchase Apple products, but, gosh, that’s pretty.

The speck tears a hole in a person’s moral dragnet. The shininess of the Apple product—that slick, that white, that angelic acrylic—bears with the weight of a thousand suns on the soul. So you buy the thing. You step outside. God’s welkin is bluer than ever. A hummingbird alights; chirps on your shoulder. You are an Apple Person now. From here on out, it is going to be easy street. You can finally purchase really angular spectacles with thick borders. Suddenly noserings don’t seem so stupid. You take the package home, install the iPod, and wipe your brow, mocking your former self. You recall with a grin that it took forty-five minutes to install that 500MB SCSI drive back in ‘91. (There was an IRQ conflict.) Now, in 2006, this iPod took only five minutes. Disallowing yourself from recognizing the anachronism, you draw deeper into the Apple universe.

But then you try to do something with your shiny new thing. You attempt to purchase an episode of the hit NBC series, “The Office,” from the iTunes Music and Video store. You submit your credit card information, and the download begins. It stops after seventeen megabytes; seventeen of two hundred and sixty-four. It won’t budge. You hit retry. Retry, retry, retry. But all the iTunes program will tell you is error code 3259. A Google search betrays that this is meaningless. You scour through the program’s network connection settings, only to find that the program has no network connection settings.

And suddenly it dawns on you: Apple Computer makes crap. It makes pretty crap, yes, but in no way is it easier to use. It is, in fact, precisely as crash-prone and virus-prone as any Windows-based computer. It is exactly as likely to break. The only difference—The. Only. Difference.—is that, when your Apple product breaks, it will not tell you why it broke. And you discover the great truth: Apple isn’t any easier. Its products just keep you ignorant. And when they finally are broken enough that the core functionalities fail, the Genius Bar will heartily recommend gettin’ a new one. And, gosh. The new one is even prettier than the old one!

MY APOLOGIES: To the 16.43% of Dartblog readers who use Macintosh computers.