Why I¹ve gone back to Mac

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

http://online.guardian.co.uk/computing/908986249-second.html

  SECOND SIGHT Douglas Rushkoff
  Why I¹ve gone back to Mac

         About two years ago in this space, I made an announcement that
         led to more than 1,000 horrified responses from you readers. I¹m
         still receiving a trickle of e-mail about it to this day. And all
         I had done was explain the reasons why I had traded in my
         Macintosh computer for a Windows machine. Now, two years and
         three Windows operating systems later, I am finally admitting
         defeat.

         I understand Windows as well as most technical support personnel.
         I can edit a config.sys file and delete bad lines in an
         autoexec.bat with the best of them. I can partition a hard drive
         in FAT32, manually configure a dial-up adapter, and scour my
         Systems folder for obsolete DLLs.

         But why would I want to know such things? And what has learning
         all this done to me? Worse, why doesn¹t my knowledge of Windows¹
         twisted innards bring me any closer to wrestling my system?

         In short, my two years in Windows has fundamentally altered my
         experience of the computer and of the Internet. A quick look
         through my 150 archived columns reveals a distinct souring that
         took place just about the time I gave up the elegance of the Mac
         for the seeming compatibility of the Windows PC.

         I went from writing about ³co-evolution with technology² to
         complaining about ³the intentionally disempowering opacity of the
         interface². I owe this shift in perspective to Windows.

         My reasons for surrendering to Bill Gates were simple: I wanted
         to be compatible. I was tired of opening e-mail and files from
         Windows users that came through on my Mac as garbled characters.
         I hated the fact that my Netscape browser would freeze up at the
         first whiff of a Java applet. I began to feel like a stubborn
         zealot. The die was cast, and Windows had won. So I acquiesced.

         I agreed to turn in my individuality ‹ my preference for the
         Bauhaus elegance of the Mac ‹ to comply with the wish of the
         majority. Like a Jew converting to Catholicism during the
         Inquisition, I figured assimilation was a better option than
         continued resistance. Non-compliance just cost too much. I
         decided I no longer cared which system I used, as long as someone
         promised to make it all work with everything else.

         Well, Bill Gates just didn¹t come through. When I became a
         subject of the Microsoft Kingdom, the coin of the realm was
         undergoing a transition from Windows 3.1 to the Mac-like Windows
         95. The new system promised to take care of everything for the
         user, from adding and removing programs to automatically
         recognising and configuring new hardware.

         Unfortunately, Microsoft seemed more concerned with fighting its
         browser war with Netscape, its word processing war with
         WordPerfect, and its e-mail war with Eudora than with supplying
         an integrated system to its customers.

         The result of this many-fronted battle was a set of essentially
         incompatible suites of programs. Microsoft¹s Outlook division
         just didn¹t know what its Office division was doing.

         The different battalions of the Windows army each worked to
         develop ³ultimate solutions² to computing. The squadron of
         programmers writing the operating system created a messaging
         system called Exchange; the team building the Outlook suite
         wanted to take care of messaging by themselves; and the Explorer
         troops used another program called Outlook Express. And none of
         them worked properly with Office, or one another.

         I hung in there, configuring and reconfiguring my system nightly,
         hoping that Windows 98, essentially a bug-fix for Win95, would
         deliver the solution I was looking for. It didn¹t.

         Instead, it merely immersed me in an even thicker soup of
         ³user-friendly² installation and configuration utilities,
         complete with animated ³paper-clip² characters to taunt me in my
         despair.

         My new iMac, though far from perfect, actually gives me back some
         control over how my computer functions.

         Its playful transparent-blue plastic design ‹ bordering on the
         silly, in fact ‹ goes a long way towards rehabilitating my sense
         of superiority over these machines. Better yet, I can write, send
         e-mail, and browse the Web as well as I could five years ago!
         Oddly, the Macintosh interface, which once seemed so opaque
         compared with the simple Dos commands I had grown up using, now
         seems connected to the functioning of my machine ‹ at least in
         comparison with the numbing distance imposed by Windows. I can
         manually enter a phone number I want my modem to dial, directly
         into a little box, without going through all the painstaking
         steps required by one of Microsoft¹s ³Wizards².

         The Wizard set-up utilities attempt to predict what I¹ll need,
         and then meet those assumed expectations by adding international
         access numbers or special modem string commands. In the name of
         user-friendliness, the software keeps me away from my own
         hardware.

         Like an all-too formal waiter who won¹t let you apply your own
         pepper to your food, the meddling Microsoft utilities most often
         get it wrong. The iron-clad interface in which the operating
         system is housed prevents even the most advanced users from
         getting past these ³helpful² sentries and configuring things
         ourselves. In Europe last month, unable to get Windows to
         co-operate with my hotel phone system, I was forced to retrieve
         my e-mail and even deliver my column through the Palm Pilot.

         By trying to outdo the Mac at user-friendliness, Windows sealed
         its formerly manipulable system in a shield of automated yet
         inoperable configuration agents (much in the manner of a writer
         who, living in the Windows world too long, will tend to write
         sentences fit only for software manuals.) Those who want to get
         at the real guts of their machines have already begun turning to
         Linux.

         Microsoft is more concerned with fighting wars against its
         competitors than providing a workable system for its own
         constituency. Expansion of the Empire takes priority over
         everything else. As a result, the promise of universal
         compatibility is more than outweighed by the totalitarian police
         state it requires.

         There¹s just no room to ³think different².

         © Douglas Rushkoff 1998

         22 October 1998

Mitch Stone
mstone@vc.net