After Apple

I can’t bite my tongue any longer. Even battling against the fear of uber secrecy that is Apple and the ‘don’t write in any blog or you will be sacked’ mantra that is told to us on a monthly basis, my two cents time has arrived. Imagine me standing up at an AA meeting right now. Hey everyone, I’m Quadrant and I’m a Mac Genius.

You know, sometimes the job title does make you feel like hanging your head in shame. You feel like a whipped puppy, you love your owner and even though you keep getting hit on from all angles eventually you erase the bad times from your memory, go running back and roll over. You even get bad jokes made every day from the very people you help at the Bar about your title – ‘So, you’re a Genius (sarcastic tone) then huh?’ like it’s a battle cry from the technically impoverished. Yes, you do need to be incredibly thick skinned to be a Mac Genius but we are only human and even the most resilient can only take so much before the cracks start to show. I’ve seen many a great asset to Apple leave the company because of the great unwashed alone. They simply can’t take it anymore. Then they leave to go to other jobs and take their great knowledge with them, which is a crying shame, but you can’t blame them. You really can’t and hopefully some of the following should help you to understand why.

As I said, I will attempt to be funny this time around, or fail miserably trying. On with the show.

A hypothetical friend (hypothetical, as I have no friends, do not need them and do not want them – including you over there reading this page while scrolling through adultfriendfinder in another window and pretending to be on oversexed 14 year girl on Yahoo messenger) arsed me the following question.

“Why do you use a Mac?”

This is marginally better than the sage observation made by other hypothetical friends which goes, “Ah, using a Mac I see! Good for graphics!”. To which I would grit my teeth and imagine their reproductive organs being dipped in a pan of hot fat with owner still attached.

A positive view would be that they are sick and tired of using Windows and are honestly seeking information about the Mac. I’d buy that, but for the tone of voice being used, which sounds like the person asking the question is actually asking about my sexual orientation.

Why in the name of heaven is it so fornicating important what computer I use? I do not wear the same clothes you do, do not watch the same tv programs, do not eat the same food, do not drink alcohol, do not smoke. So this is quite mystifying.

I joined Apple because I thought that it was the coolest computer company ever. I left because it wasn’t.

Do allow me to explain.

First kiss

It may have been a trade show in 1986. There was a Mac running MacPaint. I held the mouse and drew a Mac on the Mac’s screen. The sales guy there said, “Hey, you drew a Mac!”

Dating

In 1989, I was in my first year at University of Science, Malaysia. They had 512K Fat Macs in the lab. First lesson – how to use a mouse. We spent half an hour just clicking and dragging stuff around. It was fun.

In my second year we did programming in C and Pascal. That was fun as C and Pascal syntax was similar yet different (Why doesn’t this work? Oh, you don’t use == in Pascal).

Third year, I was sent to Uniphone for industrial training. Woot! They had yea Macs, but my programming efforts were not great. In the end I ended up mostly doing technical writing. However that was the year I asked (Well, actually pleaded, cajoled, begged, cried, whined etc) my parents to buy me a Powerbook 100. I loved it to bits. Carried it with me everywhere, brought it to lectures. 4 hour battery life, baby. Instant on. Dig on it awhile.