Questions Answered #9

In a desperate effort to gain some weird form of validation, I stole an idea for a blog post and begged my readers to ask me a question. And they did. The buggers. Now I have to answer them.

Lesley asks “Why I will never be cool enough to own a Mac”. To which I can only answer, how the hell should I know? How cool ARE you Lesley? Ahh, but then I realised she trying to imply that *I* wasn’t cool enough to own a Mac… as if..

Why I will never be cool enough to own a Mac
I’m a liberal. I’m a free spirit. I believe in an open mind. I wear t-shirts, a lot. I don’t wear a suit. In my head I am still a carefree young man, who knows that cutting edge cool isn’t *cool*. I’m laidback, I care about design, I care about quality. I like the best of things.

But I’m most definitely NOT cool.

Cool is a state of mind (man), and I’m just a little TOO conservative, a little TOO “middle-class” (ohh you know what I mean), a little TOO snooty to be cool. I mean, yeah, I’m a great guy. I’m pretty sure if you met me you’d think “yeah, he’s alright”.

But you wouldn’t think “whoa, he’s cool” (possibly because you are NOT in a Bill and Ted movie and no-one really talks like that, um, do they?).

Of course owning a Mac, and let me just clarify at this point that we are discussing the ownership of an Apple Macintosh home computer, not a plastic garment that is usually yellow and comes with a matching hat… did anyone have one of these as a kid? Yeah, I’ve got the embarassing photos too.. that and sandals. SANDALS! Honestly mother, what WERE you thinking?

Where was I?

Apple have a series of adverts which pitch a ‘Mac’ against a ‘PC’. The Mac is represented by a young, trendy guy, the PC by the staid ‘office worker’ in a suit. The adverts are clever, witty, but are starting to grate. You see, I get the whole “iLife your life” pitch but I think these adverts are over playing things. Quite considerably. This is one of the reasons I don’t think I’m cool enough to own a Mac.

You see I ‘get’ that owning a Mac is largely down to the experience, ease of use, etc etc. That’s all good as far as I’m concerned, and without getting into ANOTHER Mac vs PC debate, let’s just leave it at that. Mac owners, I get it. I really really do.

But I can’t own a Mac because I’m not cool enough. I AM that PC guy, as much as I want to be that Mac guy. Well, I’m kinda halfway in-between, and that’s the problem. It’s not so much that I don’t think I’m cool ENOUGH to own a Mac, it’s more like I don’t think OTHER PEOPLE will think I’m cool enough, they’ll snigger under their breath, talk about me behind my back and it’ll be like that time in the sauna, all over again.

In a way I blame Apple for this, and I wonder if they’ll lose the sales of other ‘on the cusp of cool’ people through the message they use to promote their wares. Owning a Mac means joining a club, a clique, a culture. Not everyone wants that, nor would feel comfortable with that, but hey what do Apple care? iPod sales continue to be strong (owning an iPod is NOT cool) so they can afford to be picky, they can afford to be the COOL guy, but maybe they should worry a little about that guy near the end of the line, the one that is always picked second last. He knows he’s not cool, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be…