Asking the Wrong Questions

Charlie Brooker's anti-Mac rant on the Guardian blog, inspired at least in part by the UK version of the 'I'm a Mac; I'm a PC' ad campaign , has been ruffling some feathers (on the other hand, it also inspired Alison to track down this Mac/PC slash site ). I love my Mac dearly--even more so now that I'm working and forced to use a Windows machine most of the day--but Brooker's screed is so obviously calculated to enrage that I can't be bothered to react to it. It's the equivalent of a middle-schooler shouting 'poo!' at the top of his lungs, and Brooker's irate--not to say hysterical--anti-Mac and -Mac-users arguments are so absurd that the entire piece goes right through aggravating and out the other end into funny. Where Brooker does have a point, however, is in his criticism of the ad campaign. I haven't seen the UK version, but even though I find the US originals quite funny (although their effect might have been lessened had I ...

My aunt, a self-employed architect and workaholic, bought a new flat screen for one of her office computers. My brother and I visited her this afternoon and, while admiring the new peripheral, he changed its resolution to one that the screen couldn't handle. The result? A black screen with the legend 'out of range' and no way to access Windows in order to change the resolution back apart from hooking the computer up to another screen. So, basically, not only did the screen's software react to a bad resolution command in a way that rendered the computer unusable and had no obvious fix, but fucking Windows has no safeguard against the user giving such a bad command in the first place. There was absolutely no indication that the screen currently hooked up to the computer couldn't handle all of the resolutions that Windows' control panel offered, and the operating system didn't block the command once it was given. In conclusion, I love my Mac.