January 13, 2005
Macs, PC's and the War Against Intelligence
Michael Kanellos is something called "Editor At Large" for C-net. I don't know what that means, but I don't think the position requires much effort or intelligence, or any meaningful understanding of a given assignment, hence his mission to write absolute shit for C-Net, like this article, easily the saddest and dumbest response to all of Apple's big news last week. It's a matter of nature that when any company puts out a product, the product will have it's detractors, and Apple is no exception. But usually the argument or concern is buttressed by sound questioning or lack of available information. There are plenty of arguments against the Mac Mini - mostly revolving around how you can get a similar PC system with peripherals and a monitor from Dell, who is decidly less kül now that the Dell Dude is gone; or Gateway, currently coughing up blood in Sioux City. This might make sense to certain people, like those who have no computer, but it won't hold water to someone who's already bought that system from Gateway and realized that a) it's garbage and b) after 20 minutes on the internet the damned thing has become a digital petri-dish, just hopping and buzzing with all sorts of weird micromutant malware, spyware and viri. And for what? For staring at quality writing and journalism offered by cookie spraying C-Net.
But none of these issues crop up for Kanellos. He's just annoyed at Apple because they seem to offend his cultural predisposal towards mookery:
"The thing that has somewhat troubled me about Apple and the Mac community over the years, I now realize, is that there seems to be an overt agenda geared at giving everyone a makeover so that they can land a marketing position. It is always about presentation and posture with that company."
So Apple is kind of the Martha Stewart of computer companies. It is not the Microsoft of computer companies, thankfully, and so they do things differently from how they bungle it up in Redmond. They make great stuff that families and companies can use to their advantage if they desire, apps like iPhoto and iMovie. This only annoys Kanellos. "Who puts a soundtrack to their family photos?" he squeaks. "Most of us are lucky to have poorly labeled computer files, a cardboard box with prints and/or a vague idea of who is in the picture." (The second half of that sentence btw, Mr. Editor-at-large, good fucking work). Maybe if you're a shallow, coke-hoovering, hooker in every town type of weaselface. You don't give a shit about this sort of thing, but maybe there's a legion or two of people who'd like to do this sort of thing for their sister's wedding, or their nephew's bar mitzvah, or their kids' first 12 birthdays, or their stoner parties in college, or their keggers, or maybe they might want to show off some photographs on the web (you can easily publish to the web with iPhoto), or make a short movie to see if you really like to make movies, etc. I think that when Kanellos refers to "Most of us" he's referring to he and his bunch of soulless mook buddies who sit around drinking shit beer and bitching about their ex wives' monetary treachery. He pretty much admits it later in the article: "There is also a personal bias here. I have knuckle hair that a rhesus monkey would envy."
Really, when you get down to it, I think the guy really couldn't come up with anything decent to write about in regards to Apple's foray into the mainstream PC market, so he decided to write an article that's more revealing about him and his personal problems than the subject at hand. He has to try to persuade the reader that Apple is annoying because they make software that you might enjoy using and might find good for your whole family.
Whatever man. C-Net has been in Microsoft's pocket since it's inception, and this thing was probably paid for and planned weeks in advance. What gets me is that he actually gets paid for writing something that lame, weird and biased. He almost gets political - "Mac people seem to want you to go into advertising. PC people don't give nearly as much career guidance" - perhaps trying to reinforce the bogus cultural divide that separates Mac users from PC users. He even goes so far to claim that these Apple products are short on substance (while quoting Castiglione, to demonstrate his apparent depth). Just what this substance Apple is short on is not stated. After all, Gates is struggling to do something similar with Windows, as evidenced by various muddy Windows Media releases and biproducts.
What Kanellos cannot mention is that Bill Gates more or less unsuccessfully tried to demonstrate similar things a week before, during an awkward and unfunny "presentation" with Conan O'Brien. There's a giant elephant sitting in Kanellos' office, not making a sound, wearing a t-shirt that says "Who's product rollouts do you remember today? Microsoft's or Apple's?" Kanellos can't even look that way, because if he did, it would shrink his two inches of solid steel.
Posted by Daniel E. Boen at 03:58 PM | Comments (1264)