The Cult Of Mac
[ author: leander kahney ]
 I have always had a very addictive personality. In high school I did acid two or three times a week. I eventually gave up acid for marijuana, which was the epicenter of my universe until I found cocaine. For the next few years my mind was reeling at a 100mph until even that wasn't enough. After a few stints with PCP and meth, someone introduced me to crack. Yes. I smoked crack. Not enough to claim I was a crackhead, just enough to force me to realize, "Holy shit. I'm smoking crack. And I like it. I have a problem." So I spent the next four years at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey eating prescription pills trying to forget about how good crack made me feel.
Then I met my wife and I've been clean and semi-sober for nearly four years. The drugs are gone, replaced with healthier, more bizarre addictions: tea tree oil toothpicks, chili hot dogs (I eat three every day), weekly haircuts, and brushing my teeth. I am not a Mac addict like the people found in Leander Kahney's new book, The Cult of Mac, but I am a recreational user and I can relate to the Mac addict's plight; the only difference is that when I was discovering crack, they were finding OS 6. Oddly enough, I think over all my years of drugging, I still spent significantly less money than any really serious Mac addict. And what do either of us have to show for it? One fellow in the book tells of how he took an old Mac SE/30 and turned it into a bong. Similarly, I'm sure if someone handed me a scalpel I could make an ashtray out of my liver.
The main difference between a drug addict and a Mac addict is that Mac-ies are more elitist. In drug circles, if you're holding drugs or you have money to buy drugs, you are in. Not the case with Macs. I have a PowerBook G4 and a 40GB iPod. These are not cheap or ancient purchases by any means, but when I went to have my laptop looked at in the Apple Store the technician at the Apple Bar said, in a cadence that can only be described as Napoleon Dynamite-esque, "God. When was the last time you updated this thing? Pfft." Then I handed him my iPod that kept freezing up, and with the same annoyed tone he asked, "God. How old is this thing? It doesn't even hold pictures." I told him that in two months it will be a year old and he rolled his eyes as if I was still playing Atari 2600. Then he told me, "You're iPod is using iTunes 4.71 and we're already on 4.73. Maybe if you kept up with the times you wouldn't be having these problems." It was all very depressing. And I went home and had a drink.
For those of you who feel as that Apple Store employee did, that I'm some kind of technological geezer, then you need to buy this book so you can realize that you're not alone. That there are people out there that understand and are willing to help, just like AA or NA. And if you're not looking for a support group then I suppose you could just use the book as fodder for masturbatory fantasies.
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