The Null Device

Charlie Brooker buys a MacBook

Charlie Brooker's latest column is a dig at the Apple iPad. The most interesting part of it is towards the end, where Charlie, who, last year, declared his allegiance to the Windows PC platform, comparing it to the stench of urine in an underpass or living in a Communist country in 1981, but nonetheless declaring it better than becoming one of those smug Mac-using twats (or, even worse, one of those Linux weirdos), declares that he's considering buying a MacBook. Not because of it'll make him cool, but because his current Windows laptop, one of the Sony Vaios (they're the nice-looking Windows laptops, the ones sort of like MacBooks for people who couldn't stand to be seen as one of those Mac users) is driving him up the wall:
Yes, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Mac sceptic for years. Yes, I've written screeds bemoaning the infuriating breed of smug Apple monks who treat all PC owners with condescending pity. But being chained to a Sony Vaio for the last few weeks has convinced me that I'd rather use a laptop that just works, rather than one that's so ponderous, stuttering and irritating I find myself perpetually on the verge of running outside and hurling it into traffic.
I just hope buying a MacBook won't turn me into an iPrick. I want a machine that essentially makes itself invisible, not a rectangular bragging stone. If, 10 minutes after buying it, I start burbling on about how it's left me more fulfilled as a human being, or find myself perched at a tiny Starbucks table stroking its glowing Apple with one hand while demonstratively tapping away with the other in the hope that passersby will assume I'm working on a screenplay, it's going straight in the bin.

There are 3 comments on "Charlie Brooker buys a MacBook":

Posted by: Greg

Wed Feb 3 10:49:30 2010

Amongst all the Apple love-hating I like that he pointed out that laptops are the new TV. AFAIK this is a fast-moving, recent trend that hasn't been outed in public much. We all knew TV was dying as a medium, but it's also dying as "what people sit around doing together in the lounge room at night". Many lounge-rooms are now a sea of laptops, one per person, and I suspect this is the future.

Posted by: acb
http://dev.null.org/acb/
Wed Feb 3 11:32:59 2010

Saying that "laptops are the new TV" sounds to me like a confusion of levels, a bit like talking about "internet addiction", or using electricity for entertainment. Though certainly, some internet-based activities seem to be taking the place of recreational TV watching as a switch-your-brain-off activity (LOLCats come to mind).

When TV was a new technology, the utopians talked about it being a promising new educational medium too, not taking into account that there'd be more money in stultifying entertainment.

Posted by: an i for an i

Fri Feb 5 02:29:51 2010

A comprehensive iSkeptic: http://joannejacobs.net/?p=1470

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