Microsoft's grinning robots
Charlie Brooker. Photo: The Guardian.
One of the disadvantages of reading American newspapers is that you don't get Charlie Brooker delivered to your doorstep.
Brooker is a British comedian and, as everyone who reads The Guardian knows, the author of the Screen Burn column that appears in G2 every Monday. He's also Britain's funniest and most enthusiastic Apple (AAPL) basher — an honorific he secured with a Feb. 5, 2007 column that included this classic paragraph:
"I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui." (link)
Now, in Monday's Guardian, he offers a sort of bookend to that 2007 column — a companion piece in which he reveals his true feelings about Microsoft (MSFT) Windows. He still hates Macs and Mac users, but it's not as if thinks Windows is so great. In fact, he writes:
"I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. OK, OK: I know other operating systems are available. But their advocates seem even creepier, snootier and more insistent than Mac owners. The harder they try to convince me, the more I'm repelled. To them, I'm a sheep. And they're right. I'm a helpless, stupid, lazy sheep. I'm also a masochist. And that's why I continue to use Windows – horrible Windows – even though I hate every second of it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life."
What has set Brooker off are those Windows 7 Launch Party videos we wrote about last week. (See Microsoft's lamest idea yet.)
By now, it seems, dozens of tech writer have taken pot shots at Redmond's house party campaign — including one clever video editor who, by bleeping some key words, turned it into something that actually swings. (See here.)
Anybody can poke fun of Microsoft, but nobody does it better than Charlie Brooker.
Monday's column is entitled "Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?" To read it, click here.
As a 48 year old geek who has been using Apple products for a few iterations before the first macintosh was available – and bought and developed for the first, the second, etc. etc. mac. I've worked for Microsoft (mac division mostly), owned and developed for neXt box…and so on…
I don't want to insult anyone but if i was twenty years old today I think i might hate mac users also. Although it's as much mac users as the age we live in – mass-market, materialist, suburbanites as happy as baby pigs about it…going on and on about ipods and ipones – driving me insane.
Turn of the 19-20th century european thinkers and writers wrote about the concept of the 'end man' – meaning man who's only essence was consumption and amusement. The concept was that when such a man came about, it was all over – decadence had devolved from the conscious, self-aware individual to the unconscious, oblivious mass. The only choices left were suicide or murder.
The sure consciousness of this coming age was the basis of both existentialism and nihlism.
Microsoft was the forerunner of this. No other company represented the decline as Microsoft's triumph not of the nerd, but of the third rate commercial opportunist , the exploiter over the innovator, to a degree of success that signaled that there was not backing out of it now..
. Apple always represented the awareness that there was more to this than circuits. Steve Jobs alone is responsible for this. But now that he and Apple is back, what do we have ? Just an upscale commercialism, and it seems little else.
At least windows luvers are somewhat aware they are grotty, unpleasant, stupid and lying little trolls who receive and deserve much abuse. But there has always been a visible aura of abdignation that signaled a particule of awareness. But nowadays Mac users – shameless.
Who represents the 'end' man more ? the greasy little dullards that propel the windows 7 generation or the happy. shiny and rabid materialist golems manically clutching their newest igadget precious?
Anyway I came here to read about a stock and saw your link and just dropped by to say your both damned.
This pretty damn funny…
I think he does points out the opposing sentiments of the polarized Mac vc Windows users that enjoy wasting time arguing over a matter of personal preference. Kinda akin to the "tastes great" "less filling" argument in the sense it's always the same arguments- MSFT die hards hate Macs because of Mac users, they believe to be snooty, smug, pretentious beings who prefer overpriced, dressed up toys. Whereas Macs diehards like to bash Windows because it all the flaws and headaches, BSOD, reboots..etc. And I think it's boastful Mac users that annoy Windows users by rubbing in the face the fact they use an inferior OS, which causes them to resent Mac users, therefore Macs in general. Last thing somebody wants to hear is how great Macs are when they have to rip the power cord out of the wall cause Windows locked up for the third time that day and cmd-alt-del isn't responding, unless you have patience to wait 20 minutes for 30 instances of task manager to finally open, if ever does.
Its easy to bash things you don't understand. People do it all the time. Learn operating system structure and then you can bash OS's. Otherwise stop complaining about products and their users.
The voice (and sometimes face) of Ford in their TV ads these days is Mike Rowe, who also hosts Discovery Channel's "Most Dangerous Catch", and does other voice work for Discovery and I think in other advertising.
As for Booker, well he gets paid to be obnoxious, it's his schtick. Like most comedians, he does that job because he couldn't survive in a real job.
MSFT grinning robots– see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
But, seriously, though we Mac people are occasionally smug about it, we get our work done with minimal fuss. Computers are supposed to be TOOLS. I spend, maybe, an hour a year maintaining my Mac. When I use Windows (like Win XP in the workplace) I can blow an hour a WEEK fixing things and rebooting. No wonder IT guys love Windows so much– it keeps them VERY busy.
Reminds me of early Dennis Leary. Today I think he does voice over commercials for Ford trucks. Wait a few years and this guy will be singing a different tune for some fortune 500 company.
ROFL. Thank you, PED. Both the anti-Mac and anti-PC columns are hilarious. To quote Romeo's pal Mercutio: "A plague a' both your houses!"