“It Just Works” My Ass

The closest thing I’ve come to owning a Mac is through my brother, who purchased a notebook some months ago — but that’s the best thing about being a blogger: its part of our writ to write about things we barely know about.  Anyway, contrary to the motto “it just works”, it just _doesn’t_ work, as he’s had a number of hiccups from time to time.  Admittedly not as severe as the misadventures he had with his Dell or, prior to that, his bargain-basement PC, but it certainly isn’t quite as its billed to be: short of perfect.

Therefore, it was with schadenfreude-like glee that I read about Leopard’s earlier mishaps (although I understand much of it has been patched), and now, Robert Scoble’s own royal frustrations (see Rob Hyndman’s problems with peripherals).

While there are a lot of things that macs in all their incarnations do very well, one thing I cannot abide by is the snobbishness that many Mac-owners take about their platform and hardware of choice.  There’s no question that PC owners do the same, but I think the real issue is that Apple corporate echoes the same kind of childish tropes through its own marketing voice (’it just works’), advertising, and error messages that are coded right into OSX.

On the other hand, I don’t think you will ever hear anyone who is attached to Microsoft ever make smug suggestions that their products are without error …which I take “it just works” to mean.

6 Comments

  1. Posted November 17, 2007 at 11:55 am | Permalink

    Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself. – Peter da Silva

  2. Posted November 17, 2007 at 12:36 pm | Permalink

    What I cant understand is when someone says he/she is a APPLE fan. A fan of a company that is so tight lipped, closed, monopolizes and so full of marketing crap.

  3. Posted November 17, 2007 at 12:45 pm | Permalink

    Hey Earl — know what I think its witty? Someone who makes rejoinders using pithy quotes. That’s wit.

    No wait, that’s just smug hauteur.

    Goodness, I always confuse the two. ;)

  4. Posted July 30, 2008 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

    “Much ado about nothing”

    -Shakespeare

  5. Anonymous
    Posted January 23, 2009 at 5:55 am | Permalink

    I Recomend changing you brother probably he is the fault

    Cheers

  6. ed hernandez
    Posted November 22, 2009 at 1:40 am | Permalink

    It’s all about marketing. The internal parts of a mac, mabook, etc are all sourced from the same manufacturers as pc parts. Ex… Logic board- Foxconn, hard drive -hitachi, seagate, etc…internal fan-sunon. Of course they will break and will need to be fixed. The difference is the operating system, it is quite good but not excellent. Oh and the price too.

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