We who love the Macintosh have been accused, sometimes rightly so, of being sort of Johnny-One-Notes. When you write for a Mac site on the Web, the Mac is what you speak of. We do reviews of products for the Mac, and we write about what the new Macs are like when they come out. We are pretty good about defending our favorite platform of choice: That’s what we do.
But there is more to life than the Macintosh, obviously. Most of us have families, and we also have other interests and even different jobs. Some of us are teachers, instructors, or artists. A few of us fight monumental health issues on a daily basis just to be able to apply our fingers to the keyboard. I am usually amazed and humbled by witnessing the others around this cyber place, knowing what they must do to write, and how well they do it. Puts me right in the shade, folks.
And since there is more to life than the Macintosh, what is it that is so important about the Mac? How is it that the Mac seems more important than things we all know are the most important things in life?
The Mac is important to people because of all the other things that are important in their life.
People have their dreams and desires. People have hopes and they make plans for their lives. Every one of us are like this, and for those of us who use a Macintosh, we somehow come to believe that the Mac touches all of these things in life that are so vital to us.
How is this so?
First of all, it is not the machine, nor is it the software or even the OS that causes the Mac to have such a profound effect on the people who use it. I am talking about something much more elemental than silicone, switches and circuits, or bits and bytes here.
The profound secret of the Mac is discovered within the people who use it.
Humphrey Bogart’s character, in the “Maltese Falcon,” said it so well when he was asked what the little statue was all about. He said, “Its the stuff dreams are made of.” So strange that we give an inanimate object such qualities. But he was right, wasn’t he?
For all of us, everywhere, no matter our birthplace, our language, our culture, there is within us a lust for freedom, and a love of personal liberty. There is also a need to be empowered. There is a single place we have all these things. This is is the place of our dreams.
There is an ideal world we dream of, where others are open-minded and we are give permission to be creative. Dreams are the place where we fly, and where we travel over the landscape swiftly and powerfully. Dreams are the place where wonderful and beautiful people live, and where they know us as equals, know us deeply, and where they freely share life and love with us.
Our dreams are peopled with these kinds of individuals. You know what I mean. In dreams people are better than they are. Somehow, in our dreams we and others have a power that is suppressed in reality and this makes our dreams dearer to us.
The Mac touches this stuff of our dreams, doesn’t it? Think about it.
We suddenly have a sweet, secret feeling, as we sit before a monitor, and as we are being busy inside the interface of a Macintosh. Here is a familiar power, and an effortless ease of doing things, wrapped in an environment of permissiveness that is very much how our dreams are. Most people might never put this into words, but this is the key to what the Mac really is.
Forget the hype about processor speed, and the size of the hard drive your Mac has. Never mind about the kind or the quality of the various applications that are available on the Mac. Even the very first Macintosh 512K had the ability to connect us with our very best dreams. People from the beginning were powerful on the Macintosh with just a couple of meager little apps on some floppies. The Mac gave wonderful power to those who lacked it before.
You know that special feeling of power, don’t you. You run in your dreams. You fly, and you go places, and you do things that you might not dare to do in daylight. But you can do some of these things on your Mac, in the daylight, in front of others, for you know you have permission. You know you own the freedom to do these things, and that is very powerful. For some people, the Mac is the first taste of liberty that they ever had outside of their dreams.
We have said it before, and it is true. The Mac is not about powerful computing, or cool and colorful appliances. It is about people. People who are enabled and empowered. People who are set free and given permission to be so much more than they might have imagined, or even allowed themselves to be. Somehow, people who use the Mac understand this.
The Mac is the stuff dreams are made of.
No wonder people love their Macintosh computer, to the perplexity of others who use other kinds of computers, and who perhaps have never had such dreams.
What do you think? Share your thoughts about this.
Write me, and thanks for your time.
Roger Born
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