i grew up on macs...well, after the
kaypro, that is. and an interesting (useless) fact about kaypro is that in 1983 they were the 5th largest PC manufacturing company in the world. anyways, my school had macs when i was little because our headmaster was john couch, of
old apple "lisa" fame. i learned what a computer could do by working on macs...and when i say "what a computer could do", i mean that i learned how to adequately disguise my game playing when in typing class...i mean LoadRunner class...i mean typing class. i liked macs, but in the same way that a child who was only ever tasted orange soda likes orange soda. then i met the PC and began to learn its ways. as i forayed into the realm of the PC i simultaneously left the world of mac behind. not because it was a bad world, but because i had just found cream soda and the orange no longer held my attention. i became more and more comfortable with the PC and soon found little use for my mac skillz. that was probably sometime in the vicinity of 1993 or so. anyways, sometime between then and now, mac...oh, sorry...apple became this looming bastion of overpriced snobbery. i bought my current
mp3 player many moons ago for just under $200 dollars and have since purchased a 40gb hard drive to upgrade it...and i'm still well under the price of a small, shiny, white apple item that holds a fifth of the music that mine does.
so where am i going with this? frankly, i'm not sure. i suppose it's all been historical data in support of this: apple...macs...whatever, are nice machines, but they cost too much and they cater to an ethos that i tend to find snobby, in the same way that Hummers cater to an ethos that i find snobby, just in a more southern, "i can crush you" sort of way. you don't necessarily buy a mac/ipod to be "all that you can be" when it comes to computers/music players. you buy it because it's white and it has a picture of an apple on it.
so, by now, i think that i have adequately proven to you that i used to really dig macs and now, while i have tremendous respect for the machines themselves, i despise them for all they stand for. and that leads me to this singular question that irks me to no end. if macs and PC's are really on the same playing field performance-wise, then why can't windows put out a music player that has visualizations that look better than
Lite-Brite animations? don't you see, windows? i want to like you more. you had me at hello...but iTunes is prettier than you are. their visualizations are smooth...flowing...entrancing. i don't know if "entrancing" is even a word, but iTunes has me talkin' jibberish. now, i know what you'll say. "visualizations have no bearing on a music player's performance, so why do you care?" yes, true...and i honestly don't really care. i'm not in the habit of zoning out to "Alchemy", on its random setting, as it does its best to graphically display the outpourings of Yani. nor is this slight discrepancy going to sway me into buying a mac. but it seems like windows should care. shouldn't they want to impress me into staying with them rather than count on me to be like the old man in Shawshank Redemption who got so used to the prison that he was afraid of freedom?
ok, it's late and i can't believe i wrote this entire, inane post to come to the conclusion that iTunes looks better than WMP10. i just started typing, and the whole thing just seemed to dredge up old feelings i had for mac. we go way back, you know. it's like an old friend that i know is decent...but things have happened between us and i just can't talk to them anymore. sad.
console me, microsoft.
