Yes, I Am a Mac Convert, But The Grass Isn't That Much Greener on This Side

I’m man enough to admit it; I’m an Apple convert. For years I considered Mac bashing one of my personal favourite pastimes; “why are their close buttons on the wrong side?”, “Mac’s are overpriced computers for people with too much money and not enough common sense” and “Mac fanboys are the worst types of people” are a few examples of the remarks I’d frequently throw out amongst my PC using mates and oh how we would laugh, laughing at our own narrow minded naivety with hindsight.

When my brother got his MacBook Pro for his university course, my torrents of negative emotion towards the Apple brand became increasingly vocal as I saw that slim lined, thousand pound piece of kit sit on his desk, in my mind, wearing a beret, smoking a cigarette with a limp wrist and scoffing at the masses while drinking a Starbucks latte. It was a jumped up toy from a company who are single handedly trying to bring around the end of any and all freedom with technology (more on that later).

I can’t quite remember how long it took my brother to snap, but when he did it had to have been early September, just before I was set to return to my third year of studies at university. He demanded I sit down and use it to see what it was really like. So I took him up on this empty mind changing threat. I sat there in front of the silver cased travesty, not making a hum nor any other audible sounds to indicate the thing was on, not just hibernating. I touched the track pad and the screen lit up in its high-resolution glory, displaying my brother’s custom made mountain biking picture in a stunning quality. Pfft, anyone with a HD monitor can do that I told myself. He then ran me through the basics of how to use the track pads finger sensors to quickly switch and navigate between all open programs and files. He showed me how quickly it was to install software and smoothly it ran even with a number of CPU intensive programs all in use.

I walked away from the experience like a man who just had a conversation with his dog; I knew that wasn’t supposed to happen, but somehow, it felt right. Back in my room, my laptop, a Dell hand me down that had needed five rounds of repairs in two and a half years including two hard drives replacements, a new screen and two other faults was heaving and spluttering, doing its best to re-enact the last moments of a life long smoker on deaths door. I felt I’d been had. No, I told myself. It’s not this laptops fault you’re having doubts about PC’s. This ‘reliable’ hunk of junk is five years old. It should be tucked up in the loft wrapped in a nice blanket for a few years before its unearthed and given to a young cousin as another hand me down, not being the centre of a students world.

Roll on three months and like clockwork, the Dell died. Again. Luckily days before returning home for Christmas. After a passing conversation about new laptops with my Dad, he mentioned something about “getting a Mac like Kieran”, to which I joked about out loud, but inside, my brain was saying it wasn’t too adverse to the idea.

It was on Christmas day that I felt six again instead of 21. I came downstairs not expecting to see a present under the tree made out to Chris. Wondering what it could be, I ripped open the wrapping paper to see a slim white box with a picture of a MacBook Pro on the front.

Now, I’m a big enough hypocrite after six months of using my Mac to say that I would consider myself a Mac convert. I swear that when I was running through the usually fresh-out-the-box computer spiel before being able to transfer all my files across, in the terms and conditions there was a clause stating that all previously detrimental and defamatory statements said against or about Apple Inc were forgiven upon clicking accept as once the desktop lit up and I surveyed the land before me, I saw it was good.

What was the point in that massively uninteresting digression into how I found myself being baptized into the Church of Apple, I hear you ask yourself. Well dear reader, now that I am a proud Mac user I feel I am able to freely comment on the products and actions of Apple Inc. While some of their products and technologies are genius, others are becoming increasingly similar to those used in science fiction dystopian societies that I am concerned that the freedom we as users have with digital technologies is being decreased and made more standardized by the powers that be.

One of the first reasons I never liked Apple products was their use of digital rights management with iPods. When those revolutionary gizmo’s first came out, I hated them with a passion as iTunes made it impossible to transfer music from friends who used iPod’s as the DRM encryption that was inflicted upon every track forbade its use to be played through anything but iTunes. I detested the thought of a company barring people from listening to music just because they didn’t use their software, and my own MP3 player at the time wasn’t compatible with iTunes formatted tracks.

When the iPad was release I was incredibly skeptical as I didn’t see its revolutionary purpose. We had a stare off, he saw me, and I saw him. Minutes past as I looked him up, down, left and right and after my inspection all I saw before me was an iPhone for people with cataracts who don’t mind not making phone calls. The iPad sparked off the race for tablet PC’s which in my gracious opinion, are a waste of money. All previous Apple products that managed to fill a specific and gapingly obvious hole in a market that had plenty of foldin’ money. The iPod and iPhone both revolutionised the technologies at their respective times, glowing examples of how quickly the science fiction dreams of the past were approaching reality. The iPad did none of these things and instead acted as a cash magnet for Apples Chief Financial Officer.

When the iPad 2 was announced, less than a year after the version 1.0 had been released I couldn’t believe the guile of Apple, to rehash the same product with a slightly faster processor and integrate cameras. The iPad was announced only shortly before the iPhone 4 which managed to integrate two HD cameras. When Apple boasted of how the new iPad would boast a front and back HD camera I felt my stomach turn. Apple must see the world through dollar tinted glasses, looking at their fanbase (which the Apple fiends equate to) and seeing how next they can dangle them by the ankles and shake them to see how much lunch money they have for them today.

The latest move Apple have made to force the bile in my stomach to start churning is their patent application to have software in their next generation iPhone that will be able to stop users at music shows recording copyrighted material of the artists. Really Apple? You want to restrict what people are paying you hundreds of pounds to purchase to keep the multinational conglomerates happy by preventing people to record crappy quality videos of bands playing live? You sicken me. The thought of Apple trying to prevent what people can and cant do with their technology is bring us within spitting range of the dystopian society created by George Orwell over sixty years ago I hinted at earlier. And that scares me.

I don’t feel comfortable living in a world where our choices of what we decide to do and how we do it are monitored, discussed and reviewed by the people who make the devices we are now incapable of living without. A few artists as Tinie Tempah have spoken out against Apple’s implementation of this anti-piracy patent. Mr Tempah said that he considered filming of his shows recorded on phones and uploaded to video streaming sites as YouTube “the biggest form of promo”. Other artists said they are impartial to fans filming, but feel as if it detracts from the experience and the atmosphere people have paid them to provide.

Recording gigs, in my opinion is brilliant as it allows you see how a band you enjoy performs live if they aren’t coming gigging near your area for a while. I distinctly remember being shown a video from a Gallows gig in 2007 and found myself being hypnotised by the uncaged animal that was Frank Carter, prowling the stage before throwing himself into the crowd and climbing up to the rafters of the venue, still singing (if you can call it that).

Seeing that two minute clip made me search the Gallows tour dates and find the next time they played near me, which I went to as was treated by a brutal performance by a phenomenal tight and aggressive live band.

Again, I digress, but I think my digressions speaking volumes on my opposition to how these potentially imposed restrictions will limit how fans of music interact with their bands. All sorts of antics have happened at shows I’ve been to that have been caught on camera so that I can reminisce on later, Fat Mike from NOFX stage invading Bad Religions set at Reading 2010, seeing Santana play Black Magic Woman at the Wembley Arena in 2006 and reliving Them Crooked Vultures secret set from Reading Festival 2009 as I spent most of the set being pushed around by a crowd with everyone at the back wanting to be at the front and everyone at the front wanting to be at the back.

Apple have huge power and influence over the technology we have come to love and imbed into our everyday lives, and as the saying goes, with great power, comes great responsibility. I guess Steve Jobs must’ve not been a Spiderman fan as a kid.

It seems to be a trend that what Apple do, their competitors are soon hot on their heels replicating the technology. As annoying as it is to see scores of white screens being held up at a gig, its part of the experience and I will mourn the day such behaviour is stamped out to appease the CEO’s of corporation who are more interested in saving money than haemorrhaging it, otherwise how will they fund all the expensive bubbly they need to use to make sure everyone has a good time, come the Christmas party.

Heed my words Mr Jobs, while your products are fantastic and work like no others I have used, please, don’t restrict attempt to restrict our leisure time. Don’t put up barriers and treat your consumers like children. Let them do what they want. You are bigger than Sony BMG or EMI. You took on Adobe once and look what happened, you won! Don’t bow to their whims. Let us live and enjoy how we use our digital products. Don’t act like a digital Big Brother unless you start monitoring how long people spend on the toilet or make people ‘disappear’ for uttering passing dismissive remarks about your products. You’re better than that. Or so I tell myself as I knock back a dose diazepam before bed.