think same

There was, in the golden days of yore, a print advertisement campaign designed with the sole purpose of asserting that Apple still existed. Frugally designed, it featured, on a white background, assorted genii and the line "Think different". Nevermind the poor grammar, the line captured the mood at Apple at the time. They were the odd man out, fighting for their life in a market where their share was negligible. Simply by using a Mac, you were different.

Amazing what difference ten years can make. These days, Apple is the epitome of hip, everyone is in, drooling, buying, cuing up to get the latest gadgets. Tomorrow in the evening, shortly after six o'clock, the iPhone will go on sale in the UK. This afternoon already, devout Macolytes pitched their tents on Regent's St. to be the first tomorrow. The line will grow, thousands will want to be the same.

Similar craziness could be observed two weeks earlier when Leopard was unveiled, the fifth revision of Mac OSX. Back then also, people waited long hours to get their hands on software they could have ordered on the web and had delivered for free to their door just a bit later. I'm thinking, was the previous version really so atrocious and unusable that one can't wait a few extra days to have it upgraded?

The Apple lemmings aren't thinking, though. They're just following the call of the marketing department, getting high on announcements of Apple innovations like computers running on Intel chips, scroll mice (Whoa, why didn't anyone come up with that before?), shock-detecting hard-drives, and, just unveiled, multiple virtual desktops. I'm speechless.

I'm also the wrong person to poke fun. The day Leopard came out I had a chat with our IT guy. We prepared an order that went out after the weekend, and now I'm in possession (though not the proud owner) of a MacBook Pro. For the inveterate Mac hater that I am, this is an event so seminal it warrants two blog entries (in case you were wondering). But rest assured, I have survived six years of Mormonism with my soul intact. I will certainly not convert to Maconism. Same never appealed to me.