I hate to do this, but to all the emailers who told me, in response to this post, that nobody actually believes that there are meaningful sociological differences between PC and Mac users, well….
“She helpfully differentiates between geeks and nerds using the “PC v. Mac” debate. See, Mac users are cool geeks, who are computer-savvy without being seen as lame. PC users are the nerds, the (specifically) white males who can’t dress themselves but still know CBASIC like the back of their hand.”
And that’s from a sociologist!
Mary 
James K 
Jaybird 
Tod Kelly 
Katherine 
Will Truman 
Kyle Cupp 
Burt Likko
{ 4 comments }
Well, sure . . . a sociologist . . . on Jezebel. :-)
As always, you have to account for the well-known 27 % crazification factor, so it’s not surprising that you can find at least some people who purport to believe this. But that doesn’t make it a widespread or especially real thing.
If she said Linux users, or custom-built PC users, and dropped the racial descriptor, she might be almost right.
As it is, most PC users are, and always have been, people who can’t afford a Mac (which start at $599 for a “mini” desktop with no monitor or peripherals included, and at $1299 for a 13.3″ macbook, whereas my comparable-when-new HP notebook with 15.5″ widescreen HD monitor was only about $650), and/or are not geeks or nerds at all really, but ordinary people for whom having a computer is kinda useful for work or whatever, but don’t really get how it works. This actually is a meaningful difference, just not in the way you or your critics really meant.
One of the more amusing moments of the NYU video I ridiculed downblog is at the end where the filmer takes inventory of all of the protesters’ bags, each of which contains an iPod, and then finds a jug of water, and says that the university wouldn’t take the jug of water because “they drink corporate water.” The implication obviously being that bottled water is unacceptably “corporate” in a way that an iPod isn’t. Which requires a pretty good amount of cognitive dissonance.
Apple’s corporate sins are forgiven for being so damn hip…
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