Oh no, here come the proles. The tasteless rabble. The masses who see nothing past the price tag. Of course you can't blame them if their trust funds aren't large enough to provide them with life's very finest—they wouldn't appreciate it anyways - but surely Apple should know better than to serve the poor peasants la crème de la vie on the discount rack at Sears.
There was a time, not long ago, when you could tell everything that mattered about a person by his or her choice of operating system. You would notice a man at the local bistro with his titanium PowerBook and a deep garnet Merlot, and you instinctively knew: here is a man with a certain flair, a je ne sais quoi that makes his company worth your while. You’d wonder if the dark-clad woman striding down the street was your type; then you’d notice tucked under her arm a Duo 2300c, so retro and so delicously delicate, and you’d be smitten, simply devastated. You’d go for coffee along Bedford and the two of you would talk about the next East Village gallery opening, or the latest collection from Philippe Starck, or how Frank Lloyd Wright had ruined American architecture.
And it wasn't just about being able to identify like-minded individuals. As a Mac user yourself, you belonged to an exclusive club of discriminating individuals and creative geniuses. Artists like Picasso. Activists like Teresa Heinz. Revolutionaries like Václav Havel. Writers like Dave Eggers. Actresses like Chloë Sevigny. I remember at a cocktail party in SoHo once—it must have been in the mid-’90s—Susan Sontag, Haruki Murakami and I spent hours debating the merits of Mac OS 8’s new “Platinum” theme. Those were fine times, indeed.
But ever since the introduction of the mass-produced iMac and iBook, it’s been getting harder to distinguish the aesthetically conscious literati from the unwashed masses. It started with the yuppies, and now it’s moving on to state-school students and former Dell buyers. On Bedford Avenue, L Café is gone, replaced by a Baby Gap. Soon it will be smelly Linux enthusiasts (ugh!) popping their pimples over translucent keyboards and lickable widgets.
We Mac users were willing to forgive Apple the iPod’s popularity, but this... if this rumor is true, then this is going too far. Mon Dieu! Apple, why do you want to sell to these poor peasants? These people don’t appreciate beauty and elegance. They don’t understand it. They probably even voted for Bush—all four times.
Mr. Jobs, please establish eligibility requirements for the purchase of a new Mac. A good start would be to disqualify anyone who listens to Ashanti or anything they play on K-Rock. You could also disqualify people who think digital watches are cool, as well as all objectivists. In America, don’t even bother selling to the lower Midwest. Don’t accept applications postmarked from trailer parks. Ban the entire Hilton family.
One way or another, something must be done to preserve the Macintosh community. Anguished but unified, we cry out with one voice. Dam the river, close the gates, pull up the portcullis, keep out the tasteless proles. Please, Mr. Jobs, don’t wait until it’s too late.
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