Having worked for so long on a Macintosh, a far superior (and, admittedly, slightly more expensive) computer, I have been spoiled; and have lost touch with you afflicted proletarians, toiling under the grim and unforgiving aegis of the Microsoft Death Star.
It is easy for us, the enlightened and blessed minority, to forget what its like out there for the oppressed masses, cringing virtually every moment of your waking lives under Microsoft's cruel lash of conformity and enforced dysfunction.
Its not your fault: with no chance to compare that which is imposed by your Dark Overlords with that which is freely chosenthe dull and monochrome of Windows versus the full spectrum of freedom, light and color that is the Machow are you to know any different? Totalitarian regimes of every age have kept their subjects in the dark, shut off from any alternative way of being.
(Windows is like the earliest Ford automobiles: you can have any operating system you want, as long as its bleak.)
I didnt want to feel superior. I have always been an enemy of class distinctions, evenno, especially!in an instance like this, when I am comfortably ensconced in the bosom of the advantaged stratum. To the ramparts! Side by side with our disadvantaged brethren!
Its not as if your cruel masters in Redmond havent made valiant efforts to at least make their flagship product SEEM friendly and, well, sensibleeven sort of comparable!
Look how closely (if clumsily) the desktop on your computer has impersonated the one on mine: drop-down menuscheck; mouse and pointercheck; desktop iconscheck.
These impersonations have been cleverly instituted and insidiously established by the faceless operatives of the Dark Sidegradually, with as little fanfare as possible, so that even the most observant of observers might easily forget, by and by, where those innovations originated; and might come to concur with the Bill Gates character in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley that all ideas, and especially the ones that have accumulated to make up the design of my desktop (and later, yours) are just out there somewherea part of the atmosphere we all breatheand belong, therefore, to everyone, and thus to no one.
Blizzards of legal action have been triggered by the imitation of such desktop items as the Macintosh trash can (on a Windows desktop, the greener-than-thou recycle bin); and the switch of the default orientation of external drives, new files and the like from the right side of the desktop (Macintosh) to the left (Windows). Whoa! I bet nobody saw that coming. Whatever do you mean? Thats COMPLETELY different and therefore original!
The desktop, by the way, is itself an innovation of the Mac, adopted elsewhere in due course.
But lets not split more hairs.
Here we have scratched at the surface, literallythe part of the computer we all see every day. Lets not carry on and dissect the whole of itincluding whats under the hoodand worry over who developed what, and who borrowed from whom. I think that pattern has already been established. To go further can only engender ill feelings.
Yours, I mean. Not mine. Im happy with my computer. :)
When his boss is looking, Bailey Stone writes extensively about postcard printing, brochure printing and the use of other printed materials for business promotion and sales. When no one is around he writes on a broad range of subjects. See his companys web site here: http://www.colorprintingcentral.com
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