As you might know by now, my Internet friend and fellow legal marketer Larry Bodine has caused a major brouhaha by first switching to a Mac computer and then declaring it to be inadequate in Law Technology News. Now he's getting hate mail and obscene late night phone messages. LOTS of hate mail. In fact, some conspiracy theorists have slyly suggested that Larry wrote what he did in order to drive traffic to his blog. I don't believe it, but if so, he certainly succeeded. I have stayed out of the fray, mostly because I don't much give a damn what computer anyone other than me uses, but here are my thoughts:
1. I am a Mac fan and have used them exclusively since the late 1980's. I have 10 Macs in my office. Just for fun...here's my first Mac, the SE20. It had one megabyte of
RAM, a 20-megabyte hard drive, and a 9-inch black & white monitor.
This was hot stuff in 1989 for use in something called "desktop
publishing."
2. There is a word, and a behavior, that has fallen into disuse: comity. I'd like to see it in modern American politics, I'd like to see it in modern American life in general, and I'd like to see it in the behavior of Mac fans.
3. Trying to swim in another culture can be enormously frustrating. I lived in France for a while, and let me tell you, when I first moved there, I had a massive headache every night. Why won't they speak slower? Why won't they serve me lunch at 3 p.m.? Why won't they bag the groceries? Why can't I buy an aspirin in a supermarket (you have to go to a pharmacy)? Why is some key employee group (mail carriers, teachers, farmers, air traffic controllers, railway workers, etc.) always on strike? And on and on. As a longtime user of Microsoft Word, I once tried to use WordPerfect. My head almost imploded. Why won't it work like Word? I suspect that, as a lifetime PC user, Larry's attempted switch to Mac had the same effect on him. He was undergoing culture shock.
4. Lawyers, and those who work in the legal field, are impatient. I don't know Larry well enough to comment on his psychology, but I don't think I would go too far afield to guess that he is a classic Type A, quick-start. One of the most successful features on the Smart Marketing website is a big red button on the home page that says "Click if you're impatient." Since I can track what page our website inquiries come from, I can tell you that we get more from that "Impatient" button than any other locus. I suspect Larry tried to do everything on a Mac (lured by the machine's reputation for intuitive use — Mac users are famous for ignoring manuals), became quickly frustrated, and vented his frustration in public, enraging the legions of Mac fanatics.
5. Despite my great love for Macs, I have had two difficult experiences
with my new MacBook, as documented in the Minneapolis Pioneer Press. The first one had to be sent back because of
frequent, unexplained shutdowns. The second had to be repaired because
of a bad wireless card. I shrugged, because I love Macs, and because I
figure some of it was my fault for not waiting for the second
generation of a new product (you see, I'm impatient, too). But it was
very frustrating and inconvenient nonetheless. Apple is not perfect,
and even Mac lovers can have bad experiences with Macs.
6.
Professional developers know that the weakest link in the use of
computers is the user. As Lee Trevino said about golf: It's not the
bow, and not the arrow, it's the Indian (speaking of non-PC, as in
politically correct, Trevino was speaking before the adoption of the
term "Native American").
7. It can be frustrating (that word
again!) for a Mac fan living in a PC world. I had to buy two PCs for
our website developers to use in creating websites for our clients,
because somewhere around 90 percent of all computer users are PC-users
and we had to be sure that the websites would be, in appearance and
functionality, PC-compatible. Professional marketers know that the best product doesn't always win.
Like yourself, very few people give a damn what computer anyone other than they use. Furthermore, very few people give a damn that Larry Bodine found his Mac "inadequate". The vast majority of comments on Larry Bodine's blog are regarding the many factual errors he made in describing the Mac platform.
According to Larry Bodine's blog he is a technolawyer, a technology adviser and a journalist. That a person with this kind of background published an error-ridden article about Macs in LegalTechnology, a respectable publication, is obviously too much for many Mac users to accept without protest.
You have not mentioned this fact---people are mostly protesting his factual errors---at all in your post here. How is it that you fail to see this? Are you purposely ignoring the facts in order to defend a friend?
Posted by: Kevin S. | October 27, 2006 at 05:03 AM