Apple Snobs Can Cock Off

Firstly, I feel I have to clarify. As with most of the rants I aim at a specific portion of the public, I need to clarify that this is not a rant at Apple users in general, nor is it a knock on Apple as a business. This rant is very specifically tailored to those people I call "Apple snobs", or those who believe that just because Apple make a product, that inevitably makes it better than anything anyone else can do.

I present to you Exhibit A:

The Facebook group "Anything your PC can do, my Mac can do better." This group represents exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. This group professes the message mentioned in the group name. Now, I'm not going to mention games, simply because it's been mentioned to death. Macs don't play many games, this much we know. Having said that, with some of the crap that comes out nowadays, you'd be forgiven for thinking occasionally that Mac users might just be getting a half-decent deal, even if they pay over the odds for their games.

Anyway, you'd think that a group like this would be celebrating and championing the cause of Mac users and Apple products, and for the most part this is absolutely spot-on. However, you would THINK that a third of the discussion threads on the front page wouldn't be full of technical errors and problems people were having with Macs. I mean, you would THINK that if fifty-three thousand self-righteous twats saw fit to add themselves to such an obnoxious group, there wouldn't be any problems with Macs at all, right? I mean, for fuck's sake, I know three people who own a Mac, and two of those three had problems in the first THREE FUCKING MONTHS! That's a failure rate of 66% among the three people I know, almost as bad as my recent luck with Xbox 360s. A second error in the space of a week after a repair? Sort it the fuck out, Microsoft.



But I digress. The Mac superiority complex doesn't end there, either. When it comes to purchasing the damn thing in the first place, there's the Apple Store to contend with. I swear, if I get another conversation like this in an Apple Store, I'm going to kick a badger across the face:
"Can I help you with anything?"
"No, I'm just browsing thanks."
"Oh". *Saunters off disinterestedly*.

I mean, really? At least attempt the sale, I'm not just there to waste your time. Truth be told, I'd love a Mac, it'd make a few things significantly easier for me. However, I don't feel that convenience is worth forking out the extra £1000 necessary to enjoy the Mac experience to the standard I want.

I'll give you an example. The Apple iMac MB952B/A (there'll be a link in a minute, don't panic!) is somewhere in the region of the kind of specification I'd like. However, let's run this specification by the list that I ended up putting into my fabled "Rig O' Win".

MAC: 2.66GHz Dual-core Intel. ROW: Quad-core 2.41GHz AMD.
MAC: 4GB DDR3 RAM. ROW: 4GB DDR2 RAM.
MAC: 1TB HDD ROW: 500GB HDD.
MAC: 512MB Graphics Card. ROW: 512MB Graphics Card.
And so the list goes on.

Now, you'll notice a trend here: For the most part, the Mac just edges out my ROW with a slight increase on a few bits, but for the most part the ROW holds its own. Now, how much price difference do you think there is between the two? Bearing in mind I built the ROW myself, with parts salvaged from a meteorite from Planet Win. Alright, fine, so that's all lies.

I bought it from Aria, and Planet Win is not a planet at all, but a site named E14. Fair enough, the screen's 27" on the Mac, which is pretty cool, but I have a 22" screen which does me fine, so I'm totally set for screen size. Besides which, since the tower for my rig is built separate, and the computer's not built into the monitor, it doesn't mean that the entire computer's fucked necessarily if something goes wrong.

Anyway, the price difference can be illustrated Here, where you find that the Mac retails for an RRP of £1869.99. My Rig O' Win? £578.22. Now, fine, my rig does crash occasionally, but for less than a third of the price it's well worth the price. Plus it runs Crysis. Good enough.



Another thing that caught my eye in this Facebook group was a topic about how awesome the iPad was going to be, and how everyone who didn't think so was an idiot. What made me laugh, first of all, about this discussion thread, was how the guy responded to someone who made some valid points about how it wouldn't be awesome. He was one of those people who says "Everything I say is true and absolute! Disagree? That's your opinion" and doesn't get the irony.

Newsfalsh: The iPad isn't going to change the world. What it is, this iPad, is essentially a glorified iPod Touch with a much larger screen. You know how Nintendo have released the DSi XL, which is just a chunkier version of the DSi? It's the same premise. True, the iPad will benefit from a slightly improved processor and probably some larger storage memory, but you can't make phone calls on it, like the iPhone, and it doesn't come bundled with an Operating System, like a Tablet PC. Fine, eventually there'll probably be an app that'll do this stuff, but in the meantime you'll be paying for a largely useless slab of electronics. For example, for a similar price to the projected price of the iPad, you can pick up the Alienware M11X laptop. A sexy piece of kit, I'm sure you'll agree. Plus it'll run an OS and games.



And who the hell decided iTunes and iPods were the way forward? Don't get me wrong, again, I use iTunes and I have an iPod. In fact, I've had two in the space of five years. Not out of choice, by the way. My first iPod developed problems after two years, showing a sad little face with the look of death upon it. I took this as a bad sign, and a quick visit to the iPod home page confirmed my fears. Off I went, then, to purchase a new one. At £239 for an 80GB video iPod, the purchase was a good deal at the time. Of course, a month later they released an iPod at twice the size for the same price, but you know, musn't grumble.

Now, I like iTunes, but they've got some arse-backwards rules. For instance, I bought a shitload of music from iTunes before they took off the DRM after a massive backlash from fans like myself who wanted to be able to back up their legally purchased music without having limits imposed on it. Now, regardless of your feelings towards DRM (or Digital Rights Management for those who aren't acronym-savvy), it's doubtlessly apparent that stuff you purchase should be yours to do with as you please. Incidentally, this isn't just the fault of iTunes, as apparently it's technically illegal to rip music from CDs you own. Arse-backwards, thy name is piracy regulations.

Now, once they changed the DRM rules, everything you purchase on iTunes now comes with no DRM attached, leaving you free to make mp3 copies of everything you buy, with iTunes finally giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not going to be Pirate McArsehole and distribute absolutely everything over file-sharing. Incidentally, a bit of trivia for you: Pirate McArsehole was among the character names rejected for Dickass DM.

So you would think, wouldn't you, that the new iTunes rules would apply to the stuff I purchased before the rule came into effect? Wrong, motherfucker. Apparently it'll cost me sixty-five pounds to update all the songs I've previously purchased. How crap is that? Admittedly, that's about three hundred quid's worth of music, and I'm sure other people have spent more, but that's three hundred quid I could've spent on other things that didn't require DRM faffing. Like a couple of spare 360s for the inevitable downfall of mine.



I know I keep on, but it still hurts, ok?

My name's Robert Wade, I'm a blogger, and I cut together everything you see here on the Rig O' Win.

Cock off, Apple snobs. Cock off.

---

In the summer of 1812, before the Oprichniki came to the help of Mother Russia in her fight against Napoleon, one of their number overheard a conversation between his master, Zmyeevich, and another. He learned of a feud, an unholy grievance between Zmyeevich and the rulers of Russia, that began a century earlier at the time of Peter the Great.

Aleksandr made a silent promise to the Lord. God would deliver him - would deliver Russia - and he would make Russia into the country that the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from the destruction that wasteth at noonday, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness - the terror by night...1825.

Russia has been at peace for a decade.

Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is calm. The French have been defeated, as have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside, and then against, all those years before. His duty is still to his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but today the enemy is merely human.

However, the tsar himself knows he can never be at peace. He is well aware of the uprising fermenting within his own army, but his true fear is of something far more terrible - something that threatens to bring damnation upon him, his family and his country. Aleksandr cannot forget a promise: a promise sealed in blood...and broken a hundred years before.

Now the victim of the Romanovs' betrayal has returned to demand what is his. The knowledge chills Aleksandr's very soul. And for Aleksei, it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later.

Thanks to our friends at Bantam Press, we've got three copies of Jasper Kent's Thirteen Years Later and the first installment, Twelve, to give away! For your chance of winning one, send us an e-mail to twelvegiveaway@rocketmail.com with your name and postal address before midday on Monday 5th April (UK time). The first three names drawn out of the electronic hat will win a free copy of each!