Ever since the dawn of personal computing, which can be irrefutably carbon-dated to the mid-1980s, there’s been a fierce Us vs. Them tribal mentality to Mac and PC folks. I’d like it to be known that from the bulky-beige-box beginning, I’ve been an out and proud Macolyte. The very first computer I ever worked on? An original Macintosh 128K with a vision-destroying 9-inch monochrome monitor. (Embarrassingly, I learned how to use it from a trio of kids—all under the age of 10.)
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We Macolytes were set to dominate the world, as the famous “Why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’” commercial promised. Then financial shenanigans, treachery, and corporate greed in the computer industry hobbled Macintosh, and we followers—always devout, ever iconoclastic—were marginalized to design firms and ad agencies’ art departments by a sniggering rabble of front-office PC users.
But we hung on, licking our wounds, purposefully carving out a distinctive personality for ourselves as cool, hip, not-your-Bill-Gates computer geeks. And in doing so, we made computing drop-dead sexy, if only for 10 percent of the population. Exhibit A:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNnX6XRQBec
Lo, these 25 years, the world has shaken out into two distinctive self-described and, if the folks at Hunch.com are to be trusted, readily recognizable camps of Mac and PC people. A website that finds patterns among users, Hunch tallied more than 80 million responses to questions designed to uncover interesting traits about the computing Us and Thems. They delved into everything from personality to media usage to food preferences, which you’ll find herewith.
Mac vs. PC Users at the Table
Now, I’m not claiming any kind of culinary superiority over my PC-hugging friends—after all, like them, I have yet to find an animal protein I don’t like, and, truth be told, I’m just as apt to reach for a tunny fish melt (as I used to call it as a kid) as I am to scarf down a bánh mi. (Don’t know what it is? Well, look it up on your Dell, Mr. Gates.) But what I will cop to, as my middle-age spread sprawls into a middle-age buffet, is that I like the notion of myself as a twenty-something, hoodie-wearing hipster huddled over a phenomenal Côte du Rhône, reenacting the latest episode of “The Colbert Report” with my even cooler friends. I hold on to the image of me debating the significance of Queeque in Moby Dick while knocking back Moscow mules, even though I don’t know what the hell they are. My MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad make me feel young. And that, perhaps, is the greatest sustenance Macintosh has ever afforded me.
To see the whole Hunch report, click here.
So what about you? Are you a Macolyte or PCer? And how accurate are the distinctions? Come on, you can tell us below.
Having been a Mac user for decades I could not agree more with this article and indeed (without trying to hurt anyone’s feelings) I DO notice a difference and pattern in tastes and lifestyles. Due to my profession I was always lucky to work on a Mac (PC, too, although mainly for testing purposes), while others at the office were on PCs. Now working for an University, we are all on Macs and never hear all the horrendous problems with their machines as with PCs. Each time I do travel to headquarters, indeed more than half of the staff is vegetarian. Now, as much as you David, I love meat, even though I could pass it as long as I could be a pescatarian.
Yeah, my PC friends never understand why I don’t fear viruses.
I’m pretty much on that dotted line down the middle of the table, David. Except that this PCer is definitely not vegetarian.
Dan, do you sup from both sides of the chart?
You know, I look at everything on that chart and it all has its place. That place would be on my table, at some point, during almost any given month… even the vegetables and “white” Zin!
I really don’t have a partiality with computers either, it’s just that when all this began, all the folks I knew had PCs. If my computing ways hold true to my food ways, I’ll eventually end up with a Mac to join my PC.
So what you’re saying is you’re computationally nonpartisan?
That’s right… and I’m non-partition, too! Never saw the sense in it.
…but I like gimlets and Cab, does that count?
What are you, a Unix person?