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.
My ‘computer’ came in a big wooden crate labeled ‘Acme Computer Company’ and seems to be made mostly of corrigated sheet metal. It runs on kerosine and as long as I keep the wick trimmed, everything’s fine and I can actually rite letters like this. I subsist mostly on Ritz Crackers and and half decent bourbon. Looking closely, I don’t see the word “Mac’ anywhere on this thing….
When was that? The Pleistocene Epoch, as in the 1970s?
Macolyte all the way! I always say, “Once you go MAC you can’t go back!”. BTW I will need to google “Moscow Mule” myself…assuming it’s a drink….
Maybe we need to have a Friday, Sloshed Friday featuring the Moscow Mule–a treat for our Mac readers.
We’ve had Macs since 1988, but we were graphic designers back then. All of our daughter’s art school friends have Macs. Maybe the 10% has to do with home computers, that businesses use PCs, which often seem to be causing them system problems, but that may skew the numbers. At a glance, the differences between the food choices are class differences, probably because Macs cost more money.
Katie, the class difference concept is interesting. Macs do cost so much more. I wonder if this chart would hold true if they polled iPad and iPad users, as they cost so much less.