Discussing why Windows is more male and Mac is more female:
Well, Windows in non-intuitive…counter-intuitive, sometimes. But it’s so MALE to just go buy a Windows PC system and waste a bunch of time learning bogus commands and reading a thousand dialog boxes every time you want to change a point size or whatever…MEN are just used to sitting there, taking orders, executing needless commands, and feeling like they got such a good deal because they saved $200. WOMEN crave efficiency, elegance…the Mac lets them move within their digital universe exactly as they’d like, without cluttering up their human memory banks. I think the reason why so many women used to feel like they didn’t “understand computers” was because PCs are so brain-dead…the Macintosh is responsible for upping not only the earning potential of women but also the feeling of mastering technology, which they get told is impossible for them. I was always told that.
– Karla speaking to Daniel, Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland
Good quote – good book too, I seem to remember.
I liked the bit about them eating only flat food!
I’m only just half way through it and I love it. It’s amazing how it seems Coupland had a preety accurate vision on what the future was going to be like, reading it almost 15 years later.
I’ve booked tickets to see him speak at the Edinburgh Inernational Book Festival. Am really looking forward to it!
I lurk about blogs but usually remain quiet however the Mac/PC debate just rolls on and on and its getting a little tired. I didn’t turn on a computer till late on in my career and I am not a natural. I knew I wanted to make work on the damn things because computers enable people to do interesting stuff.
To turn a preference for Mac verses PC into gender debate smacks horribly of Grazia magazine and doesn’t help women to be taken seriously within a largely male industry (rm* is two women intermittently employing any gender of freelancer available to make animation and digital content). At the end of the day they are machines they have motherboards and hard drive and buttons that do same thing more or less.
I suspect their differences are contrived by their developers just to emphasise their difference. Each has their strength and weakness. I promote being digitally bi-lingual. At rm* we need and use both. The only human rather than gender behaviour they exhibit is when with mutual stubbornness they won’t communicate with each other…. then, as I would in human world I recommend defenestration.
I’d say the quote is more about how men and women think versus being a sexist application and demeaning women. If anything it’s a copliment versus a negative association.
I have used both macs & pc’s for the majority of my life and do prefer one over the other. Being ambidextrious is important for digital people & freelancers who don’t always use their own machines as you never know what you’ll end up on.
The quote struck me because it was written over 15 years ago and could have easily been written today.