A Rant on Music and Apple

I recently read an article by Maddox of The Best Page in the Universe.  He made a particularly interesting article recently about Mac users and how annoying he thought they were.  I've been at odds with Maddox on a number of his articles, but he really hit the nail on the head with this one.  It lead to a discussion I had with RJ45, concerning Macs, their sterotypical clientele, and the popular "culture" created by the Mac and its associated products.

Here is a quote from the article:

What is it about Apple that makes its users unable to shut their mouths? Everywhere I go, there's another asshole with a Mac preaching about how much better Macs are than PCs. They regurgitate lines directly from Apple's marketing campaign, like "it just works."

The conversation that we had started with a question I got from a real-live Mac user, which went something like "Well you're a musician, why don't YOU have a Mac?"  This really chafed my ass for a number of reasons, which I will outline in no particular order:

     1.)  The basic assumption that musicians of this era must have a Mac in order to allow their creativity to blossom is just ridiculous. 

I've been working with a PC for all of my creative endeavors, including video editing, audio editing, the mastering and releasing of two self-produced albums, and the production of 3D photos. 

I would venture to say that I've done a higher quality of work on a PC than than a good chunk of the hacks touting the brilliance of the Mac, which leads me to my next point:

     2.)  Every attention-starved idiot with a Mac and a guitar thinks he's a rockstar.  I've heard more Youtube and MySpace wannabe's posting what we in the biz refer to as "absolute tripe" via their oh-so-easy-to-use Garage Band software.

While I don't immediately have a complaint about the ease of use of media software like Garage Band, the fact that it makes a Mac an instant outlet for poorly thought out, poorly written, and poorly sung songs is inexcusable.

The idea behind producing a song worth listening to is letting it flesh out, polishing it up, and making it great BEFORE you commit it to .wav or .mp3.  To its credit, the Mac caters to the instant-gratification, disposable culture that we Americans tend to love so much, but the fact that (thanks to the good ol' Mac) you have to wade through endless bullshit to find something worth listening to on MySpace really defeats the idea of sharing music.  Thanks, Steve Jobs, for giving shitty musicians enough rope to hang themselves, except in this analogy we're all left to smell the festering corpses from now until evermore.  Asshole.

     3.)  It sets a dangerous precedent to exclude artists from the status of "true musician" because they don't have a Mac.

The thing about this is, I bet you that I can list off a few brilliant musicians who were never aided by a Macintosh in order to create their music that has been listened to and enjoyed by millions: