Thanks for giving me the biggest email feedback in my short career
as the UK correspondent for the ever so fascinating and brilliantly
conceived site lowendmac.com, whose
financially troubles seem fortunately over, hopefully due to the
generous amounts of money that some of the authors spend on keeping
this insanely great meeting place of the Mac community in
existence.
Where else would you be able to read Charles W. "political animal"
Moore's ramblings on Apple and
politics, inspired by no one else but a humble if a bit dim doctor
from the Scottish westcoast. Charles, I feel truly honoured.
But back to your emails: I obviously hit a soft spot with my last
article, because 43 of you wanted to tell me all about your political
allegiance, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, and politics in general.
About 85 percent of the responses came from conservatives trying to
set the record straight, there were a couple of left leaning
responses, two libertarians, and one socialist.
Almost everybody reminded me of that the fact that Rush Limbaugh
(bless him) is a vivid (or livid?) Mac Evangelist and that George "so
the polar caps will melt - what do I care about Scotland?" W. Bush
apparently uses a Lombard
PowerBook. Well, come on: Can you really see him try to use
Linux?
Some responses were a bit hostile, stating that I allegedly
declared all Mac users to be lefties/liberals, but if you read
my last article again, I actually
didn't: I used the Apple-friendly bias in left-leaning British
broadsheets to speculate about the political tendencies of Mac users
in the U.S., okay? So please, chaps: Easy with the vitriol in your
email.
I have to admit that the amount of responses from conservative
Macionados surprised me: where all the lefties out there not too
bothered (or too busy) to write, or is LowEndMac.com some kind of
secret Conservative Mac Portal, only known by the initiated? Anyway,
here's a little excerpt from some of your emails:
Frank obviously wanted to cheer me up:
In regards to your article on lefties at Low End Mac. I don't
know if my politics or views on the environment have anything to
due with my devotion to the Mac. I am, on the other hand, left
handed. :)
Jeffrey writes:
Furthermore, many of the original creators of Apple and the
Mac were part of the 60s-70s counter culture and hacking.
According to Guy Kawasaki most of the original Mac team was too
young to have participated in the 60s Civil Rights struggle and
the anti-war movement, but they were old enough to have been
stamped by the political consciousness of that period. They felt
very strongly that creating the Mac was their Vietnam and their
Civil Rights struggle, their contribution to the Revolution.
Tristram goes for the education factor:
Thus, although it might be amusing if media bias fell along
party lines, I think that it has more to do with education level
and readership. Mac people are smarter and read papers that are
better-written. As for the question of why the better-written
papers are considered liberal, I've got no answer.
Birgit from Germany obviously has a mean boyfriend:
Apple users are certainly more creative than Windozers (I am a
Windoze user, and I even admit it), but I don't think that the
politically left are particularly stronger on the Apple front than
anywhere else. In fact, there are millions and millions of lefties
among Windozers. ;-) Maybe you should do your empirical research
the other way 'round: Search for the (few left) left wingers in
Britain, then ask them whether they use Apple or Windoze
and then you'll probably be able to prove your point!
(Currently Windozer but being harassed frequently by Mac-maniac
boyfriend to change sides. ;-)
Modding Your Old Mac to Make It More Useful, Phil Herlihy, The Usefulness Equation, 10.09.
If your old Mac is too slow, too noisy, too plain looking, or has too little room for expansion, you might want to mod it.
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