Mac Users as Urban Hipsters
Not all Mac users are like that. In NASA and JPL press conferences I see quite a few slinging Powerbooks. They give them a way to run all the Unixy spacecraft navigation stuff while being able to play WarCraft or Microsoft Word.
There are even beany-wearing alpha geeks who run Macs. Hell, when Mitnick got off probation his buddy Woz gave him a Powerbook. I wouldn’t see him hanging around with people like that.
I’m a PHP programmer, branching out into Python and Ruby on Rails. I use a Powerbook because I can do everything I want on it. I have a Mac Mini running Apache and PHP and CUPS (and Ruby on Rails and TurboGears) for WebDAV and beta testing and print serving. I’m not “cool.” I don’t use it because I’m “easily swayed by advertising.” I’ve been a Mac user since before they were ‘beleaguered.’ I use it because it works. It works and it gets out of my way. The things I want to fiddle with, I can fiddle with. I don’t have to worry about finding an FTP client, for example, that’s not riddled with spyware or needs to buy a license or needs me to compile it or patch my kernel before using it.
And not only that, but the software that is available for Macs is really awesome. The stuff coming out of shareware producers like Omni Group or Ambrosia is just as good as any of the apps you’re paying similar prices for at Best Buy. They’re just on the net. Macs exemplify the ‘long tail’ phenomenon; there aren’t many of them, but there is a demand that needs to be satisfied, and can only be satisfied in a cost-effective manner using the Internet. Duplicating and distributing software in the conventional way just isn’t practical.