The Cult of Mac
March 2005

Thanks to Apple's evangelical fans, it's hard to imagine anyone using a Windows PC to undertake anything more creative than jotting down the grocery list.

When semiconductor pioneer Gordon Moore predicted the exponential growth of computer power in 1965, he little imagined the way his now-famous law would be interpreted by one tiny but resolute group of future computer users: Mac fans. Connected to their machines like toddlers to teddy bears, some worshippers at the Altar of Apple would sooner spend $25,000 retrofitting an aging but beloved PowerBook 2400 with the OS X operating system, or give a defunct 128K Macintosh second wind as a novelty goldfish tank, than accept the popularly-held belief that a computer becomes obsolete the moment it’s off the production line. 

“The Mac is more than a computer,” writes Wired News columnist and self-proclaimed Apple nut Leander Kahney in The Cult Of Mac. “It's a community, an identity, a church.” Apple represents less than 2% of worldwide computer sales, but Kahney’s book reveals an alternate universe, one in which Mac enthusiasts have the Apple corporate logo tattooed to their buttocks, revere CEO Steve Jobs as a deity, and spend their leisure time at the local CompUSA trying to persuade customers to ditch their Sony Vaios for iMac G5s.

Thanks to Apple’s evangelical fan-base, not to mention its clever marketing campaigns, these days it’s hard to imagine anyone using a Windows PC to undertake anything more creative than jotting down the weekly grocery list. But while Kahney’s book is packed with iPopping anecdotes illustrating the myriad ways Mac fans “Think Different,” the author seldom digs below the interface of basic reportage to explore whether members of the Cult of Mac truly Are Different to zealots offering libations at the Temples of Harley Davidson or Nike.

THE CULT OF MAC

BY LEANDER KAHNEY

NO STARCH PRESS, SAN FRANCISCO, 2004

ISBN 1-886411-83-2