Yes, it's been done. Yes, there is search. I know all about that. I wanna write about some of that, but threads older than 5 months or so are all archived, so here I go.

First off,let me say that I am basically fully geekified. Within my field of vision while writing this are my:
iBook (600Mhz 16VRAM)
iMac (350MHz BlueBerry slot-load, posting from this)
Dell Optiplex GX1 (P-II 400MHz, DVD-ROM, DualLayer DVD-burner)
ViewSonic OptiQuest monitor for above
Gateway celerystick mini-tower
Compaq Presario K6 box
Generic K6-2 boxen x 2
Toshiba Satellite P-I laptop
Apple Mac Quadra 605 (the feets Macs rule, woo!)
Mac 512k
Assorted bits and parts in various piles and stacks.

And an Apple PowerCD hooked to a hi-fi playing Faith No More... I had Kraftwerk/Computer World on earlier.

So what? Well, I like computers. A lot. So what I say about Apple is based largely on experience using computers from a Commodore 64, an old Epson 8088 clone, and my first Mac SE up to much more than that super short list I began with.

So why do I like my iBook and Imac so much more than even my PCs running FreeBSD or a flavor of Linux? Because I want to dosomething, it's probably been reduced to either an operation so simple I can figure out where to do what with-in seconds or if I have to work to find how it's done, it seems painfully obvious that I should have known hw to do it in the first place. Simplicity. Cayse likes things that are simple and clean. Sure, there might be a layer of cruft below the surface (ever take apart the layers of a shoe, for instance?) but if it fits, wear the sucker. Apples post-Woz philosphy is simplicity for the end user. And Apple has a far shorter learning curve with it's very standard layout and interface that is easy to grasp and get to work. If you want to get something done, boot up then one click on the dock icon for TextEdit and you can begin drafting a new story. Of the many OSs I've worked with over the years, going from ROM BASIC monitors though Amiga OS 1.2-3.0 through DOS/Win 5.0/3.1-Win2k/XP and Mac OS 6 through X.2 and all the various BSD/Linux versions back to Slackware 3.2 and NetBSD 1.4, Mac OS X is truely easy to use yet it retains that underlying core of UNIXy goodness that makes the geek in me glad that that one-click-on-the-dock can also bring me into CLI productivity. It all depends on what needs to get done. I've done work on Windows boxen for years and the current state of ad/mal/spy ware and virii makes me despise them. Cayse couldn't use a Windows box because of the sheer amount of marketing being shoved down it's porous gullet. She couldn't use Linux or an Open Source BSD because both rely heavily on logos and are insanely derivative of past versions. But the current Mac OS is BSD based, right? Well, her BR jacket is derivative, but it's faithful. The Mac OS is derivative, but it has a straight relationship to the past version of Mac OS. It's probably the least of all evils.

But, it's probbly the same cop-out Gibson admitted for Starbucks. OR maybe she just doesn't happen to be allergic to it, as has been pointed out previously.

My personal take on it, in a nut shell, is that the Mac embodies deign in a product that is at once very cool, very desirable, quite obvious if you know what is is, and despite being well know, is still at the bottom of the marketshare. How many of the BR one-off MA-1 flight jackets are out there? How many 17th-off clones? Would a 17th-off clone of an MA-1 work for Cayse as a CPU? Of course not. Would a 17th-off PC clone, no matter the OS, work for her? Of course not.

OK, this is being written on an eMac, so I'm probably biased. I think the point is that the book requires Cayce to be able to access the Net from wherever - part of the story's magical atmosphere. Gibson is always very precise about machines (the similarly-named Case in Neuromancer has an Ono-Sendai deck, if I remember rightly), and in today's world I suspect only the Sony Viao comes anywhere near the kind of name recognition that the Mac has. ("She reached into the bag for her Dell Inspiron 2214CX 4 Pro"? I don't think so). The virtues of the Mac are as you describe them, but it's worth adding that its widespread use in the media/creative world also partly explains why it's a suitable machine for her to use. By contrast, Case in Neuromancer would be a Linux geek, probably one who'd been involved long before KDE and Gnome came along, and wrote his own code.

Since no one else has:

Apple Logo = Neutral [the first, posted by the late wraith]

Is Cayce allergic to her iBook (iLogo) [April 04]

The Cayce-Mac Paradox [June 04]

Mac-Apple [March 20 05]

Theories on Cayce and Macs [March 25 05]

Thanks for getting sll those links together. It'll make it easier to follow and reference different argument now that everyone doesn't have to go off and do a search for the relevent threads.

Hurts is good [and obsessive] like that.

You're all f*cking mad...

Mac... Would that be a Big Mac or a Mac Chicken?
Want fries with that?
Maybe the Pat Rec movie will bring us a Mickey D
Happy Meal little Cayce action figure.

I wonder how much a Barbie-sized BR MA-1 would cost?

Probably as much as a human-size one.

Nothing really to add 'xcept that five minutes ago I reallised that my WinXP taskbar won't autohide!


Damn those Windows!

quote:

Originally posted by yer.andreas:
Nothing really to add

Nothing new there.