I Still Feel Superior to You Despite the Fact That Apple Has Released Sixty New Computers Since I Bought Mine

Filed under why i'm better than everyone else

I bought an iBook G4 back in the golden years of undergrad, when THE Ohio State University was paying for me to go to school, and I was rolling in cash. My Mac-enthusiast friend told me, “Katie, Macs are beautiful and smart and wonderful, just like you,” so naturally I had to have one THAT MOMENT.

I marched right down to the Apple store with my best friend–and by marched, I of course mean drove forty-five minutes, because we lived in the country–and bought my iBook right off the shelf. I knew it didn’t come packaged with enough RAM, but I figured one of my genius friends could buy it cheap and install it for me.

Fast forward to 2009, when my Mac is four+ years old and still has the 128MB of RAM it came with. It frequently attempts to commit suicide if I try to start GIMP while running Firefox, and it leaves red marks on my legs from all of its overheating when I’m wearing one of my many leather miniskirts around the house.

But I love it, ’cause it’s white, it has a pink gel keyboard cover, and its icons are so much prettier than Windows icons. That’s right–I love it solely for superficial reasons, and I’m not embarrassed. Everyone tells you that they love their Macs for the video-editing capabilities, for photo manipulation and other bullshit. The truth is that they just look good next to your latté on a table at Starbucks.

When I left for Ohio two weeks ago for my sister’s wedding, I left my iBook on and open at Kamran’s apartment to finish downloading some television. I didn’t think to tell Kam to put it to sleep after a couple of hours or anything, because I was too busy NOT THINKING ABOUT NEW YORK. And then I came back five days later, and it refused to accept my login password.

I politely shut it down by ripping out its power cord, and it in return politely sat at its startup screen for an entire day, its pretty grey apple icon staring me down as it refused to switch over to the login screen. I calmly Googled the hell out of the problem and seriously thought I could solve it myself by booting from an external drive, so I searched eBay for a retail copy of OS X–because apparently the copy that comes with your computer is only good on your computer, and my copy is in a barn on my family’s farm in Ohio along with all the rest of pre-NYC Katie–found out that they cost more than $3, and started asking all the Mac-owning rich people I know if they’d bought the newest version retail and would FedEx it to me from Chicago or Munich.

Finding plenty of evidence that even a boot disc was impossible to make, I ferociously attacked every single person at my software company to ask for help. My dear friend–and obviously favourite co-worker–Jack was all up on having his way with my hard drive to uncover all the things about me that even Kamran doesn’t know, claiming that he could fire up some magic Linux disc that can cure world hunger along with reading burnt hard drives. He even bought a miniature hard drive enclosure just so he could extract my drive and hook it up to another computer if needed. He was nearly foaming at the mouth in anticipation of the geekery, and I was all for it, ’cause four years of writing and photos were at stake.

So I brought the iBook into work this morning, and Jack hauled it back to his desk in his greasy paws, expecting a huge ordeal that would end in one of us sobbing. But a few minutes later, he IMed me and asked for my password. Pardon?

He brought it back to my desk and restarted it, and after two seconds of the grey apple screen, the login screen popped up, and everything was completely normal. Only a day earlier, I’d been pricing Dells and consoling myself with the idea of a pink Inspiron Mini 9, but as soon as my iBook was up and working again, all I could think about was how wonderfully elite I am for owning one.

So I guess that sure, not knowing a damned thing about how your computer works means that you don’t know a bit about fixing it, but spending an extra $1,000 is totally worth it to be able to use the phrase mount a disk image. And speaking of mounting, I asked my friend Aaron to send me some amazing photos that demonstrate his love for his Mac. And boy, did he deliver:


Aaron calls this The I-Woke-Up-And-Didn’t-Put-Makeup-On-To-Show-My-Love-For-You-And-Oh-Look-I’m-Wearing-An-iPhone-Shirt.


And this is The Come-To-Bed-Baby-I’m-Not-Wearing-Any-Pants, or as I like to call it, My ARMS Are Fatter Than This.

When I checked to make sure I could use the photos for my evil-doing, he said, “Those legs need to be SEEN to be BELIEVED.” And how.

Now if that doesn’t make you want to buy a Mac, I don’t know what will.

25 Comments

  1. Tina says:

    I love my iBook… we have the same one and I had a similar freak out. My last night in France there was some power surge that caused my converter and the part where the charger enters the computer to spark. When I pulled the charger out the little hole smelled like fire. It wouldn’t charge and I flipped the fuck out. I figured I completely blasted the part inside the computer that you plug the charger in, so the first thing I did once I got back in the States was buy a new charger and a new charger-receiver (very technical vocabulary). When it came I literally tore my laptop open and saw all of its guts and replaced the damn thing, which was surrounded by black char on the inside. I waiting for it to charge about an hour, turned it on, and heard the most amazing chime of my life.

    To be short… I understand the pain you went through. The only complaint I have about this computer is that I go through $85 chargers constantly. I’ve had at least 5 in the 4 years I’ve had my computer and the current one I have is all twisted in its metal parts.

    • Faulty French wiring be damned, but I’m so jealous that you have such an intimate relationship with the inside of your laptop! I had no problem tearing apart my PC and installing all sorts of junk in it, but I’m way too scared of my iBook. It helps that PC innards cost a fraction of Mac innards; I used to buy extra hard drives for cents.

      What the hell are you doing to your chargers, though? I’ve had the same one the entire time.

      • Tina says:

        Ughhh I don’t know! You know the little pin in the center of the charger? I’ve had that break off inside my computer twice… I’ve also had the wire just snap in two a couple times. I don’t feel like I’m especially rough with them, but I guess so?

  2. Kinard says:

    I have the same Mac, too. Mine’s been giving me the spinning beach ball of doom, and they grey kernel panic screen of death. Attempts to install my own RAM have failed. I need assistance in a professional manner, and you’ve inspired me to get that help. *one single tear*

    • Apparently these things were all scheduled to die at the same time. Perhaps Apple foresaw the economic downturn and knew they’d need to make some money around this time, so they programmed our poor iBooks to bite the dust when we needed them most for job-hunting on craigslist and entertainment while selling our plasma.

      If you want Jack to take a look at your Mac, he can be bought off easily with Cheerios and/or the candy cane Hershey’s kisses leftover from Christmas.

  3. Kelly says:

    Aaron is basically composite of every guy I’ve ever dated.

    I KNOW THOSE LEGS!

    • Really? I mean, I know you’ve dated men with non-beefy careers, but I somehow always imagined you with real meatheads. But, like, intellectual meatheads. Who knew which wine to pair with the roast goose he made you for dinner.

      • Kelly says:

        I dare to dream! No, the vast majority of them have been skinny little Poindexters who write code and program things and invent stuff for a living. My friends used to joke that if they air-dropped me in the middle of Cambridge, Massachusetts, I’d have a husband in 15 minutes flat.

        • Yes, but I’ll bet those guys would have no problem fixing your Mac if it broke. And that’s all you can ask for in a man.

          Honestly, when’s the move up north?

  4. spaghedeity says:

    So, how did the smackin’ of boots go?

    • Kamran informed me later that the phrase is “knockin’ boots”. Right before he worked on law school papers all night and forced me to entertain myself. And I don’t mean that in an ifyouknowwhatImean sort of way.

      • Ahhh. Knockin’ da boots. I haven’t used that term since 1994 maybe, that’s a golden oldie.

        Here’s other classics:

        Makin’em Tim’s tap (Tim’s are Timberlands a.k.a knockin boots)

        Hittin’ Skins
        Doin’ the Nasty
        Boning
        Bumpin’ Uglies

        The longest term for it award has got to go to L.L. Cool J with “Pink Cookies In A Plastic Pag Getting Crushed By Buildings” who knows W.T.F. he was thinking with that one.

        I’ll save Donkey Punch and Dirty Sanchez for another sex ed class young lady!!

        Damn that’s not good. I could care less how busy I am, sometimes I don’t even care if I even like the woman (as long as she’s hot) I’ll Blaze that ass!
        Ohh Ohh …that’s another classic.

        Kamran watch out, you don’t want Plump Miss calling the “Maintenance Man” (a.k.a. Mike Lowrey)

  5. spaghedeity says:

    Also, is it just me, or do I look a little bit fourteen and a little bit thirty-five in that first picture?

    I can satisfy the desires of mothers and daughters alike.

    • It looks like you’re trying really hard to squeeze out a poop that’s been stuck up there for days.

      I think you’d make an amazing contestant on a reality TV show, ’cause you show it all.

  6. Jack says:

    What you didn’t know is that after all that technical mumbo jumbo you researched, all I had to do is tell your Mac how much better my 3 year old Dell laptop is since it still runs fine, and poof it turned on. All Macs have huge ego issues, you just need to know how to use that to your advantage.

    • Wooooooooooooow, Jack, this is the greatest comment ever. It deserves a reply of a caliber I’m afraid I just can’t provide. My commenting skills are seriously inferior to yours, much like my ability to use Spanish punctuation in everyday situations.

  7. W0nder M0nkey says:

    I became a Mac owner when the Macbook pro was first released. However, even after being told all the awesome “capabilities” my future mac would have by the numerous (and I mean 25 – 100) people I talked to about this momentous purchase.

    I was won over my its shiny sleek exterior and it minimal weight. If I was going to be carrying it with me everywhere 3lbs sounded like a much better weight than 7 – 15lbs).

    However, I have been pulled to dark side and now own the macbook pro, an ipod, the iphone and work on a mac at the office. I claim I kept the mac at work because of being able to work with our graphics and marketing departments, but really its because people are afraid to touch my computer when I’m not here.

    • I’ve gotten to the point that it pisses me off when things are obviously copying Apple. When Vista was released and they’d totally stolen the spinning beachball, I felt so used. The dark side indeed.

      I appreciate that PC people treat Macs with awe and disdain. Everyone loves to make fun of you for having one, but no one especially loves their PC like Mac people love their Macs, right? I remember going to the OSU library and staring longingly at the Macs; I sat down at one once and couldn’t even figure how to open up a browser, so I had to buy one to be able to figure it out in the privacy of my own home.

  8. smur says:

    It’s creepy to me when I go to an apartment and there are three people in the living room with macs on their knees.

    Mhmm. On their knees.