I'm a Mac...no, I'm a PC...no, I'm a Mac...

This is outside the normal purview of this blog, but it struck me the other night, and I just had to say it...

I listen to several of the TWiT podcasts in my free time, or when I'm doing more mindless tasks, and there's been a whole lot of bandwidth spent lately on figuring out Microsoft's latest ad campaigns. Starting this all has been the Seinfeld campaign (1 & 2), which may or may not have been dropped after 2 commercials (and Jerry's contract canceled), and then the more recent "I'm a PC" jab at Apple's wildly successful ad campaign.

Could it be that MS is floundering in the Marketing department, the once Achilles Heel of Apple? (This being said by the former owner of a MacTV, an OS8 machine with a built-in TV tuner, which I bought on clearance because they only marketed it to campus bookstores.)

Actually, I've got a great theory...and it involves the single interpretive key needed to make sense of the two Seinfeld commercials, which at first glace appear to be "a commercial about nothing." The key is this...Jerry is Apple. Why else would they hire a guy who, in his own series, always had a Mac on his desk? Plus, you needed a hip and funny guy to off-set Gates, in the same way Mac and PC play off each other in the Apple ads.

Now it's an interpretive leap, perhaps, but stay with me here...MS is symbolically saying in these commercials that Apple over the years has had some very inventive ideas. While MS ignored them at first ("Churro?" "I'm good."), they're starting to understand now (both seen eating churros at the end of the 1st ad). Some ideas were really out there (showering in your clothes), but some made a lot of sense (breaking in the leather shoes by repeated bending). Even the way in which Apple has learned from it's customers, (the second ad)and given them products that are all about user experience, MS is saying they've learned from that as well.

And so, MS has learned a thing or two from Apple, and has a few innovations of it's own in the works as well (the repetition of Jerry's ending question in both ads about what Bill's got in the works).

And no sooner do they pull these ads, than they prove my point...The newest ad campaign takes Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads and spins them, attempting to prove that not all PC users look and sound like John Hodgeman (himself an avid Mac user, ironically). And the real irony is, the commercial was most likely made on a Mac. More evidence to back up my otherwise seemingly outlandish theory.

So expect some new stuff, which will probably be code-named "churro", to be coming out any time soon. Maybe it's Windows 7X, maybe a zPhone (with built in water gun), maybe it's just another ad campaign which will be airing soon, talking about how all Mac users are slacker artists, while the real producers in our society are slogging away on PCs like any good American. Maybe it really is edible desktops and ready-to-make pet websites out of the box. I dunno, but it's good enough to make Bill Gates shake his shorts. :-)

This post, being typed by an avid Mac advocate...in exile on an HP laptop running Mojave...I mean Vista.

"Technology is great..."

It's funny to watch people when their electronics fail. People always feel a compulsion to say to me "Technology's great when it works." Why they say this to me, I don't know. Maybe it's because until recently, I constantly had a computer in my back pocket, and I've got enough tech-geekery to save my church an occasional $80/hour in calls to Computer Doctor, so they think I need a reality check or something.

But what they're talking about isn't "technology." Technology is the -ology, the knowledge, of techne (craft), of ways to do things which are theoretically better, more efficient. When the sound system went down at a conference I was at last month (which negated our ability to hear the slight-voiced speaker we were enjoying), some wag quipped that if Jesus had preached the Sermon on the Mount with a sound system, we'd have been more concerned with the technology than with the message. But Jesus was using technology, at least the technology of His day. He was using the technology of the natural acoustics of the local geography as an amplifier. He was using the technology of public speaking, which is far more efficient than repeating the same message to 5000 people one at a time. And then some one used a really hi-tech thing called writing (which only certain Information Technology specialists, called scribes, were fluent in), to amplify that message so that millions upon millions could interact with it.

Technology is a helper to communication. Some of it is easier to maintain (especially that which has had centuries to be perfected, like paper), more reliable (like a mountainside), but it's all technology. Roman roads, papyrus and ink, the Greek language, were the technology of mass communication in their day, which carried the Gospel message across the known world. Email, internet, cell phones, even radio, are all still maturing. Give them time. They're already, in their imperfection, spreading the Word to corners Roman roads never reached. And they remind us that God chooses to use the imperfect things of this world (like us) to do His work.

And next time someone says to you that technology;'s great when it works, ask them when's the last time their pencil broke. We're still perfecting that one too! : )