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Minority Report: Why I am a Mac user
And why the Mac's critics have got it all wrong…

By Seb Janacek

Published: Thursday 17 April 2008

On the 10th anniversary of his Damascene conversion from the PC to the way of the Mac, Seb Janacek reflects on what it is that made him the sad little geek he is today.

Mac bashers fall back on the same old arguments to justify the alleged superiority of PCs. Mac advocates do the same, of course.

The old battle has itself become a cliché but it has endured more than 25 years of bickering and we seem to be stuck with it.

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Addressing all the arguments is pointless, grounded as they are for the most part in subjectivity. But perhaps the most common allegation hurled in the general direction of Macs is that they laud form over function.

This criticism always bothered me. Partly because it seems to be a shortcut to a proper criticism of Apple products but mostly because it ignores the obvious point that form and function needn't be mutually exclusive.

If you're the sort of person who goes around making this kind of accusation, then it may be that your choice of personal technology is lacking in either one or the other of both, which is too bad.

But it's still your choice. If you decide to be some kind of technology ascetic, so be it.

Apple is famous for putting an emphasis on eye-catching design. Its hardware and software, its case designs for laptops, desktops and other computers form the focus of its marketing. It does this for the large part without any reduction in the user experience.

Certainly, there are a couple of Macs in the Apple stable that have been guilty of positioning form above function. The Cube is a recent example. Other than that, the form-over-function accusation is hollow.

Like the Oscar-winning actress who is never taken seriously because she's beautiful, the Mac is considered inferior to its shabbier peers because it happens to come in a well-designed case with an eye-candy operating system environment.

The emotional design argument is well known. It goes along the following lines: products that are aesthetically pleasing work better because we find them more pleasing and therefore they provide a better user experience.

The general idea behind emotional design - proposed by cognitive scientist and technology professor Donald Norman - is that emotions have an important effect on how we interact with things and products and how we understand them and their functions.

Products that are aesthetically pleasing are at least perceived to be more effective than ones that are not.

The iPhone is a great example of this. At this year's Mobile World Congress Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin admitted the rest of the industry was now playing catch-up with Apple following the widespread adulation of touchscreen display and feature integration.

Critics pointed to the lack of Exchange support as a major flaw with the iPhone, yet this has been resolved through a deal with Microsoft.

The lack of 3G was also criticised, though this may be as much to do with clever marketing as it is with allegations of poor battery performance. It is a full-featured device, albeit a bit expensive.

A recent description of the iPhone interface on the website of usability guru Bruce Tognazzini sums it up neatly for me. The iPhone is a 'study in delight'.

The concept of taking delight in technology or the advocacy of the principles of sexy computing are central to the tenets of emotional design in technology and are scoffed at by some. After all, these are just gadgets.

It may be a slightly embarrassing admission but in case you didn't notice we are subsumed in technology and the geeks have taken over - so why not accept it?

Of course, the real problems with our emotionally resonant products occur when the usability and device functionality turn out to be derisory.

However, with the Macs I've owned this problem has never been applicable. The Macs don't suffer in comparison with other computers because they look good.

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