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Tech

Steve Jobs Just Wanted What Was Best For Me

_By Abe Riesman_ A persistent refrain has emerged in the Internet’s collective toast to the late Steve Jobs: proudly celebrating just how ubiquitous his handiwork has become. _I’m typing this on an Apple product right now!_ people declare on Twitter...

By Abe Riesman

A persistent refrain has emerged in the Internet's collective toast to the late Steve Jobs: proudly celebrating just how ubiquitous his handiwork has become. I'm typing this on an Apple product right now! people declare on Twitter. My work couldn't have happened without Apple technology! celebrities acknowledge in their block-paragraph statements.

But lest we forget, it was not always this way. I should know. I was in the Apple cult when it sucked to be a member.

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My mom was the computer teacher at Oak Park, Illinois's John Greenleaf Whittier Elementary School during my time there in the early-to-mid 1990s. Like many of her peers across the country, Mom lined the computer lab (remember those?) with drab, blocky Apple IIe consoles. Twice a week, we'd all file in, pop in some floppies, and name our characters in The Oregon Trail after dirty words.

But unlike the other preteens, I took it all home with me. Mom had a strict no-PCs rule in the Riesman household, to my constant chagrin. All of my friends had
Windows. Our succession of Macs and Power Macs crashed all the damn time. And of course, most importantly: where were the games?

“LucasArts never puts out Mac versions of its games until, like, years after the PC versions,” I'd whine to my mother every few months. “How am I gonna ever play X-Wing at home?”

“Abe, Macs are better computers,” she'd say in a tone otherwise reserved for explanations of why I had to go to Sunday School. "They don't get viruses. They're easier to use. And hey, you can always build your own games on HyperCard! They don't even make that for PCs!"

We weren't completely alone, as evidenced by the pile of Mac-obsessed magazines we received every month. But titles like MacAddict and MacWorld — packed with CD-ROMs full of not just games but new icons and fonts — all had a paranoid, conspiratorial air about them. They celebrated all the hacks you could do only on a Mac. They wrote alternately hagiographic and denunciatory profiles of Jobs and Wozniak. They defended the Newton, for chrissakes.

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None of that was ever a comfort to me. History seemed to be passing me by. Even The Simpsons mocked me! In a key scene of “Homerpalooza,” a legendary 1996 episode, Homer says he owns an Apple, drawing a blank stare of disdain from a hip, Gen-X record store clerk. I was in despair.

Then came Jeff Goldblum and Drew Carey.

It's hard to overstate the impact those two dweebs and their embrace of the iMac had on my self-respect. Carey's eponymous sitcom started to feature Bondi blue iMacs in all their office scenes. And Goldblum — the handsomest nerd to ever grace the screen — narrated iMac ads that praised the elegance of the machine my mom insisted on putting in our living room. Remember the one where he told us how to get on the web with Mac? “Step one: plug in. Step two, get connected. Step three…” he laughed that Goldblum laugh. “There's no step three!” I was still in the minority among all the PC-oriented kids I knew, but suddenly, my Mac had a little glamor.

Then the true reckoning came. My parents got divorced in 1999 and, as part of his ecstasy at being liberated from the marriage, my dad got a Dell for his new apartment.

And it was awful.

It took ages to boot up. Its folder-browsing interface barely made sense. It ran what seemed like seventeen anti-virus programs — many of which were scarcely easier to work around than the viruses, themselves. Deleting Internet Explorer's browser history after a pornography session was a near-Herculean task that hardly made masturbation worth the trouble.

Of course, the world caught up soon enough. iMacs, iPods… you know the story. I became a valued commodity in high school and college: the guy who knew how to use the Apple menu, AirPort, and so on. I spoke the language. Being ashamed of Apple loyalty became like being ashamed of having a regular exercise routine.
Steve Jobs is being mourned as something of a father figure — a remote man who gave us so much that we can overlook his temper and professional missteps. But to me, Apple was always closer to my mom and moms in general. You look back and see that their you'll-understand-when-you're-older-that-I-just-wanted-what's-best-for-you message was kinda right. You begrudgingly thank them. You can't escape them. But you wouldn't be who you are without their smothering. Goodbye, Mama Steve.

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