As a PC user at Northwestern, I often find myself in the minority. Seven out of my eight roommates own some kind of MacBook. In my lectures, sleek MacBooks covered in brightly colored plastic far outnumber dark, clunky PCs.
My own beast of a computing device cannot fit on most normal classroom desks. It refuses to shut down or start up in a timely manner, is likely ridden with viruses and, after a little more than two years, has meant many an hour on the phone with an IT service across the ocean. I wake up each morning wondering if it will make it through the day.
As a Christmas gift, my parents gave me partial funding to buy myself a sweet new MacBook. I haven’t touched the money. I decided on a model; I even went to the Apple store. But I didn’t buy anything. It didn’t feel right. I wasn’t ready to become that person yet.
Macs comprised a little less than 11 percent of the personal computer market in 2010, but everywhere I look, there they are. A 2011 survey found that 31 percent of students under the age of 25 own Macs. I wonder if my desire to own one is truly motivated by a need for efficient photo and video editing and virus protection, or if after two and a half years of college, I’ve simply digested the idea that this is the kind of computer I’m supposed to have.
Back in 2006, a tech consultant named Tim Bajarin told Information Week, “When we talk to Gen X and Gen Y, they’ll tell you the MacBooks are the coolest machines on the market.” Six years later, it’s no less true. Apple has become a status symbol in many ways. Watch any movie, and the product placement of a laptop will almost always be angled to display the little Apple logo, or if not, a pear or some ripoff that is a clear emulation.
It’s been a few months since my computer did anything truly disturbing, like flash the Blue Screen of Death. Perhaps the viruses, the temperamental approach it takes to do things like “standby,” the way it sometimes whirrs loud enough to rival the sound of my breaking refrigerator, the decrepit speakers — they’re just quirks. I know this doesn’t make sense. Computers are machines; they’re supposed to work. And the consensus among my Mac-owning friends is that Apple products just do — no complications or tricks. Just a computer that runs. It’s a logical choice to make, one that plenty of people are making.
But I’m suspicious of bandwagons. Susceptible but suspicious too. I don’t want to want to buy things because they’re cool. I don’t want to be a cog in a marketing machine. But I’m human and not, in fact, smarter than marketing executives who have spent their lives trying to figure out how to make me want their products.
I don’t like to buy nice things. I’m a little hipster, or a Luddite, or maybe both. I’m stingy. It took me years to get an iPod. I lugged around a brick-sized Dell Jukebox until it crashed into an unusable mess. I would have bought another if they were still being manufactured. Now in possession of an 8GB iPod Nano from when 8GB was still a lot of space, I can’t imagine buying one from the latest generation. I’m dreading the impending upgrade, though the LCD screen no longer keeps up with the music as it changes. My cell phone cost me $15 with a contract and occasionally doesn’t use correct English grammar within its interface.
But should I feel guilty about wanting something that all empirical evidence suggests is a good product?
There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head suggesting that I’m willing to plunk down a thousand plus dollars for something just because everyone else has it. After all, how often do I edit video, if that’s my reason for making the switch? Is my computer not just a glorified portal to the interwebs and occasional receptacle for Word documents and PDFs of class reading?
Part of me wonders what better things that money could be used for. If it makes me spoiled, or entitled, if it’s something I consider myself “needing.” Or if it’s simply long-term planning based on the personal experience and customer satisfaction of everyone I’ve talked to about the choice. Either way, buying a Mac shouldn’t make me a better or a worse person. But when it comes to brands that sell themselves as cool, you’re in some ways buying into an image — even if that image is expanding to include my grandpa and his iPad. I worry that I’m just not ready to convey that every time I whip out my computer at a coffee shop.
I am #firstworldproblems.