"I'm iFedup"

Oh, she forgot about the iPhone ... We'll see about the touch screen.

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I'm iFedup

LEAH McLAREN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
June 2, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT

Here's the awful truth about me: I am a Mac girl.
I live downtown in a North American city in a neighbourhood with Starbucks and sushi joints on every corner. I shop vintage and get premium haircuts. My trainers are old school, my values are new school and my iPod selection is (I like to think) eclectic. I'm not really a car person, but I bought a car – on credit. I eat organic and drink whatever's going. I listen to CBC and watch The Office and develop short-lived obsessions about certain things (pulled pork, for instance, or Japanese toy fish), which may or may not be ironic – I'm not even sure any more. Like I said, I'm a Mac girl.
I say this in the interest of full disclosure. With the exception of a couple of minor technological blips – my mother's hand-me-down Epson in high school and a surprisingly plucky Sony Vaio in London – I have never used any personal home computer that was not a Mac, Apple or “i” something.
And now the world's most trendy pronoun is filling up my life – and the lives of those around me – with “i” everything. There's iKaraoke for parties, iPhoto for family portraits, iWeb for the Internet, iTunes for music, iMovies for entertainment and iPods for light listening. All this comes complete with upgrades from the handy iLife package – mandatory software for any self-respecting hipster. Is that awesome, or what?
Problem is, iOverit. And I'm not the only one.
Last week, an ad appeared on YouTube for the latest “i” product. The iGasm is a handheld vibrator you can sync to an iPod for artfully scored self-abuse. The ingeniously directed 35-second commercial features the typical Mac babe model silhouette dancing and rubbing her crotch in front of the iconic kaleidoscope backdrop. While the product is real (part of an icky trend of iPod-friendly sex toys), the ad is a spoof. And it's about time. Lord knows Apple needs a good hard spoofing. After a year of basking in the glow of its unbelievably smug “Hello, I'm a Mac” campaign, the backlash is finally beginning.
Last week, it was reported that a group of MacBook users in the United States has launched a class-action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that its notebook screens don't work as advertised (i.e. where are the “millions of colours?”). And earlier this month Reuters reported that iPods may cause implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with their delicate electromagnetic equipment. The discovery was made by Jay Thaker, a 17-year-old high-school student who conducted the study at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University as part of a science project. So much for cornering the gullible youth market.
Unlike Thaker, I feel I have not been sufficiently skeptical where Mac is concerned. Like many young women in my postal district, when my last laptop conked out, I simply wandered, zombie-like, to the nearest Apple store and purchased a new one. I had my reasons. I liked the zippy design and the user-friendliness. Plus I'm too lazy for market research.
But even a slovenly Mac girl like me can reach her breaking point. Where Apple was once the technological underdog, paddling along in the wake of the monolith IBM, today it seems more like a smug slacker twit sneering from the sidelines.
Ironically, it is Apple itself that has promoted this new image with its ad campaign featuring the adorably nerdy PC guy (John Hodgman) in a suit and retro glasses sparring with an irritating Gap-clad alterna-guy (Justin Long). Mac guy, in the words of the Slate ad critic Seth Stevenson, is “just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast. … It's like Apple parodying its own image while also cementing it.”
And while I'm not one to mix up spokespeople with their TV personas, a personal missive from Justin Long on his website responding to the rumour that he had been cut from the ads confirms the irritating hipster stereotype he projects.
“I don't know where the report came from that said I wasn't going to do any more – I'm literally setting my alarm right now to wake up for a Mac shoot tomorrow … but yeah, we're doing some holiday spots now which I think will be pretty funny – not nearly funny enough to justify the money they're paying me though, I'll be honest with you.” (He later took out the line about how much he was being paid.) These days, when I see a Mac commercial, I find myself identifying with the overloaded, overworked, insecure PC guy. I'm trading in my hoodie for an ill-fitting suit. No more Mac girl – I'd rather geek out.