There has always been something illicit about playing for the other team.
Gabriel’s MacBook doesn’t arrive until… they start arriving, later this month, but save for platform-dependent gaming I’ve used my own Mac for every computing task this week. What I have ascertained is not that PCs as we know them lack good design, but that PCs as we know them have hardly any design to speak of. I’m not trying to be insulting. Use a Mac for a week, and we’ll talk again.
I have edited autoexec.bat files in order to optimize the amount of available conventional memory, and I liked doing it, liked being the sort of person who could. As a PC user, enduring the grotesqueries of that experience is something that we are actually proud of. It’s come a long way since then, jokes about "blue screens" and what not ring like tired vaudeville acts. But those struggles were certainly real, the battle wounds considerable, and now the skin has grown over it and to a certain extent we think this is just how it is.
I didn’t even understand that’s what was going on until I started to write this. Like men who love the wilderness for its savage and untamed qualities, I believe many of us are drawn to this stark brutality. That frontier living, the self reliance, the adversity. The Mac, like The Alliance in World of Warcraft, was easy mode.
I don’t think that the Macintosh was inspired by ancient holy scrolls, found in a sea cave and excised from the original bible by a convocation of priests and wise men. But I do like it very much. It is extremely good at what it does, which is to say, exposing functionality.
It’s a big topic. I’ll go into it on Monday.
As I’m sure comes as no surprise to the long-time reader, my resolve as regards the DS Lite did not, could not hold. Shortly after I made the purchase, it was announced that Ice Blue and Enamel Navy had been postpwned and my order was quickly shifted from the latter to Crystal White. I didn’t really want Navy anyway, I wanted black, so I just got the darkest one. Of course, black won’t be available until you’ve already purchased something from the first wave. That rasping sound you hear is Nintendo president Satoru Iwata cackling on his obsidian throne.
You might have heard that in Japan, the DS is not only a popular portable but is also some kind of cultural phenomenon. Until a couple days ago, you couldn’t buy them new - what’s more, stores were buying people’s old systems for more than retail and then selling them for more than that. Apparently, stores are selling their stock of DS Lites to the lucrative import market at a premium, hence the mail I got from Lik-Sang yesterday morning. After a lengthy (and not unfair) assessment of the situation:
"Please reply to this email and let us know if we can apply the new price of US$ 199.90 (my wallet’s emphasis) to your order. To compensate at least a little bit for the higher price, we will include a $10 Lik Sang Cash Coupon into your parcel."
I authorized it, because I’m a dirty whore. Take a look at these shots from 4 Color Rebellion to understand why I might do that. I was into it for the improved form factor; I wasn’t aware that I was also purchasing two suns.
(CW)TB out.
