At first, you appreciate the diminutive uniqueness of your "snow white" laptop, glinting in the sunlight and bearing vague, subconscious allusions to SNOW CRASH, the "squib" which launched our cyberpunk age. Then you move to Sunnyvale, appropriately 6.4 miles away from Apple Headquarters (also known as Infinity Loop, Cupertino). Still, you ride VTA's Light Rail system, priding yourself on possessing a neat cut of modern technology, cheerily rapping out long sequences of gibberish while the other passengers look blankly on. Then, one day, why not -- you decide to visit "Mac HQ," home of the thirty-foot-high "TO THE CRAZY ONES" sign. Also a football-field sized wall-hanging American flag, resting next to a huge shot of Caesar Chavez. Following the signs, you eventually plant your vehicle in Visitor Parking and take a stroll into "The Company Store". Ah, riches! A sea of lickable Apple merchandise, alongside the latest demo editions of actual machines (AC adaptors wrapped in a thick sheet of raw steel, bolted to the counter). Smugly, you turn your nose up at the higher-end desktop systems, shunning their innate immobility . . . and let your eyes down in the LAPTOP section, where the best kinds are displayed first. A foreign thing, a seventeen-inch rectangle of graphite with black keyboard, grins back. Your mouth hangs open. Eyes shift to the ghostly white iBook off, way, way at the other end . . . total isolation. A postage stamp of a computer. And then, impulsively, you drag down the "ABOUT THIS COMPUTER" feature, and the graphite/black coolness gloats: PowerPC G4 Processor. Your world begins to collapse . . . You begin to think, "3K? I could have managed that; my iBook was 1.5. Oh, if only I'd waited a FEW more months . . . "
Returning, depressed, to your silver GTI VR6, you reminisce about all the fun things accomplished on your iBook . . . the madness, the movies, the games. And suddenly, it hits you: Apple Computers is a corporation, too.
The drive home is long and lonely.
Returning, depressed, to your silver GTI VR6, you reminisce about all the fun things accomplished on your iBook . . . the madness, the movies, the games. And suddenly, it hits you: Apple Computers is a corporation, too.
The drive home is long and lonely.
