The Religion of Apple

Apple-ism is an orthodoxy. And I'm going to admit that I am a part of it. And I'm not ashamed whatsoever. I can't help it.

My father started out with a black and white monolith that I marveled at as a child. On the Performa, my dad taught me the shortcuts and ins and outs of Mac OS 8 and 9. Number Munchers, Math Blaster, or that friggin educational game with the dog and those bones, or Oregon trail, or Lode Runner, etc., or ClarisWorks, was played on the Mac. At Ease, those folder tabs, and all of those bizarre parental controls.

Back in the OS 9 days, alert sounds blocked all other interaction with the OS. You couldn't click on anything and no keystroke would register. So my brother and I, still in the potty-mouth stage, would make 30-second alerts with constipated sounds, to my father's dismay.

I remember when the graphite iMac came out, and iTunes came out, but our iMac couldn't burn CDs. I remember emailing Steve Jobs about who-knows-what, as a child would email an author they idolized.

Like being a Democrat, a Jew, or an American, the Apple values were engraved into my soul. Like my attitude toward extreme conservatives like Rush or Hannity, I am filled with dismay when I have to touch anything Microsoft. That's just how it was.

So I cheered when Apple became one of the world's biggest money-grubbers. I was filled with love when guys like Terpstra and Mueller and Omni and Siegel and the Simmons brothers came up with masterful software year after year. And I scramble for the Apple Watch and the other goodies. That's just how I'm wired.