Overt operations

Two new computer operating systems were launched this year. In June Apple unveiled Mac OS X 10.6, codenamed ‘Snow Leopard’ and just last week Microsoft began to sell Windows 7. For those not in the know, operating systems are the layer of software which underpins the operation of all other software such as web browsers, word processors and media players, allowing them to make use of the computer’s hardware, the physical stuff which does all of the actual work such as the memory and the processor. Riveting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

They are also the subject of fanatical devotion.

In fairness, computer operating systems contain the code that controls all of the interesting things you might want to do with a computer such as play or edit digital video, connect to networks of other computers to share data and so on. In short, they are very important. But they are also inherently dull.

Not that you’d think that if you spent any time around their devotees. I first heard, and mocked, Microsoft’s bizarre suggestion that computer enthusiasts hold ‘parties’ to celebrate the launch of the latest edition of Windows when I was guest on the PC Live show on RTÉ Choice. The idea was that computer savvy types should invite their friends to come to their house and then spend hours showing them all of the ‘exciting’, ‘fun’ new features the operating system had to offer. A more excruciating party is hard to imagine. At least Anne Summers parties end with people owing an interesting bit of hardware.

Just what in the hell is going on here, exactly? That fact that Microsoft attempted such an awkward publicity stunt is unsurprising – the company is worse at public relations than Idi Amin. What is harder to swallow is that people actually hosted these events.

Apple, as always, has much more ‘cool’ about it – no suggestion of official ‘parties’ to celebrate the release of Snow Leopard, the latest edition of the Macintosh operating system – but Apple users, encouraged by the company, never cease to push the benefits of Apple’s operating system (OS, for short). Back in the late 1990s when Apple was rotten to the core its users’ fanaticism was a result of their growing isolation from the mainstream. Users genuinely feared that not only would Apple go under but that their computers would be relegated to the slow lane of what was then dubbed the ‘information superhighway’. The explosion in internet connectivity looked set to make the Apple Macintosh computer a pothole in the road of history. What actually happened is that greater interconnectivity and the growth of the web as a universal platform meant it no longer mattered what kind of computer you had so long as it could access the internet. (Incidentally, Apple didn’t die, as you may or may not have heard).

Macintosh enthusiasts – and I’ve written more than the odd article for MacUser and Macworld in my day, as well as interviewed the Mac’s inventor, so I know what I’m talking about – will claim their system is superior to Microsoft’s. (1) I happen to agree. What I don’t agree on, however, is that it’s much of a topic for converastion, let alone a theme around which to host a party. Even if Apple’s products are superior to those of Microsoft – and they generally are – who cares?

Which operating system your computer uses is not in and of itself a political issue. It’s not even a particularly interesting issue. What it is, is an indication of a shallow and fragmented culture that is in constant need of sending signals of belonging through consumption. As geeky and unattractive as it is, operating system fanatacism is nothing more than a form of fashion coupled with primary school-grade sociology. Neither Apple nor Microsoft love you, though they do love your blind devotion and, most of all, your cold, hard cash. That the free software movement is partisan in its support of a third operating system, GNU/Linux, is more understandable than the lunacy attached to the products of for-profit companies. Free software is an ideological movement dedicated to expanding the rights of users, allowing them to do as they please with software such as copy or modify it. That said, unless one is engaged in using free software and free software alone and doing so for expressly political reasons, there is no reason to be bothering anyone with it.

Can we please keep the parties to the people who understand how operating systems work? You know, the people who develop the damn things. Maybe then the rest of us can get on with using computers as the tools they are.

(1) See: PC Live Radio Show and RTÉ Choice
(2) Talk time: Jef Raksin, the Guardian, October 21, 2004