Once upon a time, and a very long time ago, when Windows 3 was ravaging the land (reducing grown men to bitter tears of impotent rage) with its malevolent vagaries, one hapless seeker after gadgets stumbled upon a machine with an operating system that seemed specifically designed to invite humans to interact, allowing (nay, encouraging) adherents to be instinctive and logical in their responses to particular problems and lo! they were resolved! The Holy Grail of computer systems had been found, and that system was enshrined in a Mac.
The Gadget Seeker was
hooked. And he stayed faithful, even
though he was so lonely in his affirmation of the Wonders of the Mac because
all his friends, colleagues and virtually everyone else in his little world
owed allegiance to the false gods of Microsoft.
He stayed faithful, even when he discovered that the Grand Mufti of
Microsoft had a secret decree that forbade those programs that worked on
Windows from working with Mac – even though it said it would on the box! Such deception! So unlike the friendly, civilized world of
Mac.
And the Seeker was true unto the
Mac, and lavished praise and pounds, and more pounds, to affirm his faith, buying anything and
everything that Mac made. Soon his
electronic life was enriched by iPod, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Air and a mighty
all-in-one.
But our little Seeker didn’t realize
that the providers of this profusion of goodies were no longer the welcoming,
helpful, altruistic innovators of old – they had become hard and calculating. They had progressed from their lowly garage
cradle and had been shown the riches of the world - and they had Fallen, because
the Voice had said that all of those riches could be theirs!
The Seeker was beguiled and
listened not to the voices of reason that told him that his devotion was being
manipulated and that he was being taken for a very expensive ride. He clove unto the beauty of the design and
the thinness and the lightness thereof and said that his eyes were wide open
and he was prepared to suffer for his faith.
A little.
And the cost of his devotion was
ever rising and he appeared to be getting ever less important ‘stuff’ for his
money and doubt began to sow its seeds.
And then the dark minds that held
sway in the realms of Mac began to flaunt their power and produced such vapid things
as the Apple Watch - that was not really a patch on the Pebble and cost
oh-so-much-more! And the murmurings
grew.
At last, as was inevitable, there
was the Golden Calf Moment in the Messianic Empire of Mac and they flung a
gewgaw of great price but little worth in front of their fanatics and screamed,
“Buy!” Behold! It was the iPhone 6, and it was ridiculously
expensive for what it was, but the Demons of Mac said, “Believe - and Buy!” And many did.
But the veil was torn from the
faithful eyes of the Seeker and he repudiated his faith (though not to the
extent of getting rid of all the Mac stuff that he had, or not using it, or
anything silly like that!) and vowed to turn towards Windows in a Dell.
Which he did, so now his MacBook
Air (once his Pride and Joy) is now relegated to his jobbing ‘second’ laptop! Ho!, and yet again, Ho!
But fate had yet a sneaky trick to
play.
The trackpad of his main computer
(a Mac) became skittish and refused to bend to his will. And he was wroth. It looked perfectly normal from the top. Underneath, however, one of the two ‘pimple’
foot-bumps had become dislodged. Its
design was simple, it looked like the top half of a very small spaceship: a curved
‘dome’ with a circular flat flange around it.
That flange was supposed to fit underneath the bottom casing, but, try
as he might, the Seeker could not get that flange in the hole, or at least not enough
of it to make the connection secure.
He knew that there must be a ‘knack’
to its re-insertion, or that there would be some useful (but specifically and
exclusively Mac-type tool) that would facilitate the operation. He also knew that there was a small Mac
Temple in the town where the Followers of Mac-dom would work their magic.
Hoping that the practitioners
would not be able to guess that he was an apostate, he tentatively entered the
Temple and proffered the offending touch-pad with a simperingly dismissive
smile at the simplicity of the challenge it offered to the Geniuses.
The Chief Priest of the Mac
Temple looked at the touchpad, looked at the foot, looked at the hole and made
a few ineffectual attempts to reinsert the thing. In much the same inept way, it has to be
admitted that the Seeker had done.
Eventually, the Chief Priest turned to the Seeker and said, “The
Engineer will have to look at this. He
will decide if anything can be done. It
may not be possible.”
The Seeker was puzzled, astonished,
nay dumbfounded Where was the specially
designed tool for this particular job which could, obviously, only be used for
this particular foot replacement? Where
was the easy display of ‘knack’ showing how melodiously simple and ‘right’ everything
Mac was?
“Come back in one hour!” said the
Chief Priest in a voice heavy with lugubriousness. With a sinking heart, illusions shattered,
despondency settling on him like dust from disintegrating floppy disks, the
Seeker left
.
The hour passed. He returned.
And lo! The job had been
done! The offending trackpad was brought
to the Seeker by a lowly Server, who turned to the Chief Priest with a
questioning look.
The Chief Priest looked at the
trackpad long and hard, then he looked at the Seeker, then back to the trackpad
and then, in a voice drained of emotion, he said, “That’s OK!” and dismissed
the Seeker with a half-hearted wave.
Stammering his thanks, the Seeker
backed out of the Temple, the only man to get something for nothing from Mac!
MORAL: Sometimes money isn't everything.
ANTI-MORAL: If you get lucky once - run!
