Holy Wars: Apple Vs. Adobe or What's Old Is New Again

Way back in the day, before all this fancy schmancy new-fangled crap you pass off for modern computing, we had our very own technology holy wars. Back then it was CP/M versus DOS. There was even a multitasking version of CP/M (I know, even before Apple was a company). However, famously Bill Gates was able to answer IBM's call faster and now we have Windows instead of world peace and flying cars.

People surprise me a lot, and not by jumping out from around corners. If I've learned anything from my time in tech, it's never get involved in a holy war. Sure, when I was green and there was a full-on Mac versus PC debate on a mailing list, I'd stick my n00b neck in there like a bear cub looking for honey. When I read ZDNet news regularly, there wasn't a Mac or PC article that didn't have the other side trying to bring the holy war to the article comments. That's also where I noticed an invading third party, the Linux people, make periodic drive-by comments. After a while it occurred to me these arguments were never playing out. Windows people went back to virus cleaning. Mac people went back to making sweet, sweet love to their computers. Linux people went back to eating food from their moms' fridges.

The only thing that has changed between then and now is both Microsoft and Apple brought the holy war to their respective ad campaigns. I guess they finally gave the people what they really wanted.

The technological holy war is not new. What is it about technology that makes people so emotional? It's not like there's a Sicilian and death on the line. This emotion tied to technology, especially computers, is disturbing. It's like being a moderate near a political rally. It's interesting to watch the two sides but you don't want to be there when the batons come out. I refer back now to one of my favorite HCI books, The Second Self, by Sherry Turkle:

Young children see almost everything in the world as alive in one way or another. This "animism" pervades the child's thinking until the development of concepts that help draw the line between the alive and the not-alive. Childhood animism has two faces: it makes the world friendly and understandable, but it can make it frightening as well. . . . We are drawn to what frightens us, we play with what disturbs us, in part to try to reassert our control over it. (p. 33-34)

Turkle observed children interacting with a Merlin and a Speak & Spell. She noticed, as the title of the book suggests, children behave differently when interacting with technology. It was more emotional. Most of us grew up with small electronics and computers; I had my first computer 31 years ago. Because I've had so many, I'm a little detached from computers, aside from my pure unadulterated anger at shit not working.

Emotionally siding with the companies making technology seems like a logical leap. The companies are the creators, near deities to some. In my political analogy, they are the parties behind the vapid candidates representing them. Once we make something such a part of ourselves and our personal identity, certainly the creators take on god-like states.

Yesterday I read "Sorry, Adobe, You Screwed Yourself", an article with enough traction to be a meme. Look at the raw emotion in this quote:

Adobe had multiple chances to prove their worth to Apple and they failed miserably. They ignored the OS X version of Flash. They ignored Photoshop – witness the rise of Acorn, Pixelmator etc.

Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself. You made a business decision in 1996 to screw Apple when it needed you most to gain credibility for its fledgling OS with the creative crowd. Somehow, Apple making a business decision to protect its customers from your shitty product is the most egregious ethical concern of our time.

I suggest pulling back the shiny outer layer and remembering we are talking about a couple of modern American businesses. They are more dysfunctional than your distant relatives and their products are only "good enough" to make it to market. It's not like Apple has never had quality issues and it's not like Adobe hasn't tried to shut out competition. Any expectation of loyal behavior from any modern company is misguided at best. Companies are slaves to their shareholders. Decisions are rarely made beyond getting through the quarter until the next earnings announcements. I'm certainly no close friend of Adobe, but I think the Apple people protest way too much. It seems we're living Turkle's idea of animism but applied to the companies who make our beloved tech. It's time to back away from Apple and Adobe and get some fresh air; it's just another in a long line of holy wars.

Other tech holy wars of note: