More Thoughts About the MacMacs

In my last post about the MacMac reac­tion to Apple’s announce­ment of their strate­gic with­drawal from Macworld Expo I focused on the self-indulgent sense of enti­tle­ment present in the bulk of the com­plaints. As I’ve rumi­nated more on the sub­ject, and after read­ing some very well rea­soned thoughts on the sub­ject (my main man John Welch puts it all in per­spec­tive here), I’ve decided that there’s another aspect to all of this that bears examination.

One con­stant theme to be found in the com­plaints is that Apple is some­how “aban­don­ing” the com­mu­nity that built them up. As oth­ers have pointed out, Apple has never given a shit about any “com­mu­nity.” Hell, why should they when the sin­gle great­est fac­tor in Apple’s mas­sive turn-around has been explic­itly ignor­ing the “com­mu­nity” and pan­der­ing to the wider con­sumer elec­tron­ics mar­ket? The sim­ple truth is that Apple could lose all future sales from those that sup­ported them in the lean years (and, in case any­one has any doubts I am one of that num­ber) and they’d still make money hand over fist.

But, as I wrote above, that’s not what I want to focus on here. What I want to focus on is the dys­func­tion at the heart of the MacMac con­tin­gent  of the Apple “com­mu­nity.” For all the self-indulgence, the whin­ing, the sense of enti­tle­ment, the unspo­ken (or some­times spo­ken) idea that Apple some­how “owes” the com­mu­nity some­thing, there is a con­stant thread of need­i­ness. The sense that if daddy Steve would just pay more atten­tion to them then the MacMacs would stop cut­ting them­selves and work­ing the pole for money. For all that they bitch and moan at every­thing that Apple does, when some­one out­side the “com­mu­nity” attacks Apple the MacMacs fight back with all of the fury of a beaten trailer-park wife. “Don’t you go a hit­ting on my man Apple! He’s a good man, he just get’s angry when he’s a been drinking.”

So I put this to the MacMacs: Why give Apple that sort of power over you? Why allow Apple to deter­mine the fate of your pre­cious Expo? Here’s the thing. Communities are formed of peo­ple; cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple. There may be peo­ple who work at Apple who are mem­bers of our com­mu­nity (Steve sure as shit ain’t one of them though) but Apple itself isn’t part of the com­mu­nity; and that’s a good thing. In my expe­ri­ence, when the offi­cial party line com­ing out of a cor­po­ra­tion is all about the “com­mu­nity” that’s the time to run for the door. Because that’s the very moment that the mar­ket­ing team has decided to rape you for all you’re worth. Certainly some com­pa­nies do fos­ter com­mu­ni­ties, and bully for them; but it ain’t gonna hap­pen at Apple.

I have a chal­lenge to all the peo­ple com­plain­ing about Apple pulling out of the Macworld Expo. Go there this year and send a mes­sage. Not a mes­sage to Apple, couched in futile “silent protests” or self immo­la­tion (on sec­ond thought, some­one should torch them­selves, for my amuse­ment if for noth­ing else). Send a mes­sage to IDG. Go to the Expo and make this one the most suc­cess­ful yet. Network, attend ses­sions, buy crap at ven­dor booths (just not Apple’s, not that they care). Show that you can make a com­mu­nity that doesn’t need to feed off of Apple’s teat. I guar­an­tee you’ll have a swell time. Because that’s what “com­mu­nity” is about and, let’s face it, if you only went to the Macworld Expo for the Keynote; then you aren’t really part of the com­mu­nity are you?