Apple's Battle Against DIY

If you are in humanities academia, you likely notice a strong preference for Mac computing among your colleagues. Driving this phenomenon is at least in part the desire for the identity of a Mac user vs the identity of a PC user. Through advertising and branding, a Mac is perceived as a subversive rebel in the face of "the man," or in academic terms, "the dominant ideology," the PC. Counting all computer users, Mac users are truly in the minority. Still, I have sometimes found this configuration of PC vs. Mac in the popular imagination ironic because of the DIY possibilities available for modifying a PC, most of which are much more difficult, or impossible, to apply to a Mac. To me, DIY-ness adds subversiveness.

A new Slate article by Tim Wu elucidates this topic and sheds light on how Apple has traveled the spectrum from its first and extremely DIY-friendly computer to the Ipad, an antithesis to DIY computing.

Still, I'm sure folks have already begun to mod the Ipad.

And, let me not fail to note that if you are a non-Mac user but you use Linux, you are awarded double street-cred points within the academic milieu.