I've been reading them for years, and they've always thrown off a more or less anti-Mac vibe. They've kvetched about the iPod's price (which I wholly agreed with until Apple started giving the iPod more to do, like the photo integration, color screen, slideshow output, and now video). Gabe has openly asked Mac fans to explain what makes them so great, because, as an artist, he's about the last one alive that still uses a PC for design work. And as I recall, that convo also ended with a sour note about the price. There is a recurring character who is a Mac fan and was originally this spacey, ADD hippie... but lately has morphed into an angry "screw you" beatnik.

But there has been a sea change. From Tycho's Friday newspost:

Gabriel's MacBook doesn't arrive until... they start arriving, later this month, but save for platform-dependent gaming I've used my own Mac for every computing task this week. What I have ascertained is not that PCs as we know them lack good design, but that PCs as we know them have hardly any design to speak of. I'm not trying to be insulting. Use a Mac for a week, and we'll talk again.

I have edited autoexec.bat files in order to optimize the amount of available conventional memory, and I liked doing it, liked being the sort of person who could. As a PC user, enduring the grotesqueries of that experience is something that we are actually proud of. It's come a long way since then, jokes about "blue screens" and what not ring like tired vaudeville acts. But those struggles were certainly real, the battle wounds considerable, and now the skin has grown over it and to a certain extent we think this is just how it is.

I didn't even understand that's what was going on until I started to write this. Like men who love the wilderness for its savage and untamed qualities, I believe many of us are drawn to this stark brutality. That frontier living, the self reliance, the adversity. The Mac, like The Alliance in World of Warcraft, was easy mode.

I don't think that the Macintosh was inspired by ancient holy scrolls, found in a sea cave and excised from the original bible by a convocation of priests and wise men. But I do like it very much. It is extremely good at what it does, which is to say, exposing functionality.

It's a big topic. I'll go into it on Monday.

That's such a great way to put it. I've had numerous chats with PC users who are considering buying a Mac... and many more with Windows advocates who would rather chuck 'em all into the Marianas Trench. And that whole aspect of the elegance, the design, the functionality of the Mac is very difficult to explain. Because Windows users, as Tycho says, are either really into PC maintenance in the first place, or they're so beatdown that they simply can't imagine that there's another option. A better option.

There's a huge disconnect between the "average" PC owner - who really ought to do himself a favor and buy a Mac - and the "pro" PC owner - who just digs that under-the-hood feeling. And it sucks for Mr. Average, because it's the Pros who are out there championing the Windows cause and marching steadily further and further away from what the Average crowd needs to get done in a day.

I recently ran across a weblog where the writer (an IT guy) was frothing mad about OSX because you can't open an app by highlighting the icon and hitting the enter button. He/she declared OSX "the OS designed to annoy" over that. I didn't bother to bookmark that one. But that's how deeply divided the two camps are (average vs. pro). I'll bet most Windows users have never even tried using the enter key to launch something. I know I haven't. Most Windows users I know have never even heard of using alt-tab.

Even the best laid arguments about the superiority of Windows ignore the vast majority of PC owners. Just today I read another weblog, where the writer was all pleased with Songbird, a new media player for Windows... and which happens to be rather iTunes-esque. He was happy to have the choice to use Songbird instead of, jeez, I don't know, WinAmp or Windows Media or Connect or iTunes or whatever else is there. And he smacked around Apple iTunes fans as being "against choice, whether they know it or not." The point is, most people don't want to waste time floating across the internet downloading random programs until they find one they like. Which is why most PC owners have never dared to venture beyond whatever awful audio program has been pre-installed. But we hear that all the time, about all the available software, and all the choice, and all the free market source code... which is great for Pro users, but it's a major headache for Average users. Because much of the PC software out there comes with compatibility issues, with bugs and viruses, or with confusing non-standard interfaces.

That's not to say that there isn't a venue for lousy Mac software. Mac owners can go waste just as much time grabbing OSX downloads. It's just that stock OSX serves the Average user better than stock Windows does. As for how each serves the Pro community best, that's up for debate. But it certainly isn't relevant to most people out there who need working email and internet and home video and music and Tetris and the ability to turn their kid's photograph into a greeting card.

But anyway, the boys of Penny Arcade are now Mac users. And Tycho, at least, seems absolutely smitten with it. It's not like they will toss their PCs out in the trash; they will both maintain gaming rigs, I'm sure. They can continue to be Pro PC users (gamers, chiefly) and still live through a Mac. Gabe hasn't spoken on the daily newspost about his plans; he may hate doing design work on his MacBook because he's so used to his PC setup. But I trust them to be upfront about their shiny new purchases, even though you can bet they will hit a lot of anguish from the Rabid PC Enthusiast crowd. I'll be looking forward to Monday's post.