The Cult of Mac

I have a confession to make. I am a cult member. My wife is a cult member. My kids will probably grow up to be cult members. How did I go about joining such a select group of cultist? I simply purchased a Macintosh. (My wife owns a Macintosh as well.) It is nice to be reminded why one joins a cult, intentionally or not, and that is what Leander Kahney does with his book the Cult of Mac.Kahney does an excellent job detailing the quirky, unique, and even dark underside of the Macintosh computer users. His account is exhaustive, chronicling the tribute Mac users pay to the company and the platform. Kahney includes a look at the psycho-sexual attachment, the soft porn product tributes, box collectors, tattooist, Mac bongs, and other oddball and off beat ways Macintosh users honor their favorite computer platform. He describes the sub cult of Steve (Jobs) and Steve (Wozniak) and their influence on the company and Mac acolytes.The book is fist and foremost a testament to the loyalty of the Macintosh community, it is a book of homage. It is well designed, to the point of being almost over designed. For those looking for a serious, academic look at the cult side of Macintosh users should look elsewhere. For those interested in a glossy overview of the quirks of Macintosh users will find this an interesting and quirky exploration of the world of the Mac cult.

I have read Leander Kahney's Cult of Mac and liked it a lot. Even though I am not a Mac user and never owned any Mac gadgets I thought that the book is very interesting. It is describing a unique phenomenon in our culture when lots of people go crazy for a computer.Being a computer user is not always an enjoyable experience. The software is not intuitive, the hardware is not reliable and so on. In fact, it is quite possible to imagine a society that abandons computers in favor of handwritten book-keeping. After reading this book I got convinced that this would never happen.Computers are surrounded with eternal love. They are taken care of throughout their life cycle. Their purchase or birth is marked with extensive parties often videotaped. Even their packaging is saved - furniture is built of it. As computers get older their guts are replaced with newer content. There are computers 30 years old and still working. Often, one family owns as much as a dozen Macs. If one of them is not used then it is converted into a Macquarium. People decorate their computers with pictures, place Apple graphics on their bodies and cars and advertise them in hundreds of different ways.In general, people do not treat each other as carefully as they treat their Macs. A take-home point from this very optimistic book is that beautiful things are not created but rather developed. Everybody is welcome to the exciting world of computing technology!

Have you ever wondered how crazy Mac/Apple fans are? Well, this is the book to let you know. This book is mainly composed of pictures of crazy Mac/Apple fans and their crazy ways of showing others how much they love Macs. It a good coffee table book to have friends browse through while they are chilling at your house.

If you are a SUPER FAN of Apple and the Steve Jobs empire. This is the book for you. It holds the words of selective Apple super fans and cultural Apple tips to this beautiful Apple community we live in.If you love creativity at it finest then you well appreciate this books and all the rare art forms.If you want to know more about people who has helped build Apple to top. Some them are all in this BOOK.

This is a must book have for any Apple fan(atic)! Get a hardcover and add it to your Apple library. Great job, Leander!

The 2006 "The Cult of Mac" is a paperback updated version of the hardcovered edition which was published in 2004. At a minimum, what author Leander Kahney describes as the "cult" of Macintosh users and fanatics, has grown larger and more influential since 2004. This is primarily due to the iPod phenomenon which has not only broadened Apple's business but helped introduce Macintosh computers to a much larger potential market. Some, or maybe many of these people, are likely to become Mac "cultists".This is a handsomely-produced "coffee table" book with high quality production values. It is loaded with full color photos, graphics, and hip page layout designs which well illustrate the anecdotes, stories, news items, and commentary which make up this book.Like the "Trekkie" movies about Star Trek fanatics which came out not too long ago, this volume shines a spotlight on the quirks, peccadilloes, creativity, and imagination of an intense subgroup of fans worldwide. Kahney asserts that the cult of Mac fans is the biggest subculture in the computer world. They schedule family vacations at MacWorld conventions, worship Apple founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, as superstars, shave Mac logos into their heads, and tattoo the same on their butts and other body parts. Legacy Macs are made into aquariums. At least one fanatic makes intricate models of Mac computers in paper. Mac fans have a reputation of being among the most intense on the Web; dozens of websites alone focus just on rumors of new Apple products.There is a light thread of sociological theory running through the book, but the primary motivation is to entertain and amuse.The most interesting chapter is that covering the iPod and new frontiers in Macdom. Cultists now have new toys and new cultural phenomena to get crazy about- technology as style objects, pod casting, a vast peripheral market for iPod customizations, and the development of a new phobia, playlist anxiety. What will your friends and coworkers think when they hear your playlists? Cool? Hip? Nerd? Scary.

GIFT TO FRIENDS WAS APPRECIATED

great book.

Great fun and informative book and a lovely coffee table book for a gadget aficionado. Its very cleanly presented with interesting photographs. I thought I was a devotee until I read this book a saw the lengths of devotion that some people have with anything Apple. As a relative newcomer to Apple ( the 3GS was my first Apple hardware baring iPods ) it was really interesting seeing the development of their machines. Funny that I recalled how much I liked the design of the original iMac on seeing it after a long time.You'll fly through reading it smiling as you go. If I had one or two slight criticisms its that at times the author seems to reiterate the same facts but really its not that big a problem and it could do with a few extra chapters on the end now I think given the amazing developments at Apple in the last few years. Perhaps their current success will never generate the fanaticism that the early days did given that some people are starting to see getting a mac as a mainstream purchase now.After reading this though I fancy getting in line for a product launch ha ha!

Questo è un buon libro: è una raccolta che fa da testimonianza al mondo degli utenti Apple. Alcune vicende narrate sembrano incredibili, ma le persone si raccontano quasi sempre senza vergogna.Leander Kahney, già autore di Inside Steve's Brain (dedicato al punto di vista di Jobs) ci racconta questa volta l'esperienza delle persone che hanno usufruito e continuano a utilizzare i prodotti con il marchio Apple.Le curiosità aiutano a tenere leggera la lettura.

This book is highly recommended for MAC Geek, those who are deeply in love with Macintosh, or even PC users who want to know more about MAC or why MAC users are so passionate about their machine. It tells you about the MAC culture that approximately 25 million people share around the world and what it is like to be a MAC person.

Well written and a good read.