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Neville was a nerd, a computer nerd that is. Night and day he would be locked up with his face glued to his computer screen. His wife had left him years ago to find someone who would at least say hello now and again. He rather liked the peace of being left alone and he settled into a life in cyberspace only returning to the real world to dash out for a takeaway, go for a leak or to do a bit of work to keep the wolf from the door. He had managed to find work in an internet café so even going to work wasn’t too much of a chore.
Neville the Nerd would often visit his friend Andy down the road. Andy the Anorak was a computer repair man and Neville would often visit him to get his computer repaired or upgraded or to sort out some networking problem. Andy made lots of money out of Neville but he didn’t mind, it was good to have a like-minded soul to share his passion.
Neville was blissfully happy but then one day his world was rudely interrupted. There was a knock on the door.
“Neville the Nerd?” the nice man said.
“Yes”
“Remember filling in a raffle ticket at last month’s computer show?”
“Yes”
“Well you have won a computer, congratulations.”
He handed Neville a small box.
“Where’s the computer?” asked Neville.
“That’s it” said the nice man and left.
Neville felt uneasy, he was holding a box smaller than a shoe box.
He opened it and pulled out a small flat block about 6 inches square by 2 inches deep.
He found some cables and an instruction book. All he had to do was plug his existing monitor, keyboard and mouse into the back of the thing and switch it on.
As it started a big friendly face came on the screen. “It’s an Apple Macintosh” he groaned. His heart sank. He had heard about these things before. “They are expensive, you can’t get many programs for them, they are slow and you certainly can’t connect them to other computers” people had told him.
He thought he’d give it go so he started clicking on icons and trying to find his way around. He felt uneasy, this is too simple he thought. It took him a couple of days to get used to it but he was surprised to find that it came with lots of programs including all of the standard software from Microsoft, Adobe, MYOB, Quark, the list went on and on. The operating system had just about anything he could wish for such as email, web browser, dictionary and address book and many things he had never even heard of.
But worryingly there was one important thing missing, there was no antivirus program!
He went to bed and couldn’t sleep, this machine was unnerving him.
The next morning he pulled out the manual and found the phone number of a service agent. He dialled the number.
“I have a new Macintosh and it doesn’t have an antivirus program.”
“You don’t really need an antivirus program for a Mac sir” came the friendly reply. “There are so few viruses no one ever bothers.”
“What about adware?”
“What?”
“Spyware?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about sir.”
“I want to install network and a video cards but I can’t get the top off.”
“You don’t need to sir, it comes fully configured with everything you need”
“What, everything?” said Neville “you mean I can’t go out and enjoy shopping for the latest sound or wireless card?”
“Sorry sir”
“How do I install a CD burner?”
“Already In there sir.”
He was starting to get really fed up. Every excuse to tinker with this thing was being stymied.
“ I understood that these were just toys for trendy people” he said in frustration.
“Oh no sir, Macintosh is generally accepted as the world standard for the design, print and publishing industries where computers have to be fast to handle the graphics. With their high level of security even intelligence agencies are using Apple. The Bali Snowboarding Club went over to Apple two years ago.”
“Oh and how did that go?”
“I don’t know sir, we haven’t heard from them since.”
“Is this computer I won worth a lot of money”
“Well no sir, you can buy one for about five and a half million Rupiah although the savings in maintenance and downtime can be worth a lot.”
“I don’t want to know” muttered Neville.
One day Neville thought he would try and amuse himself and bought a new printer. He started looking for the printer driver. There was no “Mac” driver. “What do I do now?” he thought. He plugged the printer in anyway. Suddenly a message came up on the screen “Cannon i255 printer, your printer has been successfully installed.”
“Damn” he thought “won’t this thing let me do anything for myself?”
Time passed. The days turned into weeks and Neville the Nerd was bored. Everyday the thing just worked, it never crashed, there was never a networking problem to sort out even when opening files on other operating systems. He never needed to go to Andy to get it repaired and anyway Andy wasn’t speaking to him anymore. He said he had gone over to “the dark side” and mumbled something about putting a lot of people out of work.
Neville was also lonely. Those friendly little messages asking you to upgrade your software or connect to the internet never appeared. There were no interesting little boxes saying “file XN133.dll not found” and he missed the friendly little dog with the waggy tail and the cute paper clip that says “I see you are making a list……”.
Finally, one day, he had had enough, there was no challenge in this frustrating machine.
He unplugged this infernal little box and put it away in the back of a cupboard. He pulled out his old beige friend that had accompanied him through many a computing challenge over the years. They had done a lot together, finding lost files, seeking out adware and fighting off attacks by worms and Trojans.
He switched it on. “Your virus definitions are out of date, click here to download the latest version.”
“That’s better” he thought as the familiar comforting sight of the virus definitions download ran across the screen.
He connected to the internet. Suddenly a news item popped up on the screen. He reeled in horror at the words before him.
“Apple computer sales up 38%” it read.
“Oh no” a voice in his head screamed “the dark side are taking over!”
Phil Wilson
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