Before anyone sends me any email, let me recognize straight-off that the title of this editorial is, yes, quite stupid. Every Mac, and consequently ever Mac user, is atypical — they're Macs for crying out loud, different by definition and now by ad campaign. However, my Mac may be more atypical than most, seeing as how I literally spend 10 hours a day (minimum) in front of this beloved little bugger (Reece is its name). I'm writing this early Sunday morning, and the below tells the story of my day.
Saturday, 14 February 1998
11:15 am — I awake. I was up until 4 am last night, so cut me some slack. You know what I was doing? Playing around on my Mac. I'll get into the "playing" later.
11:15:01 am — I click the left trackball button. This spins up the hard drive and wakes up my screen. I'm ready to rock and roll.
11:15:20 am — I first check email. Blech, a bunch of listserve digests. They get skimmed and trashed. Important email is then read and replied to.
12:00 noon — Time to eat breakfast, ahem, lunch. I gulp down some reheated pizza while reading the news on my favorite Nintendo 64 websites. Zelda 64's gone beta, awesome!
12:30 pm — Time to do Apple Wizards stuff. I gather all of the articles I have to edit and pop them open in Emailer. Someone sends me an ICQ message and I chat with them. Three articles edited in one day, not too bad!
1:30 pm — I get to thinking about my Nintendo 64. I pop in a FIFA '98 and Madden 64 (not at the same time, of course), and play them. On my Mac. Yes, it's also my television.
2:30 pm — I realize that I have to catch up on the news, so I pop open a little TV window and watch it in the lower-right portion of my monitor while I read and answer more email.
 
3:00 pm — The girlfriend calls. Yes, it's Valentine's day. I'm glad I
finished up her web page/Valentine's Day card last night.
3:10 pm — Heh, a short call. Time to write my A Spider Speaks column now...
4:00 pm — Web design time. I have 3 current projects that I must finish up, and some tweaking of the Apple Wizards site to accomplish. BBEdit is launched and away I go!
8:00 pm — I get tired of staring at <HTML> and I close BBEdit. It thanks me. I'm hungry, and my Cherry Coke just won't cut it, so I order a pizza from my Mac. No anchovies. Gotta love technology!
8:02 pm — Email beckons once again. After that's done with, I surf my daily sites. Not much happens on the weekends, so this only takes about 30 minutes.
9:00 pm — Dang that pizza was good! Time to futz with more Apple Wizards stuff. Graphics get made and the issue starts to get compiled! I'm a busy bee.
10:00 pm — I watch the Olympics a little. On my Mac. I record some of the skaters and lugers and skiiers into QuickTime movies so I can later play with VideoShop and make a "best of Nagano" video or something.
11:00 pm — You're starting to get the picture, right? I continue in the above fashion until about 2am. My Mac spins down and so do I — right on top of my bed. Zzzzzzzz.....
Note: Not once did this day did I restart Reece nor did any applications crash. I wasn't a wimp — I had as many as 13 open at any given time.
My point? Wait, I had one. Where'd it go? Aha! Gotcha you little bugger. My point is that the above is atypical. No PC-using dolt, I mean person, would ever do what I have done above. First of all, they couldn't use 13 applications at once and not crash. Second of all, the PC is simply a tool (when it works) to them. They use it to type papers and graph stock trends and then they shut them off. Younger PC morons, I mean children, may play Quake or something on them.
The Mac is different. I accomplished a lot, and it was all fun. Never have I felt that using my Mac has been work. Try that on a PC.
  Erik J. Barzeski
erik@applewizards.net
http://applewizards.net/staff/erikbarzeski.html
 
SiteLink Poster Contest
Our friends at SiteLink, in cooperation with Apple Wizards, MacCentral, and the Mac Surfshop, have announced a cool new product that you can take part in designing! SiteLink will be producing a full-color 18" x 24" poster that will feature the logos of all your favorite Mac web sites, and you can help select the sites! Also, vote for your selection of the best 3 sites and if your sites come up in the final tally in order, you could get your name on the poster! Other prizes will also be awarded, including SiteLink CDs and pens, and T-shirts from the Mac Surfshop (kindly donated by Michael Yrabedra of the Surfshop, who's also doing the final design work on the poster). The contest runs through Saturday, March 14, so stop by now and make your vote count! More info on the poster and contest can be found at http://www.sitelink.net/PosterContest.shtml .
