The Cult of Mac

There is no product on the planet that enjoys the devotion of a Macintosh computer. Apple's machines have legions of loyal, sometimes demented fans. Like fans of a football team, cultish TV series, or rock group, Macintosh fanatics have their own subculture, with clearly defined obsessions, rites, and passages. Fans who get Mac tattoos and haircuts; people who attend Apple Store openings; counterculture icons; people who turn old Macs into aquariums (or bongs); Ellen Fein lookalike contests; erotic fiction featuring Steve Jobs; it's all here. Wired columnist Leander Kahney exposes all sides of Mac fanaticism, from the innocuous to the in(s)ane.

Leander Kahney is an editor at Wired News, where his Cult of Mac blog is a reader favorite. Previously, Kahney covered Apple and the Mac community for Wired News. He treats his subjects with insight and humor and his experiences interacting with Mac fanatics and attending Mac events around the world are highly entertaining. Kahney's work introduces an element of warmth not usually associated with technology reporting.

Macintosh Madness	p. 2
Techno Fetishism	p. 4
Mac Loyalty	p. 5
Hey, I'm a Loyal Mac User, Too	p. 7
Apple's Stickiest Marketing Ploy	p. 8
Music About Macs	p. 11
Film: Mac Fervor, Malcolm X Style	p. 13
Mac O'Lanterns Light up Halloween	p. 14
Mac OS X Birthday Parties, or Blowing Out a Candle for OS X	p. 16
New Apple Stores Make Fast Mac Friends	p. 18
Tekserve: New York's Mom-and-Pop Apple Shop	p. 21
Unpacking the iMac	p. 23
All Aboard! (But No PCs Allowed)	p. 25
Sexy Desktops	p. 28
Macs and the Counterculture	p. 31
Macs and Pot	p. 32
The iBong	p. 36
Free Love and Selling Macs	p. 37
Ellen Feiss: Stoner Celebrity	p. 42
Feiss Look-Alikes	p. 44
Apple and the Church of Satan	p. 45
Worshipping the two Steves	p. 47
The Cofounders: Jobs and Wozniak	p. 48
Jobs for President	p. 53
Slash Fiction: Bill/Steve's Sexcellent Adventure	p. 54
Mac Tattoos and Haircuts	p. 56
Tat's the Way MacHeads Like It	p. 58
The Professor and His Mac Tattoo	p. 66
Mac Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow	p. 67
Macspotting	p. 68
Macspotting: The New Obsession	p. 69
Apple Product Placement	p. 70
Hollywood: Good Guys Use Macs	p. 71
Mac Evangelism	p. 75
The EvangeList	p. 76
Some of the Guys in Aisle Six	p. 79
Case Study-Lewis Perelman	p. 81
Guy Kawasaki	p. 81
Arun Gupta and the SPA	p. 83
The Mac Web	p. 84
Apple's Unofficial PR Corp	p. 85
Rumor Sites - Picking Up Where Mac the Knife Left Off	p. 86
Rodney O. Lain: The iBrotha	p. 88
Inside the Mind of a MacCommunist	p. 89
Apple Haters	p. 90
Gatherings of the Clan	p. 94
Tales of Macworld	p. 96
The Gathering of the Mac Clan	p. 98
The Line for Macworld Keynotes	p. 105
Macworld: Vacation Destination	p. 106
Mac the Knife Party	p. 106
Mac Deadhead Camps in Style	p. 109
Iceland's Hot for Macworld	p. 111
PCs Don't Go Gently into Macworld	p. 111
What's Behind Apple's Curtain?	p. 112
Jobs' Potty Mouth	p. 114
No One Gets In Without a Badge	p. 114
Going the Distance to Get to Macworld	p. 115
Macs in Japan	p. 119
Mac Love: Japanese Style	p. 121
Macworld Tokyo	p. 122
User Groups and Upgrade Clubs	p. 129
In Japan, Upgrading Beats Buying	p. 130
The Undying Devotion to the PowerBook 2400	p. 132
Kaizo	p. 133
PowerMate: Volume Control Knob Turns Heads	p. 139
Computer Mac Kan	p. 140
Goshu Trading: Where Old Macs Go Off to Thrive	p. 142
Incessant Tinkerers	p. 144
Macquariums	p. 146
Mac Aquariums	p. 147
Fantasy Macs	p. 150
Ersatz Designs Honor Apple	p. 152
Isamu Sanada: Master Maker of Mock-up Macs	p. 156
The Passion for Designing Macs	p. 159
Learning Design: Absorbing Apple's Aesthetic	p. 167
Flat-Screen iMac Designed by an Amateur?	p. 170
Hardware Mods	p. 172
Mac Modders	p. 174
Kent Salas' Blue Ice	p. 176
Jeff Paradiso's Web Pad	p. 179
Christophe Jobic's iBook	p. 180
Paper Macs	p. 181
Andrew Dusing's Mac Box Furniture	p. 188
Hoarders and Recyclers	p. 192
Mac Collectors and Collectibles	p. 194
RedLightRunner, Saving Collectibles to the Macs	p. 195
Three Apple Collectors	p. 198
Raines Cohen, T-shirt Collector	p. 200
Andy Warhol's Apple Logo Print	p. 203
Caesar Lima's Studio Museum	p. 204
Antique Macs	p. 206
The Incredible Devotion to the Color Classic	p. 209
$500 for an Empty Box	p. 213
The Most Collectible Apple I	p. 215
Black Mac	p. 217
Bruce Damer's DigiBarn	p. 219
The Newton	p. 220
One Man's Retro Mac Revival	p. 224
Web Revival for Old Mac Interface	p. 227
HyperCard: Forgotten but Not Gone	p. 229
HyperCard: What Could Have Been	p. 231
New Frontiers	p. 232
iPOD	p. 234
Music to Hackers' Ears	p. 235
iPod Piracy (Have iPod, Will Secretly Bootleg)	p. 238
Other Forms of Theft	p. 239
Andrew Andrew (They Walk Alike, They DJ Alike)	p. 240
iPod DJing (With an iPod, Who Needs a Turntable?)	p. 242
iPods Around the World	p. 244
What Makes Mac Fans So Loyal?	p. 246
Apple: It's All About the Brand	p. 250
For Mac Users, It Takes a Village	p. 252
Worshipping at the Altar of Mac	p. 254
Baby, Friend, Pet: That's My Mac	p. 258
Index	p. 261
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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