Hail Apple, full of grace

The press has it all wrong. The New York Times, C|Net, PC Magazine, even Macworld, they all seem to think that Apple Computer is a corporation, a business entity composed of management and employees that produces products for customers in order to maximize investment profits for stockholders. But it’s not.

Sure, it has the outward appearance of a corporation, and even issues quarterly reports and sales figures. But Apple is no mere company.

Businesses, no matter how endearing their product, do not evoke the emotional response Apple does from its loyal base of Macintosh fanatics.

No, Apple is a religion – a religion complete with sacraments and sacramentals, icons and saints, temples and councils, gurus and students. Occasionally this fact is recognized by the more discerning observers of the fruit company’s story – particularly Wired, which in the dark days of 1997 ran a cover featuring the Apple logo wrapped in a crown of thorns above a single, ominous word: “Pray.”

But what turns a corporation into a religion?

It takes a company with a soul, a company that is unique. And Apple is certainly that.

You could kill the Dell dude. Butcher Gateway’s cow. Even replace Microsoft’s Windows, and the industry would march on. But Apple is indispensable. If this fruit rots, so does the core of computer innovation. So believer or skeptic, all should pay close attention to the fate of Cupertino, California’s crown corporate jewel.

Apple’s religious nature stood in stark relief at 10:20 p.m. this past Friday, when the company rolled out its biggest software product ever, the first truly polished version of its new core software, Mac OS X.

Across the country 50,000 faithful souls stood in lines, some up to three or four hours, to be amongst the first to purchase this new OS, which is generally referred to by its codename, “Jaguar.”

Now, late night software releases have been held before, but never quite like this. Whereas the grandstanding premiere of Windows 95 drew computer aficionados to their local CompUSAs in droves, the mood at those affairs could never match the atmosphere at Apple’s spectacle.

The desperation that drives Windows users to whip out $99.95 every three years (along with the prayer “please, please work right this time”) stands in stark contrast to the jubilation of the Jaguar introduction.

Like the religious revival that it was, the Apple faithful jostled and joked in a very un-Microsoft way as they awaited their turn to receive the digital Communion in Apple’s 35 name-brand sacred sanctums.

And what sanctums these Apple Stores, these Temples to Macintosh, are. Far removed from the nerdy and cluttered warehouse look of the shops that sell Microsoft-loyal PCs, Apple’s establishments are slick, clean cathedrals befitting this most New Age of religions.

The icons and atmosphere of the Mac religion permeates every square foot of these stores.

Along the front, like reliquaries to Saints, are posters of the Switchers, the omnipresent Apple converts currently giving their Testimonies to Steve Jobs’ Good News on TV screens across the land.

There’s the one of David Carey, publisher of Newsweek. And look, next to him is Apple’s Joan of Arc, Ellen Feiss, whose stoner expression and uniquely teenage inflection (“My name is Ellen Feiss? And I’m a student?”) has given her a cult of her own among teens on the Net.

And like any sacred space, the architecture leads you to the altar, or in this case the theater, where videos are shown, and classes and sermons (né#233;e demos) are held.

To the side of the altar lies the Genius Bar, where Apple acolytes can receive the wisdom of Mac gurus, who sit on stylish stools, repeating their mantras … “zap the PRAM” … “rebuild the desktop” … “Macs can’t get that virus,” while throughout the world the heathens cry “control-alt-delete!” as they wail and gnash their teeth.

Gateway may have stores, but they feel like barns, and who would stand in line for four hours to attend the opening of one, as tends to happen whenever Apple opens a new retail space? Microsoft may dwarf Apple, but how many people wrote eulogies to recently axed Office Clippy, as many Mac fans did to the “Happy Mac” icon that was recently thrown to the wolves … err, Jaguars? No one cared about Clippy.

But people care about Apple, and that is why it matters. Because Apple represents more than just a different type of computer, it is a religion.

A religion that says that technology need not be intimidating, complicated or the province of a few selected high priests lucky enough to memorize the right C-prompt codes.

A religion that says that computers were made to serve man, and thus should work in a way that makes sense to man, not require the user to conform to the habits of an inscrutable machine.

A religion that offers up usability and design as the sacraments of a technological age that drowns in powerful tools that are impossible to use.

And that’s a religion worth embracing, that’s a faith worth spreading as we walk into a world surrounded by machines that will either obey us or control us.

That’s a doctrine worth sharing to a world often incapable of embracing the very tools it has created.

That’s a church, or cult, worth joining to help build a world where personal technology is truly personal.

So let us pray.