Are Mac Users Snobs? Your OS and Your Identity

A Mindset Media study published in US stock market news site The Street asserts that Mac users tend to be snobs. Calm down, Mac users. Put down the projectiles, please. If it makes you feel any better, PC users are supposedly cheapskates. But seriously, the whole idea behind this poll is a great example of how identity is tied up with our online—and offline—activities.

So what does your choice of operating system say about your identity? It really depends. Let’s do a little analysis of a television ad by Novell in order to explore this.


(NOTE: Novell is a software corporation that produces a Linux distribution called SUSE Linux for profit. Portrayals of competing companies Microsoft and Apple may not be accurate.)

This is a rather convenient way of looking at the prevalent stereotypes regarding not only the operating systems themselves, but the people who use them.

We’ll start with Mac. He’s a pretty young, hip guy; attractive, amusing and generally likable. He’s a casual and somewhat sloppy leopard-print shirt in honour of his operating system, Mac OSX Leopard. He’s pretty much a yuppie, but he’s harmless and fun.

PC is an older, slightly harried man with a somewhat peevish attitude. He is portrayed as staid, conventional, and a little dorky. He’s wearing an almost ridiculous-looking leather jacket in honour of his flashy new operating system, Windows Vista. Beneath the jacket, however is a suit. He’s obviously geared more toward business.

But wait, there’s a new kid in town. It’s Linux. A young, pretty female trots into the picture. She’s smart and slightly mocking of her counterparts. She definitely feels superior. She’s wearing simple, business casual clothes, stylish as well as professional and fun. While we watch, she’s given a leather jacket and sunglasses, taking the best aspects of Mac’s look and PC’s look.

These are nice character sketches, but what do they tell us about identity?

Mac’s portrayal plays right into the supposed “snob” characterization of his users. His yuppie style mirrors his users’ propensity toward coffee shops and, for some reason, buying at least five pairs of sneakers per year. Macs (and their users) are traditionally seen as being more intuitive and better with creative applications. They’re expensive for what you get, but people are willing to pay for the certain cachet that comes with having a Mac.

PC’s portrayal carries with it the manifold and highly publicized prejudices against Windows Vista. He’s a bit of a dork, with outdated glasses and a tragic haircut, but he can obviously get a job done, especially one with numbers. We tend to consider PCs as business machines—after all, Windows is the business standard, even if Microsoft was off the mark with Vista. Users appreciate it because of its wide-ranging applications and its familiarity.

Linux’s portrayal demonstrates the superiority many Linux users feel when they consider Mac and PC users. They see themselves as the cognoscenti of the computing world. Not only are most of the distributions free, appealing to the stick-it-to-the-man type, but installing and using the Linux operating system implies some knowledge about computers and programming. This also means that Linux users are likely to become Linux producers, stealing and modifying bits of code or ideas from other operating systems and incorporating them into customized Linux distributions.

You can see, then, that your choice of operating system just might say something about your identity as a computer user.

So what are you? A businesslike dork or a fun-loving snob? Or a Linux user…