About

We’re shameless, it’s true.

If it’s possible for a technology company to have groupies, then we are definitely on the bus with Apple. Yep, we’re officially Hangin with the Band.

We’re AppleSluts.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Some of us are dudes. Some of us aren’t exactly as young as others. Some of us could pretty much work the Genius Bar at the mall, while others of us get all happy if we figure out how to change the color of the desktop.

But that’s the beauty of Apple. It speaks many languages. You can be young or old, hip or hopeless, a raving geek or a recovering Luddite, and some product or feature or capability can spark your imagination and fill you with AppleLust.

How do they do that? We don’t know. But that’s part of what we’re here to check out.

But we’re not just here to worship—we’re also here to help. So bring us your questions, and we’ll try to help you figure out the answers. And if there are things that piss you off, we want to hear about those too. We’re not such crazed zealots that we can’t see things that can be improved.

(Like, for example: Why, in the name of all things good and true, did they hook up the iPhone with the Evil Empire of AT&T? Whose idea was that? And more importantly, when are they going to fix it?)

Are you an AppleSlut? If you look at Apple stuff and think “iWant,” you’re definitely one of us.

So don’t just sit there with your iPhone in your hand; talk to us. There’s plenty of room on the bus.

CONTRIBUTORS

Felix—Okay, you want to know how something works, here’s the dude to talk to. Seriously, the man’s operating system is universally synchronized with technological advancement.

Whether he’s blogging, doing web design, masterminding search optimization, or just messing around with Halo, he seems to be plugged into The Way Things Work. Some of us think maybe his awesome full-sleeve tattoo has something to do with it, but that’s just a theory.

Anyway, the crazy thing is, he only came over from the Other Side in 1997. That’s when he started using Macs as a graphic design student. Since then, he’s been using one every day at work. But somehow he’d always had a Windows PC at home, which is just so wrong.

That all changed in 2007 though, when he finally got himself an iMac. It was OSX that did it. Who can blame him? Has there ever been a sweeter operating system?

So now he’s a hopeless AppleSlut—iMac, iPhone, iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, the whole nine. When a guy like that falls, he falls hard.

Fiona—The other half of the original, unlikely AppleSlut duo, Fiona has many fine qualities, but technological proficiency isn’t one of them.

We don’t like to say she’s slow exactly, but if the world was about to blow up and Fiona had 37 seconds to hack into the program, find the glitch, and neutralize the bomb or whatever—yeah, well, let’s just be glad it isn’t. (Unless maybe she had her iPhone with her* and could call Anthony, who would no doubt figure it out.)

Not that she’s stupid, Fiona. Really. It’s more like she got born into the wrong century somehow, that she was actually supposed to live in some slower, quieter time and place, like down the road from Emily Dickinson or something, but there was some kind of Wretched Terrible Mistake and here she is, stuck in this bewildering video game we call Modern Life, surrounded by a bunch of scary machines that are supposed to make her life easier but seem designed to drive her mad. And not in a good way.

Which is, of course, why Fiona loves Apple. These are machines a poet can love.They’re not the grey and forbidding tools of the postmodern plutocracy. (What?) They’re friendly, for god’s sake. They’re designed for people, ordinary people who don’t know shit about computers.

There’s something intuitive about them; you don’t really have to know what you’re doing to use one. And most mysteriously of all, they’re hot. There’s no explaining it; they just are. Who knew technology could actually be sexy. (Hey—they don’t call us AppleSluts for nothing.)

So it’s been Macs all the way for Fiona, since she was a wee lass. She’s been a writer for eons, and all on Macs, but the poor girl still needs remedial help when it comes to anything that has a chip in it, unless it’s from the bakery.

*In point of fact, Fiona doesn’t have an iPhone yet, and much as she lusts for one, she refuses to give it up until they get out of bed with AT&freakingT. Even AppleSluts have principles.

Like I said, we’re an unlikely duo. The two of us kind of represent the extremes of the techno-continuum: those who know what they’re doing without even thinking about it, and those who really mostly don’t.

But we both think Apple rules. And we’re all about sharing what we do—and what we don’t—know. So if you just figured out how to jailbreak your iPhone, or some other tech-head craziness, tell us about it.

On the other hand, if you won an iPod in a raffle six months ago (you tart!) but still haven’t figured out how to use it—and you’re too embarrassed to ask someone—ask us about it. (Or any other seemingly stupid question about how stuff works.) Anthony or one of our brilliant guests will help you figure it out. And then Fiona can find out too.

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS
Yussel—Yussel is old. He is so old he has been using Macs since 1982, a tan rectangle with a black-and-white screen, a roaring 128 k, and AppleWrite. It replaced a series of Radio Shack Trash 80s. He was, in fact, one of the first freelance writers in the country to use computers instead of typewriters. He groks the aesthetics of Apple products. The author of 10 books, he is actually teaching at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (in a journalism department that is 90 percent Macs), surrounded by people with iTouch players who keep waving them in his face as if he lusts for one. Ridiculous. He lusts for an iPhone and came THIS close to buying one during the holidays. Unfortunately for Apple—and for him—he didn’t have the money.