6 déc. 20192 Min
Back in 2004, then-Wired editor Leander Kahney published The Cult of Mac, a photo-filled book containing an array of anecdotes about fans, collectors, and others with special connections to Apple and the Mac. While Kahney took the opportunity to add a chapter on the iPod when the book was published as a paperback edition a couple of years later, the book remains an interesting look at a time when Apple had only recently surfaced from its near-death experience of the 1990s.
As outlined by Kahney in The Cult of Mac, Apple may even have been saved by those devotees to the Mac, some of whom became an army of essentially unpaid evangelists seeking to convert over to Mac anyone and everyone who would listen. Some even went as far as to stake out CompUSA stores to educate or counteract clueless salespeople who only wanted to sell Windows machines and were uninterested in directing customers to the Mac section of the stores, while others shared their love for the Mac with the world through tattoos, stickers, vanity license plates, and more.
So now with 2020 right around the corner, Kahney has teamed up with David Pierini, a writer for Kahney’s independent Cult of Mac site, to release a second edition of The Cult of Mac, another photo-heavy book that would fit right in on any Apple fan’s coffee table. Rather than a revision or update of the original, the second edition of The Cult of Mac is more of a companion book, revisiting some of the same themes but introducing some new ones and sharing new anecdotes about some of Apple’s biggest fans.
The coffee table nature of the second edition of The Cult of Mac is evident before you even open the cover, as the book itself is cleverly designed to resemble one of Apple’s iconic MacBooks, wrapped in a silver plastic jacket with an Apple-shaped title logo on the “lid” of the book. There are even four black “feet” on the rear of the book to match those used on Apple’s notebooks.
The book wraps up with a look at those dedicated Apple fans whose obsessions date back even further than the Mac to the Apple II family, as well as a quick trip around the world to look at fandom in several different countries, including an iPad magician in Germany, the Russian and Ukrainian luxury iPhone markets, and users in the Middle East who use special cases to carry multiple iPhones for work and personal use.
The Cult of Mac, Second Edition debuts December 17, and it’s available for pre-order now at Amazon in hardcover for $39.95, or if you don’t have a need for the physical book you can pre-order the Kindle edition or Apple Books edition for $23.99.