Loyal to the (Apple) Core

I am a loyal Apple girl. I have my 40GB third-generation iPod (and I actually know what all those words mean), I have an iPod shuffle, I have an iBook, and I have a ruby-red iMac circa 2000. If I dig around, I could even unearth my first Apple laptop, a Powerbook 180 that weighs about 25 pounds and has a screen the size of a single slice of bread (ok, maybe two slices, stretched out). However, all my loyalties aside, I have to say this:

Just because you can write the code for the elegant and easy-to-use MacOS doesn't mean you can write good poetry.

This may seem like a non sequitur, and if you're surprised, then you must be new to this blog. Thanks for stopping by! For the newbies and veteran readers alike, I would like to share the following poem, written by some unnamed person and embedded within Mac OSX to discourage potential hackers from pirating the software that now runs on Intel chips. Here it is (quoted on cnn.com last month):

"Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind
he'd do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don't steal Mac OS!
Really, that's way uncool."(C) Apple Computer, Inc.
-- Apple's poetic warning to would-be hackers

Limerick or not, it still sucks. Sorry, Apple. I love you, but please don't write any more poetry. It hurts me. It hurts me deep.

But this does beg the question: How effective is poetry at discouraging crime? That sounds like a national study waiting to happen. I wonder if it would work against muggers, such as the guy who held up me and three friends at gunpoint in Berkeley several years ago. Maybe I should have quoted poetry at him, like this:

There once was a robber named Dan
who tried to take money from Stan
But Stan was bigger than he
And kicked Dan in the knee
Now Dan can't walk anymore and learned his lesson.

Ok, so it's not going to win the Pulitzer, but it's a work in progress, alright? And I can see how it might work. I mean, the mugger could have doubled over laughing, giving us time to get away before he could take our money. Why, I could be $25 richer today if I had just been more poetic!

Well, it's fun to dream about what might have been. But the truth is, I find it pretty unlikely that a couple of hackers, after stumbling across Apple's poem, will look at each other and say, "Awww, look at that! A poem, just for us! Hey man, you know what? This IS way uncool! What were we thinking? And after all, they did say 'please.' Let's not pirate Mac OS!"

It's a nice thought, Apple. And hey, it made me laugh, if not the hackers. But please have some mercy on my literary sensibilities--they're easily outraged. I wouldn't want them to spoil a beautiful relationship.