NEW WINDOWS 7 FLAW LEADS TO DANGEROUSLY HIGH SMUGNESS LEVELS IN MAC COMMUNITY

If you thought Mac users were smug before, you have no idea. The "black screen of death" flaw in a recent Windows 7 patch has brought out the worst in us.

I must admit, it's a pretty sweet feeling, all those PC users wringing their hands and shouting at the sky helpless and alone. It brings me back to a time of great smugness, back before iTunes was available for Windows. Ah, those were good times. These days I usually only experience a fleeting glimmer of that sensation after the report of a major hard-drive-eating Windows-only virus or when somebody tells me they want to edit video on their PC. In the latter case, I usually stick around for an over-the-shoulder view of the inevitable catastrophe.

"I thought you came over here to help me out," they invariably say.

"No," I reply. "I came here to laugh. Sorry."

So, you can understand why this is a great moment for people like me. So precious is this moment, as a matter of fact, that I would love to commemorate it with a hand-crafted porcelain figurine of a hapless PC user slitting his or her wrists at the sight of a black, lifeless screen. That would be great.

The best part is that if you're a loyal PC user you can't even see this right now because your screen is black. So, ha! I'm smirking so hard right now- it's a shame you can't see it. It's a rather good smirk, I think. Maybe I'll take a picture so you can see it when you finally get your computer back up and running.

Here's the bottom line: you bought a crappy computer because it was slightly cheaper than a Mac, spent hours setting it up and buying new software and now it doesn't work. Ha. Let me drag that one out for a bit so it can really sink in. Haaaaa.

Your OS deliberately copied the Mac interface model as much as legally possible. In fact, that was the nicest thing anybody could say about Windows 7 at the launch: it's a lot like a mac. And still it failed you- not due to some malware you downloaded but a patch from the the Redmond mothership herself. [Update: Apparently this last part isn't true, but it hardly makes the story less pathetic.]

Again, haaaaaaa!

Considering the amount of money PC users spend on anti-virus software and other utilities that attempt to fix the underlying security and functionality problems inherent in the Windows architecture, the "PCs are cheaper" argument is particularly laughable. And you might be laughing at that last sentence, too, if your computer was still working. A PC is better and cheaper to own in the same way that the American healthcare system is the best in the world. Both are fantastic if you never actually need them.

On the bright side, the problem is quite fixable as it turns out. The IT experts at Ars Technica recommend the following procedure:

Restart machine
Resrart machine
Attempt to downgrade to Windows XP
Resrart machine
Purchase a Mac

As you can see from the previous paragraph, smugness among Mac users has now reached dangerously high levels. With this in mind, a group of Mac users has written a passionate appeal to Microsoft pleading with them to stop writing poorly-crafted patches and make its products better, otherwise the smugness among Mac users could become deadly.

Perhaps this has been Microsoft's plan all along, to eliminate the market for their competition and leave behind only those easy-going souls willing to pay a premium for crappy software.

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