# Your Mac-- Male or Female? :)



## Bluefusion (Apr 18, 2002)

This isn't as bizzare a question as it seems (OK, maybe it is). I have had rather fascinating discussions with many many people about the presumed gender of their Macs... and it's not just "my iMac is purple so it's a girl"-- sometimes there is a lot of real thought put into the idea. If you start thinking of your Mac this way, you start thinking of he/she more as a person. 

For example, I have always felt that my dad's G4 tower is "male", while someone on MacAddict had an interesting viewpoint and explained to me why he thought his was "female"... so it's not just about the generic model, it's about the characterization that you give your machine.

For me... my LCD iMac is female (her name is Trillian, after the last woman on Earth in the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_), my mom's iceBook is male, and my Blueberry iBook/300 is also female. As stated above, my dad's G4 is considered male.

So what do you think, guys and gals?


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## AdmiralAK (Apr 18, 2002)

who cares 
it's a mac


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## xoot (Apr 18, 2002)

My iBook is male.


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## AdmiralAK (Apr 18, 2002)

how do you figure that out ?
all connectioning ports are female....right ? 


Admiral


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## .dev.lqd (Apr 18, 2002)

Mostly it's in the name...

I've found that it's good luck to name your machine... not just your name... but a name like it was a pet.

My DP500 is named Gibralter... since tossing OS X onto it it's been living up to it's namesake


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## googolplex (Apr 18, 2002)

Yes the ports on computers are all female. I guess all my peripherals are male then. If this applies then my mouse, powercord and smartmedia reader get the most action.


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## unlearnthetruth (Apr 18, 2002)

her name is Miranda


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## Valrus (Apr 19, 2002)

I don't know about my Mac, but I know my acoustic guitar is male, and named Gimli. The suggestion was from a friend (named Miranda, incidentally, to whom I sent an email pointing her to this thread), and I used it for three reasons:

1. It's a dreadnought-style, big-bodied guitar, like a dwarf
2. I like puns
3. "And my axe!" See #2.

Heh.

-the valrus


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## voice- (Apr 19, 2002)

My main computer(the tower) is male. It gives MALE performance and makes MALE sounds!
My PeeCee, however, is female. It looked like a good buy, once I had it I wanted something better and it just kept costing more money as the days went by...


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## scruffy (Apr 19, 2002)

His name is poppacrow, after the big crow sitting on the monitor.

He's definitely male - for the same amount of work done as a female Mac, he has twice as many cables running all over the place, does twice as much flailing, and makes twice as much noise.


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## Nummi_G4 (Apr 19, 2002)

All of my Macs are male.  Not that i am gay.  they just seem tough.  or maybe they are women weight lifters.


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## ksuther (Apr 19, 2002)

Ummm, it's a computer, isn't it? Please refer do the "Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse" thread


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## gamedog00 (Apr 19, 2002)

I've been waiting for you to start this. It was from that old mac addict thread, right?


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

Yep, it is.


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## genghiscohen (Apr 19, 2002)

My iMac is so versatile, it must be a hermaphrodite.


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## gamedog00 (Apr 19, 2002)

My lcd iMac is male and named ender.


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## divibisan (Apr 19, 2002)

I picked male, it was hard to choose because my cube doesn't seem to have too much personality, but it doesn't seem female. I really can't say why and i'm not really sure, but if I had to pick one that's the one I would choose


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## gamedog00 (Apr 19, 2002)

I think it has a lot to do with the computers surroundings.


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

I would tend to agree-- Cubes have always seemed male to me, but then again I've seen what appeared to be a few "female" G4 Cubes as well...


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## phatsharpie (Apr 19, 2002)

Really disturbing... I think we all need to make a commitment to see the sun more often.

-B


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

Hey, it's a perfectly good question. It sometimes sparks some interesting conversations, too.

It's one of those "cocktail party" things more than anything else though...


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## xoot (Apr 19, 2002)

The three things that alter whether your mac is male or female:


Model
Your Gender
Surroundings or what it is used for
[/list=1]


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## phatsharpie (Apr 19, 2002)

Okay... I think my iBook is a cute but hardcore punk rock chick...

I am a nerd, I admit it!

-B


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

That seems pretty accurate...


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

(referring to Xoot, by the way with that last comment )

What color is your punk rock chick iBook?


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## phatsharpie (Apr 19, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Bluefusion _
> *What color is your punk rock chick iBook?  *



Well, I didn't change the case color yet, but I want to change it to a light blue... Kinda like your avatar actually!

-B


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

Oh, you mean it's a white iceBook? Ooooh. I thought that it was a clamshell. 

BTW: yeah, the color of my avatar is by far my favorite color in the world!


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## divibisan (Apr 19, 2002)

I guess this counts as surroundings, but the periferals plays a role too


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

I suppose... although one would think that having an two black tower speakers (alteclansing atp3s) instead of the clear Pro Speakers and a very masculine-looking printer, in addition to two vertical (very geeky-looking) networking devices and--the ultimate "male-looking device", a Visor Prism, would make me think my computer was male... but it doesn't...


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## AdmiralAK (Apr 19, 2002)

well my mac is neither 
I basically call it "Admiralty" (I think this is becoming an obsession  what sayeth thee ed ?  )


Admiral


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## divibisan (Apr 19, 2002)

> but it doesn't



What do you mean _[U}it_ doesn't?


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## Bluefusion (Apr 19, 2002)

Fine. _she_ doesn't. Trillian has lots of masculine peripherals around her but she doesn't at all make me think she's male because of it.

How's THAT for personification? LOL.


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## divibisan (Apr 19, 2002)

No, you said that it thinks that she's female. How does it do that?



> Trillian has lots of masculine peripherals around her but she doesn't at all make me think she's male because of it.



Wouldn't that make her seem more female?


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## RacerX (Apr 19, 2002)

The current naming convention with my computers is to name them after my favorite mathematicians/physicist. Around the room we have Feynman (Rhapsody 5.1), Archimedes (Solaris 7), Milnor (Rhapsody 5.6), Gauss (Irix 6.2), Fermi (Mac OS 8.6), Euclid (Mac OS X), Bonnet (A/UX 3.0), Euler (Irix 5.3), Morse (Irix 5.3), and Riemann (Rhapsody 5.1). My two Quadra 900 series systems are named HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 (both Mac OS 8.1), so I guess SAL is the only female computer I currently have running around me right now.


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## Valrus (Apr 20, 2002)

Solaris 7: Don't touch my circles!

*whack*

-the valrus


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## Hypernate (Apr 20, 2002)

My iMac is called Mr. iMac lol

He's male 

I wonder what I'll call my iBook. Not Mr. iBook, cause that would only be appropriate for the Graphite and white iBook, because it loos like it's wearing a tux


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## Daeyin (Apr 22, 2002)

the two macs I've had have both been girls

a lime green imac (Lisa)
and my current DP450 (Selma).

My windows machine I just call stupid motherf****r.


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## TommyWillB (Apr 24, 2002)

Aren't their languages that have gender for everything (le Car)?

What gender do these languages say a Mac is?

When a new thing comes into being, who decides its gender? How?


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## Bluefusion (Apr 24, 2002)

Yes. French, Spanish, Swedish, I think Danish, and a few others all do this. I have never understood how or why. In Spanish, a computer is "computadora" which I assume is feminine. I don't know the French word.


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## Valrus (Apr 24, 2002)

The French word is "ordinateur," and it's masculine.

Noun genders. Man I hate French. 

Not as bad as Latin, though.

And don't be a wiseass and ask what the Latin word for computer is. 

-the valrus


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## scruffy (Apr 25, 2002)

In German a computer is a Rechner or a Computer, both masculine

Surely the verb 'to compute' has some equivalent in Latin, and so 'one who computes' would be a computer.  Would the gender then depend on whether the person doing the computer were a man or a woman?  I don't know any Latin myself, so perhaps someone can fill me in


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## simX (Apr 25, 2002)

I have to say I've never really thought about this, but I voted "female", mainly because personally I'd rather have my computer be female.  I dunno; my cube is really attractive, so maybe that has something to do with it.   Nothing to do with the accessories argument though.

Although the names of the partitions are C3P0 and HAL 9000, so I suppose I need to think of new names for them.   Anyone want to think of some good names (no, not "Britney" or "Celine", thank you)?

How's this to spark some debate:



> _Originally from the ITS connection_
> As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being female. Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males) announced that computers should also be referred to as being female. Their reasons for drawing this conclusion follow:
> 
> 1.  No one but their Creator understands their internal logic.
> ...


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## Bluefusion (Apr 25, 2002)

What's the Latin word for computer?


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## Alexandert (Apr 25, 2002)

Mine is called Susi! Spoken with a sharp s! Szuszie!


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## AdmiralAK (Apr 25, 2002)

> _Originally posted by TommyWillB _
> *Aren't their languages that have gender for everything (le Car)?
> 
> What gender do these languages say a Mac is?
> ...



several languages have grammatical gender, these come to mind at the moment:
German, Russian, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish (and several others).  What determines teh gender of the mac is the gender of teh word computer.  L'ordinateur, it would be in french, ordinateur is masculine, this "mac" would be masculine.

gender is basically decided upon by the ending of a word. Anything that ends in an A for example is feminine (although there are some exceptions like "dedyshka" in russian that means grandfather).


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## divibisan (Apr 25, 2002)

In spanish, computer is either ordenador (m) or computerdora (f)


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## Valrus (Apr 25, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Bluefusion _
> *What's the Latin word for computer?   *



 That's it, you're dead. 

-the valrus


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## ulrik (Apr 26, 2002)

Both my PowerBook and my Quicksilver are male, but I think they actually are gay. 

My iMac is...uhm....don't know, never looked. My B&W G3 is male, but dresses like he is female (thought they other gay Macs don't want to play with him).


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## z4ph0d (Apr 26, 2002)

Mine is male... definitively! And it's named "Marvin". I'm not gay either, but its my buddy so to speak. And it does a man's work too! Here's an excerpt from my console log... as you can see, the name is quite fitting (ref. "the Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy")

I'm not getting you down at all, am I?
I'll just stick my head in a bucket of water
I'll be in the corner
.....

you get the point


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## Bluefusion (Apr 26, 2002)

Yeah, with the 512 MB of RAM... I can just see "Brain the size of a planet and I get brought down here for this?" 

I caught the Zaphod reference btw... mine is named Trillian 

Lots of Hitchhiker's Guide fans here, I guess...


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## dricci (Apr 26, 2002)

My PowerMac is Male and his name is PoDFP, short for "Poorly Designed Front Plastic" due to the highly visible plastic stress marks around drive/speaker/button openings.


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## z4ph0d (Apr 26, 2002)

The funny thing about the console messages was they appeared after I had "named" him. Immediately I was dumbstruck, thinking my TiBook had gotten a life of its own, taking on the "Marvin" robot character from  Hitchiker's. Kinda fun... I think its the Samba Server that outputs these messages, but I don't know for sure. It would have been fun to have the computer output them to the desktop. Kinda like floating text over all windows that dissapears after a few seconds ;-) Or perhaps a screensaver? Anybody know if the statements are in a resource file, or are they perhaps hardcoded somewhere in the Samba distro?


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## nkuvu (Apr 26, 2002)

The source of these messages was pinned down in another thread -- it turned out to be the beta Logitech driver.

Here's the link


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## Giaguara (Mar 28, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Bluefusion _
> *In Spanish, a computer is "computadora" which I assume is feminine. I don't know the French word. *



Hehè ... computadora is feminine, right. And in one Spanish Mac board you couldn't talk about computers, the word was censured so it looks like com****dora 

In Italian and Portuguese the computers are male. In Italian only Suns are female.

My computer is now in English mainly so for the language it doesn't have the sex. But I'm sure he (it) is male as I spend so much time with it (him). Besides, I understand the computers so they have to be males - I simply don't understand the females ...


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## The MokXnster (Mar 28, 2003)

Ok, let me explain why my Mac is a girl...

Her name is The Monster, she runs Veronica (OS 8.6's code name), have the Kathy sexy voice saying marry me every hour, have a red hair girl icon and she (like Bad Religion's I love my computer song says) can be my princess and she can be my whore... Hell yeah, who's showing me nrop? Her... She's Punk as hell, kinda like the Hardcore Punk chick mentioned earlier in this thread. And yeah, I love her, she truely rocks! 

BTW, Computer in french is Ordinateur... I like computer better to tell you the truth...


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## Decado (Mar 29, 2003)

Alice is her name. From Alice in wonderland and from the Roger Zelazny book-title "come back to the killing ground, Alice my love".

At first It was my sony-ericsson that was called Alice... but now they are both called Alice. Since there are Seven Alices in the Zelazny book, i thought it was ok.


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## hulkaros (Mar 29, 2003)

...my TiBook is! 

And while I am the Green Hulk he is the Gray version of me... Smaller with less power than mine, sometimes smarter than I am but in the end we are the same:
The Incredible HULK 

Alter egos can be a VERY confusing thing 

Trust me!


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## Arden (Mar 29, 2003)

My iMac is named "Spielberg," but I call it a bitch whenever it acts up.  This computer remains generically named.

In Spanish, "puta" = "whore" so you're basically saying "com-whore-dora" (which, oddly enough, sounds right... ).

I, too, am a Douglas Adams fan.  I haven't read those books in so long; I should go back and re-read all the Hitchhiker books.


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## chevy (Mar 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Giaguara _
> *Hehè ... computadora is feminine, right. And in one Spanish Mac board you couldn't talk about computers, the word was censured so it looks like com****dora
> 
> In Italian and Portuguese the computers are male. In Italian only Suns are female.
> ...



In French it's "ordinateur", which the one who puts everything in the right order, or who brings order into things. Therefore at home Macs should be females, and at work they should be males... or is it the other way around ?


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## toast (Mar 29, 2003)

In "Computer Love" by Kraftwerk, the computer is female 

My computer is a static piece of metal and plastic. AFAIK I say "He" when I personnalize him (esp. when agry at him). Rest fot the time, it's "the computer".


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## TommyWillB (Mar 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by toast _
> *In "Computer Love" by Kraftwerk, the computer is female ...*


I always thought that was just a classic example of Gay pronoun swaping. 

This reminds me of discussions on whether a car is a "chick car" or not. I've come to the conclusion that auto companies give cars they want to be chick cars nice names. (Acura Integra) But when the want to attract more male buyers the succenly give them weird letter-number names. (Accura RSX)

My comuter name is the very unoriginal "Mac OS X - 10.2", so i'm not sure if that qualifies as a nice name or a weird letter-number thing. However the name of my hard drive is not what I think of most... Usually I think of the fact that I'm using Apache, so maybe it is a male warior? (Obviously there were female Apache, but that's just not what comes to my mind first.)


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## JetwingX (Mar 29, 2003)

I think of my mac as my twin. It's grumpy when it wakes up. usualy stubborn but works just like me.

and since i am male i just figue it's male too


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## llyrwy (Mar 29, 2003)

i dont really personify, much less assign a gender to my computers, preferring instead to regard them as an extension to my own temporal body.

upon deeper thought i somewhat regard my mac as a part of my body. hmmm


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## Randman (Mar 30, 2003)

I love HitchHiker's, but I call mine Computer from classic Star Trek. I loved the episode where they give it a sharp female personality but Kirk still calls it Computer.
  Actually, my Graphite iBook once was Computer, then my new snow iBook became Computer and the graphite became Computer, too.

I use the high-quality Victoria voice so I guess Computer is female, though my girlfriend and my dog (she's a she pooch, the dog that is) may have issues with yet another female presence taking up my time, love and money.


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## Giaguara (Mar 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Jet _
> *I think of my mac as my twin. It's grumpy when it wakes up. usualy stubborn but works just like me.
> 
> and since i am male i just figue it's male too *



Are you identical?


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## JetwingX (Mar 30, 2003)

i was thinking of dyeing my hair blue...


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## hulkaros (Mar 31, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Randman _
> *I love HitchHiker's, but I call mine Computer from classic Star Trek. I loved the episode where they give it a sharp female personality but Kirk still calls it Computer.
> Actually, my Graphite iBook once was Computer, then my new snow iBook became Computer and the graphite became Computer, too.
> 
> I use the high-quality Victoria voice so I guess Computer is female, though my girlfriend and my dog (she's a she pooch, the dog that is) may have issues with yet another female presence taking up my time, love and money.   *



Alex Ross Shazam or Superman presentation? Or is it something total irrelevant to Alex Ross amazing drawings? Let me know and thank you in advance


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## Randman (Mar 31, 2003)

I prefer Alex Ross' Batman over Supes and Marvel, but I think his Superman seems more powerful, even in simple scenes. Marvel always looks a little slow, but maybe that's my own feelings on the characters.

But to keep this Apple, related, let's say Clark uses a TiBook at the Planet, Billy Batson is at a school with an Apple program and you don't expect Bruce Wayne not to meld an Apple, a ToughBook and a Cray for his Bat'puter.


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## hulkaros (Mar 31, 2003)

...Dark Knight (not Returns) rulez! 

What say you?


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