What makes a Mac so special? Apple Computer consistently has led the industry in producing stylish, easy-to-use< computer tools, such as iTunes, a program that makes it easy to use Internet music.
system Apple released its next-generation OS X operating system before Windows XP.	style Apple's Titanium PowerBook set a new standard for laptop design with its 15-inch-wide screen.
graphics Apple's original LaserWriter laser printer and Adobe PageMaker are credited with creating the desktop publishing revolution.	internet/ NETWORKING The Airport Base Station is largely credited with driving the popularity of wireless networking.
audio iTunes is free software from Apple that simplifies working with Internet music.	visual Apple users can create their own DVDs with iDVD, free software included with some Macs.

Passengers were backing up at the Burbank Airport last April as security guards shut down several gates to investigate a suspicious piece of luggage.

The problem was a sleek, otherworldly metallic case the gate guards could not identify, clearly not a valise or a briefcase.

After it was X-rayed and chemically tested for explosive resins, the new Apple Titanium PowerBook G4 laptop was returned to its San Jose-bound owner.

Could this have happened with a Dell or a Gateway or an IBM?

The incident underscores what Macintosh lovers everywhere will tell you: There is something about Macs that sets them apart from the rest of the crowd and something about those who love Macs that separates them from the legions content to live under the Wintel (Windows/Intel) empire.

"There's a cult of Mac — no doubt about it," said Rick Calicura, of the 600-member Diablo Valley, Calif., Macintosh Users Group. "And along with it comes a certain smugness. Frankly, we look down on PCs."

So what is it about Macs?

What has made these bundles of processors and memory — essentially the same construction as a PC — a separate species altogether?

What is it about a computer company that controls a scant 5 percent of the market that enables it to hold such sway over the digital future?

Deconstructing the phenomenon

How does a mere machine engender the kind of unwavering devotion typically lavished on bands like the Grateful Dead?

Mac users insist it's impossible to deconstruct the Mac mystique.

But you can come to understand it. And the best way to do that is to sit down in front of a Mac.

"When I fire up the Mac everything becomes intuitive — it flows," said Santa Barbara resident David Macomber, who used a suite of Macs to create the digital homemade Web film "Duality" (www.crewoftwo.com). "Sometimes I can use new software without even glancing at the manual because everything just works naturally. The Mac is more than just a tool you manipulate. It moves with you."

Calicura has been using Macs exclusively since 1988 when he swore off IBM clones for good.

"I learned more in a week on my first Mac than I did in a year on my clones," he said. "Macs are designed with transparent, easily accessible shortcuts so you don't find yourself getting slowed down by awkward procedures like you do in Windows. The Mac comes to you instead of you having to go to it."

The engineers at Apple couldn't have said it any better.

The belief that a computer can be so intuitive has pervaded Mac design since the first one debuted in 1984 with its standard-setting operating system based on the now-ubiquitous graphical user interface, dubbed "gooey" for GUI.

The alternative at the time was the command-line DOS operating system that often ran on the glowing bilious screens of old IBMs. Running DOS required painstakingly learning all the commands then tediously typing them in.

Graphics change computing

With the Mac and its GUI, Apple engineers had hit on a new philosophy of how versatile the digital language of 1s and 0s could be. It no longer had to appear as lines of code but could become images rich with information. Where DOS required rote process, the GUI with its drop-down menus and familiar icons appealed to the human mind's primal proclivity for visual cues.

"Macs have always been about managing data visually," said renowned Macintosh expert Tim Bajarin, president of the consulting firm Creative Strategies. "With the GUI you're grabbing the information you want usually represented by some sort of familiar symbol. It's a lot like the way a child reaches out and grabs what it wants after it recognizes it."

Apple introduced the Mac in a television ad directed by Ridley Scott during the Super Bowl. The 60-second commercial aired only once, but the image of an athletic woman blasting into a boardroom and smashing a tyrannical screen image of Big Brother crystallized Apple's identity as a rebel and the Mac as an engaging alternative to the cold drudgery of business computing.

At 25, Mora Howe is too young to remember much of that. But Apple has apparently been able to retain its rebel image with machines that continue to appeal to the timeless human capacity for fun. The new Macs especially all come equipped for handling digital music and video with ease.

"PCs make me think of work," Howe said, eyeing Apple's new iBook laptop at the company's newly opened retail outlet in McLean, Va. "Macs are for creativity."

Still, the humble PC can claim far greater feats than any Macintosh.

The digital empire was built on the inglorious "beige box" and its often pedestrian applications: spreadsheets, word processors and ultimately the Windows 95 operating system that ushered the PC into the living rooms of the masses. Despite the rhapsodic claims of Mac lovers, Windows sits on a whopping 92 percent of desktop computers.

Concept and style

But Mac devotees will tell you that doesn't matter.

Like luxury cars, Macs don't derive their greatness from ubiquity.

It comes from concept. And where concept has not been great Apple has floundered.

Take the Newton handheld computer. Released in 1993, the bulky progenitor of the modern PDA suffered from handwriting recognition problems, and ended up the butt of late-night jokes.

And then there was the recent G4 Cube. Technically, it was rated as a weapons-class supercomputer, but the high price tag and boxy design didn't resonate with consumers.

Apple has succeeded with its loyalists best when it has appealed to the same sense of aesthetics that gave rise to the first Mac. And for the past three years it's been scoring big with consumers doing that.

The streak began in August 1998 when Apple started shipping the iMac, proclaimed as a computer "for the new millennium." Designed for easy plug-and-play Internet access, the translucent plastic orb sold faster than any other Mac. That was followed in 1999 by iMacs in five dazzling colors unheard of for computers: blueberry, strawberry, lime, tangerine and grape.

After a creative lull in the mid-90s that almost saw the end of the company, Apple was back, rebellious and hip as ever.

Earlier this year, Apple took another daring turn and shifted away from the psychedelic throwback look of the iMac with a pair of decidedly sexy laptops that left critics drooling.

Introduced in January, the Titanium PowerBook G4 was made for 007. Based on the blazing new G4 processor, it sported a stylish new enclosure of 99 percent pure titanium that measured a slim 1-inch thick when closed.

It was enough to convince Fortune magazine's opinionated computer columnist Stewart Alsop to abandon his longtime devotion to Wintel systems and buy one, proclaiming it "a truly cool device."

The G4 Titanium was followed by the platinum-blond iBook, a richly featured affordable laptop designed precisely with Apple store shopper Howe in mind.

Built to handle multimedia with ease both new laptops were created to help lead a revolution in computing Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is now trying to stir, confident he can once again change the way people live with his beloved Macs.

Digital living

When Jobs stood before the Macintosh faithful at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco last January, the personal computer faced an uncertain future. The market was stale and critics had proclaimed the end of the PC era.

But Jobs struck out boldly, proclaiming the onset of a "third golden age" of personal computing with the household Mac leading the way. Jobs envisioned the computer as the hub of the digital home, a switching station for all the data families were generating with their CD players, MP3 players, digital cameras and DVD players. Apple would take advantage of the explosion in consumer technology by creating original Macintosh applications that united these devices and gave them a new enhanced value.

Living digitally is about shooting video and turning it into a home movie on the Mac with iMovies, film-editing software so intuitive that it doesn't need a manual or come with one.

It's about ripping music from the Web as easily as you would turn on a radio.

And Jobs is not alone in his belief that this is the future of personal computing.

Compaq, Dell and Gateway are all now trumpeting the digital entertainment value of their systems while Microsoft is touting its soon-to-be-released XP operating system as rich with multimedia features.

Jobs plans to use Apple's lead in developing the digital lifestyle to boost sales and go after some of the vast Wintel market. Mac lovers may not appreciate or even care about market share.

But in Jobs' vision of digital living they sense once again the genuine and enduring dedication to cool computing that has become the hallmark of the Macintosh in all its permutations.

Said Calicura, "When you get a Mac you're always going to be ahead of the crowd — out at the forefront."

And perhaps occasionally stuck at the airport.