Can Apple users be True Geeks?

Question hit me this last week when I helped the No 1 son build hs first "hot" gaming machine. Research was done, budgets set, parts specced and ordered, the obligatory pilgrimage to Maplins made to pick up last minute stuff, and then Lo! inside an old PC Tower carcase there now throbs the multicored heart of a Beast.

You just can't do that with an Apple computer (probably can't get that sort of performance either...)

(Update to above - you can get similar Apple performance specs, but at c 4-5x the price - but you can't build your own machine, its Apple defined. Would The Woz have started off with Apple gear if he was a kid in a garage today?)

So the question is this - can you call yourself a real Geek if you can't build your own computer to spec? Or program in a "real" language? Or know your way round the operating system's arcana?

Putting it another way - has Geekdom moved up the layers from the infrastructure to the applications, or has it become revalued socially (its sexy to be geeky now) and devalued technically (we don't want those - eeeew - technical bits)?

(An aside - the root of the word "Geek" comes from the Old English/Dutch/German word Geck, or fool)

Anyway, I put the question out to the Twitterverse and Benjamin Ellis came back with an interesting response:

Geek 1.0: We build cool technology. Geek 2.0 we use cool technology.

....which seems to fit the semantic shift in Geekery - you no longer need to know how technology works anymore, its all about using it. To be fair, it was ever thus - each tricky new layer of technology becomes simplified, then commoditised and eventually just disappears into the infrastructure. Old PC hands will recall how "interesting" it once was just to set up printers properly.....

The good news about this is that one don't have to master the technical skills to get something else done.

The bad news is that one loses control of what can be a fairly major levers of performance.

But clearly trading off the former for the latter has made geekery more socially acceptable. Although I do worry that the next semantic shift will start to call the Geeks who can build their own stuff "Nerds", and then we have gone fulll circle again.....

Back to the original question re Apple, you do risk giving the term "Geek" a bad name when, as "Stuff White People like" puts it:

It is also important that white people are reminded of their creativity, and remember you need a Mac to creatively check email, creatively check websites, and creatively watch DVDs on planes.

So where to draw the line? I guess to me its comes down to "are you a creator or a consumer".

(Update - nice post leading the charge for the New Geeks from Ian Betteridge - killer line "the less people are required to learn programming in order to be creative with computers, the more creative work you get.")

(Another Update - it seems I wrote this on the day Apple announced its new 12 Core machines are ready for sale but, as many commentors in the Engadget article point out, its more expensive - though not 4x more expensive - than the similar PC)