His computer was a piece of crap. 

windows

machine. Not an 

Apple

like the design kids and artists. And not a 

linux

like the hackers. Instead he had a crappy windows machine. A PC. He remembered those ads. Where the PC was the old white man in a suit while the apple guy was a hip slim young guy.

He wished he had an apple. Alice had an Apple. She probably came from money. Who else would go skiing. Or rather, go to a ski resort when there was no snow.

Dick thought about the real hardware tools. Not computers. Real man tools like power drills. Milwauke. Dewalt. Mikata.

In the world of tools there wasn't such a division like in the world of computers. No Apple vs PC. Instead there was just a hierarchy of quality. Everybody respected each others' tools though. You got what you paid for.