I think his point is that in any case, you're still advocating one product over another, as if choosing firefox (or...fill in the blank) will create a better--as in socially just-- world. hardly. might make life more bearable in terms of the effects of malware, but that's it.
it's still consuming and, we've had this discussion before, open source is often parasitic on capital anyway.
as for ugliness--the mac vs. pc issue. I dunno, my box is out of sight. All I see is my nice, purty flat screen. When a member of Testosterone Central is here, they say things like, "What a far out computer!" -- as if the monitor _is_ the computer. :)
Besides, there's always box mods! http://www.envador.com/
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling