To my regular followers, this is not a post about the Adelaide Hills. I promise to get back on track with a cool Adelaide Hills blog later today, but I firstly needed to share a confession.
I crossed an invisible line yesterday. The line between not being the owner of an iPhone and being the owner of an iPhone. For the past 19 months since starting my latest mobile phone contract, I’ve convinced myself that I don’t NEED an iPhone. I’m not anti-Apple. It’s not like I’m a crazed neo-Luddite. My Samsung phone is perfectly fine. Why do I NEED an iPhone?
I’ve watched as people around me have become indoctrinated into the Apple family. At work it’s not much of a concern – I work alone in my Lobethal office 4 days out of 5. Sure, the clients who visit, the tenants on-site, the winemakers, the businesspeople and most of the tourists who come in have the mark of the Apple beast. In social circles it’s worse – people comparing apps and ringtones, merrily networking across tables and laughing at the in jokes that only the cool people know. But even with all that, I’ve still managed to convince myself that I don’t NEED one.
It’s funny because I was always the innovator or at least the early adopter. In 1994, I had a part-time job delivering KFC (yep, for a little while there in the mid-90’s KFC did home delivery – those were the days!). I drove a 1978 Datsun 280ZX, listened to Nirvana, worked hard and played hard. I had a large social circle and I was always the first in the pool. So being the cool hip thing I was I just had to have one of those new mobile phones. It was the first thing I ever had on credit - I can’t remember what I paid for it back then but it was a small fortune. It was the ironically named Motorola 9660 Ultra Sleek (aka The Brick). 33cm tall and weighing over a kilo this thing could cause serious blunt force trauma if swung correctly. I was the first of my friends to own one and I thought I was shit hot. I still have the phone – it makes a cool conversation piece now.
I later became a Nokia owner and went through five or six different models – always staying one step ahead of everyone else, always the innovator. But then in 2000 I moved to Brisbane. My social circle changed and so did my priorities. I stopped being the innovator. I stopped being the early adopter. I still liked to have a phone – it’s a necessity, right? It just didn’t have to be the current flavour of the month. I became the early majority. I got into a Nokia rut and didn’t care too much about the features. Then we had kids and priorities changed again. It wasn’t until 18 months ago that I upgraded and got a Samsung (not even a good Samsung), because I still didn’t think I NEEDED an iPhone. I was officially the laggard.
Until yesterday. I won a competition. One of those in 25 words or less tell us such and such about our great product (so great I don’t remember what I said or what the product was!). I became an iPhone owner.
Has my world changed? Yeah! Like George Costanza said in the Seinfeld massage episode: “I think it moved”. Just like in the Bible I was blind but now I see.
People have told me that’s why there’s a bite out of the apple in the Apple logo – it symbolises something you are missing, something the product will supply, something that once tasted you want more of. Others say they put the bite in the logo so it would look less like a cherry. Well my cherry has been popped baby. I’m no longer the Apple virgin. I have arrived.
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