An Ode To Apple (and iPhone Wankers)
iPhone users are wankers. It’s simple fact. They text when you’re talking, leave it out on the table at dinner, and don’t know what to do with their thumbs when the battery dies. And the battery always dies.
My circa 1998 Nokia C3 and I have been getting along just nicely, thankyouverymuch. We’ve prided ourselves on calling over texting, of learning how to read a map instead of following Google’s little blue dot, and of acquiring numbers over usernames.
It’s been quite the point of pride, and one not hindered by the fact that underneath that cloud of iPhone judgement is the dirty little secret that until last year, when my bag got stolen in Rome, I was actually an iPhone Wanker myself.
DETAILS WILL SELDOM GET IN THE WAY OF SOME HEARTY PASTIME JUDGEY-NESS IN THESE PARTS, FRIENDS.
I’ve been jonesing for some smartphone lovin’ for a while now. Half of my favourite people live overseas and it’s hard to arrange a Skype date when everyone is home and able to talk and OH HEY I GOT HELD UP AT WORK, ARE YOU THERE? YOU ONLY HAVE TEN MINUTES? BUT I DIDN’T GO TO THE PUB SO I COULD CHAT WITH YOU! I KNOW IT’S MY FAULT I’M LATE. I’M SORRY.
Etc.
And also I have a crippling social media habit that doesn’t look like it’s abating anytime soon.
And I want to take more photos.
And videos.
And FFS sake I run a digital academy. I should know how snapchat works.
I ordered an iPhone at Christmas, and within 24 hours cancelled my online order because I broke out in hives at the thought of a two-year contract. I want to live in New York by then, not be stuck in the U.K. for the sake of £34.99 to The Carphone Warehouse on the first of every month.
Then I found out about GiffGaff, a pay-as-you system that costs £12 a month for loads of airtime, free texts, and all of the data. I don’t understand why, then, if it’s so cheap, everyone in the world doesn’t own an unlocked second-hand iPhone and stick a Giffgaff sim in it.*
*this post is not sponsored by GiffGaff.
I’m not sure how I thought buying a second-hand iPhone off of eBay would be anything other than an utter disappointment, even though I actively chose the model with the broken volume button and no sound because, at £180, it was all I could reasonably afford.
On Monday night I raced home from work to find my package waiting for me on the kitchen counter top. I plugged her in, dizzy with the anticipation of my first Instagram opportunity, digits twitching to Tweet and Facebook and text.
Of course, it was broken.
No Wifi connection, which I needed to download the settings for GiffGaff, and no texting capabilities because…? I don’t know why, but damnshittitsarsebollocks I paid nearly two hundred quid for what was essentially a broken computer. Not the plan.
I emailed the guy who sold it to me, threatening the worse fate of them all, a bad eBay review, and he told me to go see how much it’s cost to get fixed, and he’d foot the bill.
Enter stage left: THE APPLE STORE.
Seriously. I’d never been in an Apple store before, because what if geek is catching? Turns out, I’ve been misguided for a very long time indeed because that shop, that shop with it’s shiny flat screens and gadgets and combined knowledge of all those cute men in blue t-shirts who ask Can I help you? and seem to ACTUALLY MEAN IT, is the most erotic place I have been inside since I sat in Calum’s bedroom two years ago, Googling naked celebrities.
I love a man who knows his tech (it’s the modern day hunter-gatherer) and as Odim- tall, dark-skinned, dreadlocks and twinkly eyes- asked me what he could do for me today what I thought in my head and what I said out loud were two versions of the same thing.
‘I need fixin’ up,’ I said, ‘And you look like just the fella to help me.’
He pushed buttons and asked questions and all the while I looked around the store with a staff base of such genuinely enthusiastic brand ambassadors and I thought shit. Steve Jobs must be looking down from heaven thinking what a motherlovin’ BOSS he is.
And, as Odim told me how much it’d cost for a new handset, since this one was clearly unfixable, I happily handed over my cash because I bought into the dream. I stood in that glass and chrome building and inhaled the geek and I wanted it. I wanted it all.
I also wanted Odim’s number, and I needed a phone to put it in first.
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