It's no secret to my friends and family that I loathe Apple and their products. From the evangelical store openings, to the product rumour mill dominating the online space prior to launches, their extremely smart PR campaigns promote Apple as probably the best at what they do. Which is, in my honest opinion, producing shameful money pits.
Once you buy an iSomething, you have to buy compatible accessories, you can only buy certified apps, and you better hope water never meets your new baby so you don't have to kiss goodbye to your warranty. But they do look so good. A lifestyle lubricant for the 21st century, no self facilitating media node would be such a fashionable dickhead without one.
I am fully aware that they are well designed and technically brilliant machines. My boyfriend and I argue about this religiously. "Your life would be so much better if you had a Mac!" he wails.
My life would be so much better if people stopped telling me I need a Mac. You want doesn't equal I need. I now get introduced in social circles as 'The girl who hates Apple', which as you can imagine as a lively conversation opener as mentioning the BNP.
"Why do you hate Apple?! What's wrong with you?" I am met with a look of confusion and terror that I have seen many times before.
"I don't feel need to prove my importance by walking into Starbucks with an iPad under my arm. There are much less expensive ways to look like an idiot."
This comment is always generally agreed with. One person has once unashamedly confessed to me that he has stuck a Apple logo sticker over the top of a Dell logo to maximise his respect points.
"But you work in online? How can you do your job without working on a Mac?" This generalisation never fails to stagger me.
"I work perfectly fine on a PC thank you." This statement is always particularly hard to admit, as I do curse repeatedly about working on Windows.
But I would rather say this than rant for the next 10 minutes about how fast it is, or shown off my latest Scorsese digital masterpiece on Vimeo, or produced some sound that when processed through some digital synth sounds like an elephant farting, and before you know it I have had my ear bent on how I am totally wrong and they are very right. An unsuspecting loiterer (probably a mac user too, as they always hunt in packs) ask to join the conversation. "Rosie was just trying to convince me how PCs are better than Macs." Errrr, WRONG! I can't get a word in edgeways in between your big head and your even bigger Apple-shaped ego!
I know crap PCs can be, and I am not defending them. But when you buy an Apple product, you also buy a special pair of apple-tinted spectacles, that makes you believe that there is no other digital product worth having. I refuse to buy into that cult. They get cracked, they break, and they get bugs and viruses just like any other technological object.
It is also bad for people to assume that everyone else as bought into that cult. It's very painful for digital marketers to admit teenagers phone of choice is the BlackBerry for it's messaging system, not the iPhone. If people are creating content with one demographic in mind, they will run the risk of bypassing certain minorities and alienating in favour of another product that fits their needs better.
So in short, I probably will one day buy a Macbook Pro. When the market has bottomed out, the pricetag has been slashed in half, and the hipsters have levitated to the next big thing. But until then, show off your Apple love to someone else, cos this Apple-hater don't wanna know.