Gadget Whoredom

For most of my life, I've been a devotee of function over form. I never cared that my television, DVD, and VCR were all made by different companies, nor that one was white, another gray, and the third jet black. What mattered to me was that they performed their function...preferably for a long period of time. I like to think of myself as stable, durable and resilient, and I value those traits in any household appliance. Unfortunately, I happen to live in a society that likes to sacrifice durability on the altar of mindless consumerism.

I should note here that my shadow side revels in mindless consumerism: I am every bit as susceptible to the I WANT ITs as the rest of you...sometimes more so. Materialism is a drug: the thrill of acquiring can lift you high as a kite, but you'll crash down to earth in short order and start looking for the next "fix". I lived that life through my twenties, and it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to look down my nose at a burned-out junkie...because I came perilously close to that existence myself. The only difference: My drug of choice was not only licit, but encouraged by every passing billboard and beaming TV ad.

I've outgrown that evil addiction to "NEW AND IMPROVED" (and incidentally, how can something be both "new" and "improved"?) Mostly, anyway. When it rears its head nowadays--should I choose to indulge it--I at least try to get something that will last.

This inevitably means spending more...but I'm okay with that. Because in my experience, the expensive stuff is cheaper than the cheap stuff. Take shoes, for example. The average pair of shoes used to last me about three months. I distinctly remember buying one deeply discounted pair at Hobo's Shoeperstore that actually split in half within a fortnight of the purchase. Now I buy Rockports: one pair lasts me a year, give or take.

Or coffeemakers. The heating plate on cheap coffeemakers flakes off like sunburned skin. We went through three of those things within a calendar year before we wised up and shelled out a little more for an Oster. That's been going strong for a couple of years now, and would still have pride of place in our morning were it not for my wife's attack of gadget whoredom:

She actually had what we considered to be sound reasons for shelling out more than twice what the Oster cost her. The single cup brewer means we'll never toss half a pot of coffee down the drain again. And this Keurig platinum is considerably more versatile than a pedestrian coffeemaker: it'll do ciders, teas, iced drinks, and hot chocolate, amongst other things.

And...I can't deny the allure it has: Meet George Jetson, and here's his coffee machine. (Ooooh, shiny.)

Most importantly, the customer service is highly rated: any problem and they'll just send a new unit, no questions asked. Not that we anticipate a problem: the clerk at the store where we purchased this sleek thing told us they had discontinued a competitor's line because of reliability issues and poor customer service.

And then there's...*treads carefully* Apple.

Look, I'm going to try not to be a fanboy, here. I understand that there are perfectly good reasons to buy a Microsoft machine, that Windows 7 doesn't suck...much...that Apple has built-in limitations on what you can and can't do with an iPod/Pad/Phone, and so on and so forth. Further, I know that my reason for entering the orchard in the first place is largely based on anecdote: to wit, I know an author still using a Macintosh computer dating to 1991. Anecdote, yes, but mighty powerful as you watch your fourth household system in seven years.

And so now I have a Mac to go with my iPod and my wife's shiny new iPhone 4. (For weeks before we relented, both of us went around quoting this. Highly NSFW--language!)


*sigh* I guess we are sheeple. Then again, maybe Mr. Smug Salesman should consider that Apple didn't get to be the most valuable company on the planet simply by feeding clover to sheeple.

Why the enthusiasm? Part of it is the cross-platform iTunes account, possibly the most intelligent thing Apple ever created. Apps, Mac software, music and film...all of it is accessible from one account, and things that work on your iPod will also work on your iPad and iPhone. iLike. Then there's the minor convenience that things...just...work. The file management system is simpler, you can drag and drop objects between programs with ease, and I have not once had to put up with my computer warning me about the grave dangers inherent in any least task.

And finally, again, the shiny factor: my Mac Mini is not much larger than a hardback book. It takes up next to no space on my desk, and it looks damned good not doing it.

My wife, at fortymumble, is an aspiring artist, and a talented one. Macs were designed with artists of all sorts in mind: mine came with a music studio that would cost me a couple of hundred extra bucks on a Windows system.

Hell, PC World magazine has even published ""Eight Reasons Your Next Computer Should Be A Mac". And you gotta figure they're a tad biased against Macs. Certainly their readers are.

I'm not a member of an Apple cult, honest. Just a common garden variety gadget whore...