There is an ugly war going on at my house—a war I am personally losing. This is a very technical and delicate battle. Right now the odds are not in my favor, with the score three against one. My wife and kids are on one side (the fruity side), and I am on the opposing (and more reasonable) side. The only problem is my side doesn’t have a whole lot of friends. If fact, I daily feel as if I am a sole survivor standing on a quickly shrinking island.
This major division of beliefs at our house isn’t political, and it isn’t about religion. Our war is much more important than those two trivial, inconsequential issues. What is on the line at our house gets bloody, personal, and comes with wall chargers. I am talking about the important life choice between Apple and Droid phones.
I’m going to say it loud and proud: “I am a loyal PC/Motorola/Google/Droid man!” I don’t do iPods, iTV, iPhones, iPads, iTunes, or iMacs. In fact, I don’t do any Apple products whatsoever. I know, I know—society now shines a light of shame on me. I’m considered a social pariah for not owning an iPhone.
I was at a bar on Halloween last year and a woman threw her iPhone in my face and said, “Take a picture of me and my friends.” I grabbed the device, looked at it, and noticed she hadn’t set it up for the camera app or anything. While she and her friends posed in their costumes, I was taking too long to figure out how to get the camera to work since she had 6,000 Angry Bird games on her home screen.
I asked politely, “Excuse me, what do I need to do to get the camera to work here?” The girl ripped the phone out of my hands and started frantically navigating the screen while she verbally berated me, “It’s an iPhone! Really, you can’t make the camera work? Geez, what year is it?” I was a little taken aback since I was being asked to do a favor for a complete stranger. I looked at her and simply said, “I don’t do Apple products.”
My wife, whom I love, my kids, and my bank account—they all do Apple products. They love their iTunes, their iPads, and, of course, the ultimate, their iPhones. Every single day I hear, “Dad, you’re so lame, you need to get an iPhone.” Then my kids list all of the reasons why I am an idiot because I use a Droid. “Dad, if you had an iPhone, then you could share our iTunes music.” Sorry, having access to 50 songs by Justin Bieber is not a reason to switch to Apple. In fact, it is 50 reasons not to.
So what is my problem with Apple, besides JB? The funny thing is, I actually used to be an Apple guy. In fact, I was a member of the first Apple generation. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I learned to print back in the day by pressing “Open Apple P.” Then I went to college and my parents purchased me a very expensive Apple McIntosh. This was during the years when the Apple Corporation decided it didn’t want to share with others. There was relatively no software available for the computer (well, none that was reasonably priced), it came with limited memory, and it wouldn’t interact with the “new” Internet very well since that was heavily PC based.
At this time in the tech world, Bill Gates and Microsoft were kicking Apple’s ass. Little Billy made an inexpensive computer that everyone could use as a platform to design, create, and build whatever, and the world changed forever. In college, everyone in the dorms was playing “Doom,” stealing music, and chatting online with their PCs. Well, I should say that everyone except me was doing that, since my Apple computer didn’t play well with others. In fact, I couldn’t even share Word documents while doing assignments with other students because I was using Apple Works, and the world was using this thing called Microsoft Word. Apple had let me down. The company darn near went extinct, and my parents and I still owed a ton of money on a computer that was almost useless. So from that experience, I was reborn as a PC man.
Then there was a time in my life when I really wasn’t paying attention to what was happening in the technical world since my wife and I were chasing two young kids around the house. Apple released the iPod and created iTunes. The original iTunes was super restrictive in regard to how the music you owned could be transferred from device to device (it couldn’t be). This was done at a time when everyone on a PC was using Napster to steal music from Metallica and put it on everything they owned, and everything their friend owned, and also on stuff a guy from Amsterdam owned, too. I laughed at Apple: same company, same bad idea to not share data. The first iPhone dropped more phone calls than it actually connected, and you had to buy an entire new phone just to expand the memory. Lame. Later the iPad came out; no USB hook up or SD card slot to transfer data from other devices LIKE A CAMERA. Another bad idea. I simply stopped caring what Apple did.
Then something inexplicable happened. A few people around me bought an iPhone. I didn’t care. I had a Droid with a keyboard, WiFi connections, and an unrestricted MP3 player. I was living the dream. Then a few more people I knew bought the iPhone (and were oftentimes annoying about showing me how many apps they had that made fart noises). Then my kids bought iPod Touches (who are we kidding, my wife bought them for the kids). The next thing I knew, everyone had an iPhone, and they were all in a bar, pointing at me and laughing. I don’t know what happened. I feel like everyone in the world is drinking the Apple Kool-Aid, and I am the only one on the island saying, “Hey, that Kool-Aid is overpriced and it forces you to use iTunes, which sucks!”
Progress is continuing whether I like it or not. Similar to the horseshoe maker and the automobile, it is inevitable and probably just a matter of time before I have that damn iPhone in my hand. Angry Birds anyone?
No Apple products were used to create this story. Rob wrote it on a $300 PC laptop, and e-mailed it via a mobile hot spot signal from a Droid. Ed. note: It was edited on a MacBook. Ha!
