Media & Technology

Not long ago I realised that I’ve been in an abusive relationship with Apple Computers for many years.
It started even before I first laid eyes on that ugly beige box. The Laughton household, already outgrowing the 16k ZX81 and about to upgrade to the Acorn Electron, and while our friends played the world’s best computer games on ZX Specturms and Commodre 64s, what I pined for was an Apple IIe. Some time in 1984 my mother (with great foresight) saw an advert in the Newbury Weekly News announcing a free demo of the revolutionary Macintosh’s wysiwig software deftly “obtained” from the genius’ at Xerox’s PARC laboratory, and drove us into town. Pre-Vodafone Newbury clearly wasn’t as tech-savy as it now aspires to and the queue of business men lining up to witness the future was not long, in fact the queue was limited to two long haired schoolboys - us! The demonstrator seemed glad to show how computers could be used to draw a house - if only Newbury’s business elite had seen the potential. Computers passed me by for the next decade - can you believe the teenage stupidity of it - fighting through the crowds of provincial Britain’s business elite to see the future as it happened, only to sleep through the most technologically creative decade in history?
Not until the mid-90s did Apple resurface in my life, when my flatmate brought home a sleek black Powerbook - I knew then I needed her and before long I’d purchased one myself. At first things were good, we were happy together, but it didn’t last. The upkeep was high - new software every year; soon the abuse started - suddenly shutting herself off, refusing to communicate - I couldn’t cope. I scoured the phonebook for the Apple Help number, but nothing; on the internet, only message boards of sad addicted individuals like myself. Like many a middle aged man I started looking around for another model, only to be drawn to another member of the Apple family - the iMac. I locked my Powerbook in the drawer and started up an affair- she may have been young but I had to have her. By now, one was not enough - I loved that white plastic exterior, and clear bright screen, but my iMac was a stay-at-home girl, I wanted to be seen around town, to show her off and before long I started up an affair with the iPod then still not content her cousin the iBook. She was fragile, and soon enough I had to open up the bonnet and tinker with her hard drive to keep her going; and even as she ailes, I still lover her.
And through my years of loving care, do my Apples love me back? Do they respond to the love and kindness I’ve shown them? Do they thank me for the roof I’ve provided over their heads? Never. Like every supermodel, they work on their terms only. Push them too far, and they’re prone to throw a tantrum....but this is the price we small percentage pay, for the privilege of stepping out with the best looking girl in town.