Apple Whore

It has taken thirty five years for me to evolve from the chrysalis of MSDOS into a fully formed Apple whore. No, that isn't strictly true, since I won an Apple computer for the school years ago and loved it. Get a Mac, don't look back. In the day, yeah, I have to shamefacedly admit to being if not a geek, at least a languid anorak, casually tapping shortcut keys which looked almost alchemical at the time and driving friends insane... "how did you DO THAT?"
Ten or so years ago, a mobile phone was an almost essential, but I would not have suffered permanent paralysis without one. Last week, I bought an iPhone, the Vuitton of communication devices. I can subside into a self-contained virtual reality with this thing - reading Heart of Darkness as well as sending banal little notes to people via a chic little message interface - while jolly little gnomes trot glibly across the bottom of my screen. There are thousands of apps to play with - a melancholic's paradise. I now have one more thing to worry about - the cost of the bereavement counselling I shall assuredly need if I leave it on the train.

Apple's first computer arrived when I was twenty-four years old - half a lifetime away for both them and me. It had a massive 4 k bytes of RAM with an ' 8 k byte capacity ON BOARD' . Wow. This, together with a cassette interface, made it a world beater. They have come quite a long way from Steve Jobs' slightly greasy chalk pinstripe Madison Avenue look - nice parting, Steve. The image is from the first edition of MacWorld, 'dealer enquiries invited', and a quite awful first logo of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The original machine was priced at - wait for it - $666.66. Say no more.