Gadget Whore

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH


About 2 1/2 years ago, I got my first Apple product. It was a sexy, 30GB video iPod. Signifying just how lame I, er, still am, I had it engraved with the words 'luceo porro immortalis,' using Apple's free engraving service if you ordered it through their web site. It was, at the time, the best technological event of my life.
Then, a little over a year ago, wearied by the trials of my Windows machine, perpetually crashing like a planeful of jihadis, I decided to cast my lot with the sleek, seductively stylish MacBook.
I wasn't disappointed — The spare, yet classy design won me over from first click; my boot time decreased by what must have been an order of magnitude; and I was no longer forced to support Bill Gates' coke-off-a-Lamborghini's-muffler habit. I could even run Windows on the same computer — and did so for a while, until it was doing nothing but taking up space.
In January I was back in California trying to wash the cabbage smell out of my hair, entrusted by my roommate with $400 and instructions to pluck the latest fruit from the Apple tree, that is, the sumptuous new iPhone.
I never even knew I needed an Internet-enabled, music-device, touch-screen phone with a user interface that was smooth as as a ...
But enough with the smilies ... the point is that what I didn't know could have filled its 16 gigabyte flash drive. Before I was content in my ignorance, content to stay in touch with a device that in hindsight was hardly discernible in form or features from an overdone beef fillet... Smugly assured that I didn't need gadgets to give meaning to my life.
And that's the problem with ignorance: the self-satisfaction you gain from refusing to pluck the Apple of knowledge. Pride is, after all, a deadly sin.