Wait a Second

I feel I should pull you up here.

I agree “Um no” isn’t helpful but let’s just imagine the response had been this:

Airpods don’t offer a new relationship because they aren’t alluring, sensous and sultry.

He’s simply said the opposite of you. Now would you shoot him down? This might be painful to accept but neither of you provided a reason as to why you think what you think.

Let’s get some stuff out the way. I’m a techie. Things break and I fix them. Things don’t work how they should, I’m expected to make them work how they should. And I’m not a fanboy of any tech. As a techie of 17 years I can say this… they’re all as bad as each other. Sure Apple products might perform a little better but does a £1000 Macbook perform £650 better than a £350 Windows PC? Not really. You still have problems with updates, crashes and hardware faults (admittedly not as many but you have paid not far off twice the price).

But they look nice, don’t they? So what. I don’t care how they look. What are you creating? Shakespeare used quill and parchment. The Beatles used reel-to-reel tape. Have you or I ever produced anything to match them? It’s not the tools of our trade that matters. It’s our finished product.

My last play was very well received. To the point that I’m still having people talk to me about it a full six months after they saw it. It’s praised.

Would it have been more praised, more hard hitting, more thought provoking if I’d written it on a Mac?

So now we can remove the “Apple helps you create” argument (before it comes up) let’s move to what your argument seems to be. How it looks.

Are you ready for this?

I don’t give a shit.

And do you want some real forward thinking?

I reckon in 50 years… very few people will give a shit. Today society expects certain people to wear suits. Society thinks men should dress in mens’ clothes and women as women. Society thinks that for some reason if I wear a shirt and tie to work I’m somehow more efficient and work harder. Fortunately these things are starting to break down. And they will break further. They will shatter. We will learn that what people look like does not matter one fuck. And when we realise that we’ll also realise that the tech they are strapped to does not matter one fuck.

Android. iOS. Bluetooth. Wired. Talking to your phone to get directions or just wandering enjoying the feeling of being lost. No one will give a solitary fuck. What will matter is openness. A break of technology borders. No more locking people down to one company. Messaging services will need to be open and cross platform. Everything will have to be cross platform. We will want tech that lets us make different decisions to our friends but we can still communicate, like and share. The tech companies will have to learn that what consumers really want is choice.

Choose Apple if you want. I’ll choose what I want. Choose Airpods if you want. I’ll stick to wired headphones. But I won’t have the iPhone 7 because it is removing that choice from me. It is restricting my freedom. That is my problem with them. You speculate that Apple doesn’t care. That it’s in it for the long game. Well fuck you Apple. I care. These headphones cost me £9 and I really really really like them. They are comfortable, noise reducing and sound wonderful (they were a bargain to be fair). Sure I can could give them extra money for an adapter (which means I can’t charge my phone while listening to music) or give them more money for another adapter so I can but that’s not freedom. That’s locking me down. That’s making a decision for me and forcing me to buy products from them, licensed from them. It’s taking away my choice. Fuck you Apple. Fuck you. If you want to do that, fine. I don’t. I don’t care how good I look on a train. And frankly, if someone wants to fuck me because I’m wearing Airpods then I don’t really want to fuck them. I prefer my partners to consider their partners with more care.

Or for the TL;DR version…

Um, no.

:-)