I Love Apples - Thanks Steve Jobs!

When did I have my first Apple? Well I’ve been around a long time so I would say it was in the 80s yep THAT long ago…back in the mists of time.

It was a trifle flirtation to begin. In a shop with a boyfriend in Reading in 1989 discussing earnestly the attributes of Apple over Apricot then nothing until the powers that be where I worked opted to scrap the electric typewriters, galleys and print for computers and floppy discs and a new digital era.

I took to the computers like duck to water and a splendid Apple Mac Plus running QuarkXpress.

It was so easy.

Editing was a dream and if I went wrong it was simple to put right. I disappeared into the world of OCRs, floppy discs and editing without the use of a red pencil instead I simply highlighted in red what I wanted to get rid of then clicked a button to see if it fit and by careful refitting tools was able to say goodbye to widows and orphans forever. The fact that as a journalist I got rid of a sub-editor quite passed me by – such is the inevitable momentum of progress.

But I never had an Apple of my own.

I dropped out of publishing in 1994 for a while drifting to the dark side and the political hot bed that is press relations – I didn’t DO public relations because basically I was a social liability. In the end I didn’t do press relations either because the clients were too dumb to see what was in front of their faces. I fear for many PRs this adage still holds true today. Why do they get press relations and advertising so muddled? Why do they insist of hiring a PR then equally insist that they can do better themselves? Eternal questions without an answer.

I got a PC not an Apple and it is something I have regretted ever since. I have never been happy with my PC and life only got worse when Apple suddenly or so it seemed sprang to the fore with its iMac just after Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. How I hungered for one but they were out of my league.

And in 1999 I returned to being a journalist and by then QuarkXpress was on windows and a PC was deemed all that was necessary. I pretended it didn’t matter.

I pretended it didn’t matter when I went freelance, money was tight. But I watched and I still hungered.

In 2006 I succumbed and bought an iPod for my husband for Christmas engraved with his name on the back from the Apple iStore. I couldn’t buy one for myself it would have been too decadent. A year later Charlie got me an iPod Shuffle - a corporate freebie with 10 songs downloaded that I used to boost my flagging energy levels while training for the Flora London Marathon in 2009.

Various iPods have come and gone and I now have a smart black fifth generation Nano with camera and games, radio and pedometer that I take on long journeys and runs but until this year, no computer.

I can't say our finances have chnaged much, the boom years passed us by as we renovated a monolith in the middle of Suffolk but this year I felt I deserved a treat. No designer shoes for me nor brand new wardrobe but an iPad something I could pretend I needed and so feeling brave I dived in to Apple store and took possession of my white iPad II.
I don’t consider it a computer; it’s far too much fun. I Skype but keep forgetting to look at the person I am talking to as I always look at the camera and land up looking half mad with people only seeing me side on; I write on it, play games, listen to music and watch TV. Such a clever piece of kit. It’s a toy, my special toy and one I love to bits. My own proper Apple at last.

And who have I to thank for this treasure?

Steve Jobs.

Thanks mate you will never know how much joy you have given, how much inspiration and darn it how much sheer fun…

RIP