‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ That’s the Shakespeare quote I would have used for the original iPod campaign that sold me, and it may have worked on a billboard. They used the iconic song, ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ from the album ‘Get Born’ by the Australian band Jet. I think they made the right choice, because my love of music drove me to spend way too much money on that original iPod generation 3. My thought was, ‘you can put how many songs on there?’ And also, it was the Marilyn Monroe of mp3 players, the clicker wheel, the music game they put on there where you got points based on how quickly you could recognize songs from your library, ‘Some Like it Hot.’

I built PCs with my friends in high school like it was a second job, so any thought of an Apple product back then for any of us was the equivalent of sacrilege. Since we were in Catholic school at the time, that was two counts of sacrilege against me in the same institutional group. When we were all deciding to get our laptops for college, I was incredibly lucky, because Apple had just decided to put Intel processors in their new MacBook. That meant, I could put windows on it too, and hedge my bets. Bet your life I got the most out of that first MacBook and all the creativity possibilities it provided.

After College, after probably some irresponsible ONU student left an iPod Mini at one of the parties, nobody else wanted it so I claimed it. I put a playlist on there from my iTunes and gave it to my young cousin, son of my coolest uncle. Thinking about it now he was so young that when he wrote me a thank you note, it was on three line paper. He said he really liked, ‘More Than a Feeling.’ Recently I found he still has that collection of songs, and without that first inclination to get an iPod, how would that be possible?

There are a lot of conversations about Steve Jobs to be had, I don’t want to get into the weeds about it though, because he was the visionary who made these products happen. Personally, as a nerd, I would give Wozniak far more credit. I say that, like I would give the left tackle credit for making that quarterback’s pass possible. They are in the same band, and The Rolling Stones don’t exist without both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Then came the iPhone, I remember when my cousin had the first one on AT&T because that ancient behemoth somehow secured exclusivity. I got the iPhone 4 as soon as I could when that barbaric arrangement was over. First smartphone, only smartphone. I don’t want to use a marketing slogan because I know the tech, but, ‘It Just Works.’ That’s why I got my parents on the platform, with an iMac almost ten years ago, and the number of tech support calls dropped off considerably.

I achieved what Steve Jobs was dreaming about though, my 110 GB music library in my pocket on my iPhone. Playing guitar into my Mac Mini and recording songs into the abyss. Listening to music based on the shape of my ear with my AirPods Pro like I’ve never heard it before. Typing this sentence on my latest MacBook, something I couldn’t live without since 2006. So when you say Apple is too expensive, or inferior, I don’t need a Jet song to tell you, ‘Think Different.’