Every week I join the audience of the recording of the PC Pro podcast. It’s live every Thursday at 1pm on Mixlr, where you can listen to the recording (warts and all) as well as join in with text-based chat.

At the end of each podcast is discussion of a piece of hardware – what they call the “Hot Hardware” part, as everyone votes whether it’s hot, or otherwise. This week, the latest M2-powered MacBook Air was reviewed. Now, I’m not here to argue either way but this comment by one of the listeners grabbed my attention…

Apple make over priced fashion devices for which I’m not the target audience…

And, for this reason alone, he rated it as “cold”.

The thing is, I used to think like this. It was over-priced, for “sheep”, etc. But the reality was, I didn’t know. I’d never really tried their devices.

The change was when my old employer game me an iPhone 5. Suddenly, I saw what people liked about them and, soon after, bought my own iPhone (an iPhone 7 I think it was). The reality was, as much as I held views like the person above, they were simply out of my reach. They were pricey and it was a lot a simpler to just buy a much cheaper Android phone. So, just like bad drivers who get angry with YOU when you beeped your phone because they cut you up, I lashed out and made disparaging remarks. In my head, it helped me justify not having one. I didn’t want to be one of THOSE people, so it felt good to have an Android phone instead.

But, when I realised I was actually missing out, I saved up and got an iPhone and, well, never looked back.

In fact, my first Apple purchase was a MacBook Pro – I’d got sick of buying plastic Windows laptops which didn’t last very long before breaking, going slow or whatever. I bought a MBP 2012 and still have it today. It works, albeit with some odd power issues (which maybe the dodgy third-party battery I put in it, if I’m honest). But, it looks like new still and, performance wise, is like the day I bought it – I couldn’t have been happier.

And the person who made the above remark, in one sentence, insulted a lot of of the people also in the chat (inc. some of those running the podcast), all of whom own Apple products (I wonder why they bother turning up to listen if that’s view of the people who present it). Apparently, we’re buying these for fashion reasons and nothing else. Yeah, right.