Forbidden Apple?!

How many of you have iPhone?, asked my prof in the class. My thoughts travelled 23 months 13 days back in time, the Christmas of 2007 to be precise when I first laid my hands on the brand new iPhone.

 11 months had passed by since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in his Jan 2007 keynote at MacExpo. What Steve Jobs showed the world was way ahead of the contemporary handheld devices. He literally made a mockery of the stylus that comes with these handheld devices and showed the world why stylus was such a redundant piece of stick when you have the natural stylus, five of them in each hand!

My love story with Apple started off in mid 2006 when my cousin gifted me an iPod Nano. It was hard for me to fathom that stuff like music could be made so organized and portable. I was impressed by click wheel and the option to choose the song you want. From Walkman (the tape cassette one!) to iPod was an astronomical leap of sorts. Apple made it possible. It was indeed love at first sight!

By December that year, I moved to Los Angeles, a bit closer to the birth place of Apple. I was on the lookout for buying my first notebook. MacBooks were a bit heavy on the purse. All I could do at that point in time was to hope that Apple would give away free MacBooks to people who want to own one but cannot afford one! ( Yeah! Brand Apple makes you Insane!)

 Again, my cousin came to the rescue! He offered me to get a 25% discount on the MacBook from one of his colleagues at Apple. Flying to his home in Bay area, the birthplace of Apple was the next thing I did.  I landed at his home on a cold December morning. The MacBook was waiting for me on the table. Pure, white, gorgeous and oozing style in every inch of it. Carefully connecting the charger to the power point, I switched on the Mac Book. The Apple Logo lit up in a white light brighter than the MacBook’s skin. I had never seen anything like that before. I cherished every moment of it!

6 months on, iPhone was launched. And I did call my cousin for that 25% discountJ. I was not fortunate this time around. My friend and I used to track the reviews and feedback of iPhone users. There were quite a few complaints ranging from a battery that would not last more than a few hours to poor camera quality and what not. We were disappointed. Although we did not care much for these complaints, we still could not find a reason for not buying it. Probably there wasn’t one. 

On the Christmas Eve of 2007, my friend got a crazy offer from Amex, offering its card holders a 10% discount at the Apple stores for any purchase of over US $1000.  We sensed that probably, this was the chance. Two iPhones would bring the bill up to 880 USD with taxes (by 2007 rates). We went in search of someone who can buy for the remaining 120 USD! Fortunately, my other roomie was ready to get his iPod. We were off to the Apple store and the next call I did to my mom was on my iphone!

From being clueless on what an iPod was to a Crazy Apple Loyalist possessing three of its beauties! All this in fewer than 8 months! Although I did see that there were lots of compromises like changing your service provider, entering a 2 year contract with ridiculous terms of breaking it, compatibility issues and limitations with the iPhone, brand Apple did push them to the background. Definitely, too good to resist!