Many years ago I purchased my first Apple laptop. It was purple, it cost me £400 at the time which was a sickening expense seeing as my primary income was from laboring on construction sites in London, and it meant that I had to make a few weeks of serious sacrifice by not going to the local for a few after work jars. It may not sound like much, but a quiet pint of lager or three after a day’s manual labour in London in winter is not a privilege or a treat – it is a simple necessity.
Once I had figured it out I managed to pump out a few articles, and my first ever pay cheque, from a travel magazine in London, was £400, which put my entire life in perspective, and I left the manual laboring gig for good. As a return to Apple for changing my life, I offered lifetime loyalty to the brand – Apple For Life.
So where does this lead to? What has all this vainglorious rambling got to do with surfing? Funny you should say that.
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Championing a brand like Apple is expensive. An iPod equals a brand new surfboard, an iPhone equals a trip overseas, and a MacBook Pro equals a whole bunch of months worth of school fees for my kids. Still, I buy.
There are many people – surfers – who decide to be Luddites. It is a choice, and quite frankly good for them. After a recent visit to China and witnessing the disturbing habits of the Chinese with their obsessive behaviour with their mobiles and wearables, all I wanted to do when I returned was to unplug. Leave everything behind and go and spend a few quiet days at the beach surfing, hanging out, and playing soccer with the kids. Eventually I needed to return to the matrix in order to join the revenue stream again, but I had seen why people unplug, head for their cabins in the forest and forget about the world of the Internet, sometimes forever.
Apart from the Chinese overload however, I do like to think of myself as dialed in and abreast of the current technology, functional apps and plug-ins, and what the next big thing might be.
I’ve ordered my Apple Watch 3. What it might mean is that my watch could ring while I’m surfing, and it could mean that there might be predisposed Luddites ready to tell me to keep quiet, to take it to the beach, to piss of and go and make some beeps somewhere else.
My wife could phone me if there’s a drama, and I always like to be in contact with my boy in case he has any need to speak to his dad at any stage of his life.
For someone who is time poor and who can never seem to fit in 30 minutes for a quick paddle, this Apple Watch 3 could be the tool to get me into a very much better place than I am in right now. That’s the whole point, isn’t it, to use technology in a bid to improve your life?
My order is already in.
