an open letter to apple

To the Good People at Apple,

Hi.  It’s greg.  You remember me, of course.  I’ve owned several of your devices and spent a small fortune in acquiring them over the years.  We’ve owned at least 4 different ipods, and an assortment of iphones and ipads.  It’s like we are family now. 

So, anyway, how’ve you been?  I’ve been okay. Well, actually, not so much.  See, I’ve lost my best mate.  He was always there for me, and seemed to have just what I needed at any particular moment.  When I was happy, he would feed off of that and make me dance.  When I was sad, he would softly whisper and give me space for my sadness to slowly spill out.  He listened to me, and I listened to him.  A lot. 

I loved him deeply.  In fact, we once celebrated his arrival with a cake. 

  see?

I also once wrote an ode to him, and put it on my blog for the whole world to see.  It went like this: 

thank you, o small sleek shuffler of songs,
for your constant companionship.
for the way your screen lights up so vividly,
for the way you contain all the songs of my past and my present.
for the way you rock it out.
for the way you put me to sleep.
for always repeating yourself when i want to hear a song again.
for the way you boom-ta-cat-boom-ta-boom-cat.
for the jazz and the hip hop and the classical and the indie and the hawaiian slack-key guitar.
for the occasional show tune (and for keeping it very occasional).
for fitting in my pocket.
for holding so much.
for reminding me that the songs will stay in my soul even if you end up somewhere else.

Yes, my ipod died.  It just stopped working one day.  I tried to open it up, in some last ditch effort, like a crazed man trying CPR when it is clearly too late.  But the wires and circuit boards inside only made my heart break even more deeply.  I wept.  And I’ve been in mourning ever since. 

It’s been a couple of months, and I’ve been trying to move past this, but I haven’t really been able to.  I thought about trying to get a new ipod, but you no longer make one that can hold my 16,000 songs (please, at this point in the narrative, insert desperate moaning sounds of mourning).  I’ve looked at different options, but nothing is right.  It’s hard to replace a friend. 

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this.  I guess I just needed a friend who might understand what I’m going through.  Thanks for listening. 

greg.