Bite By Bite:

My Journey into the Apple Universe. 

After my release from prison, my first major purchase was a cell phone. The year was 2012, and the phone was a Samsung Galaxy S3. 

In prison, I thought a lot and read a lot of magazines, leading to a few predictions for the future. For example, I was sure that Tesla would succeed and Apple would fail. It was all about the leadership: Elon Musk had a clear plan for success (make an expensive luxury electric car that works and slowly progress down to models that ordinary people can afford), and Steve Jobs was dead. 

Unfortunately for my portfolio, I was released with less than twenty dollars, so I didn’t invest in Tesla stock back then. But I could act on my other call; I surmised that I would save myself many headaches if my first smartphone was an Android instead of an iPhone. 

In the halfway house I was released to, we weren’t allowed to have cell phones, but quite a few were around. You can’t trust ex-cons fresh out of federal prison to follow the rules, especially when so many of the regulations hinder your ability to build a new productive life on the right side of the law. 

Most of us were broke, but it was easy to get an “Obama phone,” a dumb phone with free service given to people on public assistance because access to communication is a right in America. As recently incarcerated individuals, we all knew that we had forfeited our right to many “rights” forever. Our general attitude was that we would have to work around a system designed to protect other people from us instead of helping us reintegrate into society. 

 I didn’t smuggle in an Obama phone and break this rule like many others did (even though I broke others). I was scared. In prison, I saw quite a few people released to the halfway house who came right back a few weeks later because of being caught with a cell phone. I decided it wasn’t worth it.

But there was a legitimate exception to the rule. If you managed to find a job (a tall order for newly released felons) and your boss told your case manager that you needed a phone for work, your case manager could approve it. Of course, you weren’t allowed to have it inside the halfway house; you had to check it at the door and could only reaccess it the next time you were allowed to leave the halfway house for work. 

Once I found a job as a personal trainer, my boss agreed that I needed a cell phone for work, and my case manager approved it. Right after my first direct deposit, I went to a Verizon store. It was technically illegal since I left work to go to the store, but what was I supposed to do after my case manager explained that he couldn’t give me a pass to leave the halfway house to buy a cellphone even after I was approved for one?

I was wearing a massive grin as I walked out carrying the newest Samsung Galaxy on the market, the S3.

When I returned to the halfway house, I checked my new baby in and went to my room. My roommates weren’t very talkative (they were busy on their cell phones), and I had lots of time to think about what a cell phone meant and what I would do with it. 

Smartphones are computers, and it was obvious to me that as technology progressed, they would integrate with laptops and other devices, creating personal tech ecosystems. I figured the best way to get a jump on this trend was to buy all my devices from the same company.

Any company with a vision would work to make sure their devices are integrated well with each other. As the most prestigious company making Android Smartphones on the market, someone at Samsung had to have a vision. And there is a general rule that your shit is much mo’ flyer when it all matches. Like Biggie said, “I stay Coogi down to the socks.”

It didn’t take long before I was out of the halfway house, making good money, and knew it was time to invest in a laptop. I waited for the new Samsung Series 5 Ultra touch to drop and bought one.

It was a good laptop that lasted a long time, but over the years, I realized there was no advantage to staying with one brand. Any PC can connect with any Android phone, and you get all the same features. The devices were getting more powerful but were not integrating as I had predicted. I stuck with Galaxy phones but bounced around a few laptop brands before ending up with a Lenovo X1 Thinkpad.  

About a year and a half ago, I considered adding a tablet to my tech universe. Hiking and camping had become bigger parts of my life, and I constantly needed to write for my online master’s classes. Taking my laptop out to nature was nerve-racking, so I sought a smaller, cheaper solution to pack for my trips.  

Last February, I was in New York on a speaking tour. I stopped by NYU, the university I am studying at, to pick up the podcasting mic the university provided for my podcasting class. The teacher also recommended studio headphones, specifically the Sony MDR7506, but I would have to buy my own.  

Since I live in Israel, where electronics are much more expensive than in America, I waited for this trip to buy the recommended headphones. I asked the administrator who gave me the mic where I could buy a pair, and she suggested I go to B&H Photo.

A sales guy with a scruffy beard and black yarmulke quickly found the headphones and asked if I needed anything else. I mentioned that I was considering a tablet, and he convinced me I wanted an iPad. 

He promised me that it wouldn’t pull me into the Apple universe. He convinced me it was a better deal because of its robustness and available peripherals if I wanted something lightweight for writing while traveling. He also convinced me to get a Logitech Combo Touch Keyboard Case for the iPad and a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse for my laptop to make the sound design more comfortable in my podcasting class.

The mouse was a bust. The side scroll feature would always stop working near the beginning of my editing sessions, and that was the main feature I was sold on. But the tablet and keyboard case were perfect. I had to admit I was wrong about Apple rotting. Instead, they were still making great products. I was especially impressed with the fingerprint reader, which worked much better than the one on my Thinkpad. 

A few months later, the left side of my Bluetooth headphones set stopped taking charge. Thinking about how happy I was with my new iPad, I decided to try a pair of AirPods. They were the first pair of in-ear headphones I’d bought since high school, where the left earbud didn’t pop out constantly. I have just enough cauliflower ears from wrestling that I have been forced to use wrap-around earphones to keep them in. 

Then, I was hanging out with a friend who had been dumping on me for a long time about not having an iPhone. I admitted to buying an iPad and AirPods and loving them both. After the obligatory “I told you so,” he mentioned that he had just upgraded to the iPhone 14 and offered me his old iPhone 12 mini. 

You obviously don’t say no to a free iPhone. As soon as I hooked it up, I realized that my AirPods would magically shift from my iPad to my iPhone based on which device I was using. I had dreamed about this type of integration a decade earlier in the halfway house. I knew that I would have to switch out all my devices for Apple products as soon as my finances allowed. 

At the end of last summer, I picked up a few new online training clients and decided to make the jump. Even though my Thinkpad was only about two years old and still working fine, I justified it because my wife had been thinking about a new laptop. When her last one died a few years ago, we replaced it with a Chromebook. That was a mistake. The Chromebook looked like a laptop but functioned more like a tablet with a keyboard instead of a touch screen. To be fair, the price point was in the tablet range. 

I figured I could solve the problem by giving her my old Thinkpad and buying myself a MacBook. So, I purchased a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 14 Pro, protective cases, and AirTags.

It really hit me that the Apple Universe was the world of my dreams when I checked my camera list on Zoom in class one day and saw that my phone camera was an option. 

Of course, it should be an option without having to connect anything or change any settings; the devices should talk to each other. 

Uploading files to Google Drive or emailing them to myself makes no sense. I should be able to Airdrop files between devices. Once I log in one device to a new wifi network, it should just tell all my other devices the password. Obviously, my tablet should function as a second screen for my laptop. If one company produces all the devices, they should come off the shelves working together as part of one integrated system. 

Even though I was dead wrong about the future of Apple after Steve Jobs passed, I am thrilled that they were able to make my dream a reality. Paying a premium for Apple products is worth it as long as they make my life easier and provide quality tools that help me realize my dreams.

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A Birthday Gift.