Let’s get a couple of things straight.

Sure, I own a black polo-neck.

Ok, I’m also posting this from a slightly clunky G4 ibook.

And yeah, I have an ipod, and yeah my memory stick’s actually a 1st gen 512mb shuffle and my music platform’s itunes (despite its obvious short comings) and yes, ok, i did pre order those sennheiser in-ear headphones in white so i’d have them when they hit the streets and they’d match my mp3(4) player.

So why, when i’ve given up smoking, actually enjoy eating pulses and green vegetables and all sorts of other responsible, adult stuff - am I too to be found camping out (albeit nonchalantly) on macrumours to salivating over whatever tasty, ergonomic, intuitive, white and brushed titanium morcel Steve Jobs’ll toss me this quarter? (see Showtime at the Apple-O below)
It seems to me that the vitruvian triangle of form/function/delight in equal measure which meets in many of apple’s products has been squared by ‘covetability’…

and when you force the balance of a triangle even into a rhomboid, if not a square, that marvellous equalibrium gets broken.

So even if covetability is only one part (the marketing part in this case) of the whole apple set-up (and i’m being enormously benevolent to the apple board and share holders here, i think) means that the weighting of the apple dream is inevitably set to ‘And one more thing…’

One more thing you can’t quite have; one more thing you don’t own yet. One more thing you which will render your next upgrade obsolete almost before you’ve bought it. The Steve Jobs purchase plan is annual upgrades for your hardware and periferals, and while striving to always be better and better is admirable it forces an inevitable hierarchy which means in the end, one more thing is never enough…

Apple Bed, Sparklehorse, It’s A Wonderful Life. 2001.