First bite of the Apple

Well I wasn’t going to, but I was at my wits end with my elderly mobile phone having constantly drained its battery whenever I whipped it out of my handbag to make an important call. I sidled into my local mobile phone shop and whilst the telephonic vendors were otherwise engaged I had a little look at the gleaming new Apple iPhone 3GS. Hmmm it was very intriguing, it could do all manner of things I’d never realised were missing from my life but now I knew I could do such things I felt a sudden need to fill this gap. I’d been deterred from an iPhone previously because of my apparent too long nails for such touch screen manipulation but really it just takes a little getting used to. And it wasn’t long before I’d swapped networks (yes annoying there is only one that an iPhone can communicate over) and found myself a proud possessor of a shiny black iPhone. Then I immediately had to hurtle home to load all my music and see what apps I should adorn my new gadget with. And of course this being a food and travel blog that was one of my themes for app selection. Firstly I could actually access my blog on it, something my BlackBerry hadn’t been able to cope with – too many photographs or something! And within a matter of moments I had furnished myself with a plethora of colourful travel guides, a useful translation app for those tricky menu items, a restaurant locating program, the UK Michelin guide, the huge Epicurious recipe database and even a mobile Ocado app so I could order groceries from wherever I am. I used the Google maps to locate a restaurant we’d forgotten to write the address down of within hours of owning it and the inbuilt camera was also immediately deployed to snap a few of the delicious delights we ate. There’s a great collection of photographic apps so I can recolour photos or rather bizarrely make any picture I take look like a seventies cookbook image. I’ve also got a couple of painting programs so I can while away train journeys both listening to music or an audio book and creating things like the illustrative apple bite picture above, though I don’t feel Van Gogh needs to worry himself too much! I can’t really rationalise my need to have Excel close to me all the time but I blame my inner geek there and now even that desire has been sated. I noticed there was an app to help with grilling meat but feeling I know how to do that task I have managed to resist so far. I’ve also been able to hold myself back from Cooking Mama but I did plump for and am now a big fan of Cooking Quest – a hidden objects game ever so slightly based on the theme of cooking, but still fun nonetheless.
I also have ELLE à table, my French is far from fluent but I have always been fond of the pictures and trying to read the magazine and now that A-A will not be nipping over to Paris regularly it will be harder to get my French recipes magazine fix. And to try and make inroads with my clearly inadequate French I have also uploaded all Michel Thomas’ French lessons CDs. I shouldn’t be too surprised that I have found my little Apple so strangely alluring, I always was a fan of a gadget and this has got to be one of the ultimate ones. This has been my very first foray into the Apple world, I’d been one of those mavericks with another MP3 player not the one that all the boutique hotels in New York provide adapters and chargers for. No I had to be different! And that’s not just because I didn’t fancy white earphones.
As much as I had admired an Apple Mac from a distance I was determined to stick with what I know and what my clients pretty much exclusively have when choosing a new laptop but I can really see the allure.
But for now I am happy to report that I think that I am pretty covered for fruit based communications devices - I have a BlackBerry for work and an Apple for pleasure. Let me know when they bring out an Apricot or even better my favourite RaspBerry but I’ll pass on the Banana as I really don’t like the smell!