Longtime readers of this site may remember that I have in the past voiced certain strong feelings toward that famous fruit-theme brand. Worry not, my mind hasn’t changed, and the fact that my G4’s supposedly brand new screen, already replaced a first time, is starting to show up the familiar white blotches all over again (and this time no warranty), just hasn’t been helping at all.

I had last vowed, stomping on the remains of my prematurely dead iPod’s battery, that I would never purchase Apple hardware ever again in my life.

Sure, Apple can be a sweet and caring lover at times… After all, they still make one of the best operating system out there, despite recent efforts to put an end to this trend (that Tiger? it’s so bloated and overfed: you could probably poke it with a meat stick and walk away safe). But the moment you fall for its sleek looks and shiny baubles and bail out one of them good-looking Powerbooks or bad-boy iPods, then their real side will show through: daily abuse will set in, money will go missing and you will soon start finding suspicious paraphernalia around the house.

Seriously, though: that whole “Superior Quality” myth around Apple products is way long gone. It disappeared around the time they started shipping computers that most proletarians could afford: over ten years ago. The original Mac 512K or that souped up Mac Classic on which I did my first Mac Paint drawings? It still worked 10 years later; hell, for all I know, they still work now. On the other hand: LC3? Performa? Powerbook G4? Give them a year or two and you’ll end up with some of the most technologically-advanced paperweights ever made.

What? You think Steve Jobs goes to Taiwan every morning to personally handpick the components that go into your computer? Your beloved Mac hardware is made from the exact same stuff as that Windows-based piece of junk your neighbour is running. Your extra money doesn’t go into quality components, it essentially goes into financing R&D for new shades of white plastics and buying fresh gazelle snacks for their OS menagerie. Unfortunately for them, Apple’s tight-knit user community is also what allows them to compare and realize that entire series of the stuff they bought are blatantly riddled with factory defects. As a result, no sane well-informed customer would ever consider using the first generation of an Apple-made product, unless receiving a monthly paycheck from their QA department.

So why, oh why, did I buy this damn thing? I know it will break well before reasonable wear sets in – actually, it already has for many. I know it’s still the same maker of shiny but shoddy hardware. I know I’ll be back here to rant about its defects soon enough.

I could try and justify it by saying that the nano is fairly cheap (compared to the rest), so incredibly damn small and I just couldn’t take another week without portable music device (see device stomping incident above).

But at the end of the day, we all know there was no rational justification. The pattern of abusive relationships is just a hard one to break from.

But look at him! He’s so cute and so tiny… How could I resist! I know he didn’t mean what he did to me last time: He changed. Things will be different this time…