Technology is a big thing in my life. I’m a big geek and I love playing with those sorts of things and seeing how they work and just generally using it in day to day life.
This means I buy a lot of tech. I’m young, not having many responsibilities, and I have the means to buy these things. And that’s ok, right? Evidently my brain disagrees.
I think that holidays are the perfect time to test out and wear in new tech. Good headphones, typically have a “burn-in” time where the speakers explore their whole range. Tablets / Kindles batteries burn in aswell, increasing a small amount with heavy usage in the first couple of weeks.
I have used those two examples for a very specific reason.
I have been wanting a new tablet for a little while. After leaving the Apple eco-system, due to the removal of the headphone jack being so sin-worthy in my mind that I was willing to completely uproot my mobile technology life, to only now discover that Samsung have done the same thing with both the Note S10 and the Galaxy Tab S6!!!! Grrr!!!! (We’ll talk more about this in the next section) I digress. Since leaving the eco-system and joining Samsung (which has been very pleasurable so far) I have missed the capability of a tablet. I consume a lot of media, and quite simply, media is better consumed on bigger screens. I also, as some of you may know, am currently writing a novel. One of the many new wonders of the world is cloud technology, meaning I can write on the go. But, attempting to write large amounts during a lunch break or on a train etc with thumbs can become painful and does not flow as nicely. Incidentally, this post was written on my phone.
Now moving on to the headphones. I have a very lovely pair of Bose headphones (I’m not looking to start an audio fight here, they simply produce my favourite frequencies for the sort of music I listen to. But humans experience frequencies and music in different ways, and nobodies preference is wrong. Unless you like Beats. That’s just wrong. 😉 ) I bought these headphones on holiday and they weren’t cheap, to the point that I did not buy a wireless pair. This was backed up by the reasoning that I don’t believe that the quality of bluetooth is quite there yet to warrant the extra cost. If my music listening experience is at all disrupted by a Bluetooth dropout, as an Autistic person, this is unacceptable, and I will want to revert to the wire. And I shouldn’t have to carry around a USB-C/Lightning to 3.5mm converter just so I can use what I see as a very basic functionality of a smartphone! To see Samsung now replicate this outrageous behaviour is to say the least, disappointing. I may have seen this coming, as one of my very switched on to mobile technologies colleague pointed out, Samsung gave away free “Galaxy Buds” (their take on Apples Internet-infamous “AirPods”) with the latest iteration of the Galaxy S series, the S10. This could be seen as a very sneaky “ploy” from Samsung to get their customers to buy in to wireless technology before they made the jump too. At the time of purchase for my headphone, I was very bloody minded in thinking that consumers would not stand for Apples almost parent like behaviour of “WE don’t like this, so WE are taking it away from YOU, the ones who are giving US money.”, and would ‘vote with their feet’, as it were. I did vote with my feet in the hopes that either Apple would return with the headphone jack on the next model, having realised the foolishness of their ways, or, Samsung would keep to their advertised promise (yes, they even made a commercial mocking Apples decision… shortly removed after their latest presentation, showing off the Note10 without one, presumably in shame of their actions) and I would just stay rooted in their eco-system. Instead, I ended up with the arse-end of both deals, assuming that Samsung keep up with this appalling behaviour when announcing the S11 and onwards. Luckily by that time, I will have had my current headphones for 5 years, and upgrading will be reasonable and justified.
Now, if you are still reading, firstly, congratulations, but you may now be wondering why this post was titled as it is, considering how long I have just ranted about a completely different subject. Sometimes we have to get these things off our chest. But there was a point to it!
I am going on holiday as of Friday, for a total of almost 3 weeks! Lucky me! Both new headphones, and a new tablet, would be great to treat myself to while travelling. However, both, right now, are bad buying decisions. The Samsung tablet I would buy has just been announced that it will be superseded by the Tab S6 on September 6th (the day AFTER I get back from holiday! Something about law of sods…), and so right now, I will pay full price, for a tablet that will be both out of date, and discounted, in a months time. Bad money decision. On the headphones side of things, the Bose I would like to upgrade to (QC35s), have been out 2 years, and the QuietComfort have tended to be on a 2 year product cycle. I have also only had my headphones 2 years, and spending that much money so quickly is not fiscally responsible.
What I find interesting about this, is that I even have this line of reasoning in the first place. 2-3 years ago, I would have bought both without hesitation, and worried about the consequences later. Am I truly feeling the weight of ‘adulthood’ ? The thought makes me shiver. I am losing that childhood rush of “must have now” and being more select and planned about things. I suppose it speaks to how much I have grown over the last few years, but then again, I still make rushed decisions every now and then, but I have not regretted any of them, and to me, that’s ok.
I am hoping these decisions pay off in the long run, but for now I am just left in this introspective headspace where I am just hoping amongst hopes that I have made the right decision. Luckily I have managed to borrow a tablet from my equally tech-enthused Father for my holiday, and I suppose that my dreams of new headphones can stay just that until time has passed.
I hope this post finds you well, and thank you for reading.
I discovered something new today.
That you could post, on FaceBook, a very impressive link (with a Picture no less!) to a blog post (and to presumably other forms of social media) and, always being interested in what you have to say, I followed the ‘bait’ and clicked on the link.
Furnishing myself with hot tea – any reading experience is enhanced by hot tea – I settled down to read…
As you have noted, I am especially enthusiastic about Tech, and also like you; mourned the loss of the headphone ‘jack’ from my iPhone 8+.
I try not to be an apologist for Apple (nor any tech giant), but I believe that the loss of such convenience is likely to achieve the goal of waterproofing our gadgets across the board. A headphone jack is not an easy aperture to make waterproof, hence it’s loss by Apple and then (ahem, second) Samsung.
It IS a ‘parental’ move on these tech giants part; they believe they know best and want to drive us, sheep-like, towards their own vision. They lead and we must follow or turn to another make to gain the features we want and need. But as you have found, companies are a little like Dominos (had to get a Genesis reference in) and once one makes a choice and it is perceived to work, others will follow. And hey, without such vision, would we have experienced the ‘game changer’ that was the iPod, and enjoyed our music on the gin on a small MP3 player (and not on CD or Mini Disk players) before convergence arose his head and made phones and ‘phablets’ the silicone based Swiss multi-tool that they have become?
Like you, I find Beats ‘cans’ to be poorly designed, uncomfortable sonically. I love Sonos at home and Bose everywhere else. My Bose headphones for holiday are cleaned and prepped for use, but like you, they are wired as the BT versions are just too expensive to be easily affordable. And I’ve not listened to my ‘go to’ tracks on a BT pair to hear what the sound they produce is like compared to my wired versions. So I’ll have to rely on a Lightning to Headphone connector – horrible!
Now, it is true that you have been profligate in the past (I’ll not mention the recent Watch purchase, Gym membership or other many instances), and also true that your purchasing choices have sometimes been esoteric to say the least. But this forward planning of what to buy and when to do so is a step towards a mature and sensible outlook.
A turning away from the ‘must have NOW!’ and the ‘But I cant wait for it to come down in price in a couple of months time…!’ towards a fiscally responsible, and more thoughtful approach to the buying and enjoyment of such gadgets.
So I only really have one more comment to make.
Who are you and what have you done with my Son?