Apples keep growing on my Christmas tree

The demand for the newest technological gimmick is insatiable, so even though my home is full of computers and other perfectly good devices, the latest shiny tablet is all the kids want – and I’m left fighting a losing battle

TDHERE is one line in Zoolander, the hilarious spoof of the moronic fashion world, whose humour rings slightly hollow for me. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson play two simple-minded male models called Hansel and Derek who, apart from around-the-clock preening sessions, are trying to crack an off-catwalk assassination plot, the key to which they are convinced is to be found among the files in their Apple computer.

As their hamfisted efforts become increasingly frustrated, a desperate Hansel smashes the computer onto the ground. Staring down at the pieces of glass and metal lying in smithereens at his feet, he scratches his head in confusion. ‘Where did all the files go?’ he asks.

The scene is one of the movie’s comedy highlights but it has a somewhat uncomfortable effect on me. Granted, my understanding of computers is a little more sophisticated than Hansel’s – he is an imbecile after all – but in the arcane world of computers and t echnological gobbledegook, the same joke could easily be made about me.

After all, it is not so long ago that on hearing how my friend had given her son a tablet on his birthday, I commiserated with her about him being sick for his big day. I also have to put my hands up and say that, although I recently mastered the art of sending a link, I still get anxious when people offer to send me one, instead of just emailing me the article I need. And don’t get me started on Cloud computing. Like Hansel, I’d just have to hazard a guess that it’s all up in the air.

When it comes to technology, I have been living under a rock – or, to strike a more modern metaphor, in my bedroom with the door closed, shades drawn and nothing but the luminescent glow of a computer screen lighting my world. It has not always been so. ARE I say it but I was something of a computing pioneer back in the day. I clearly remember the first time I laid eyes on an Apple Mac in a seminar room at university and how it gleamed with mystery and fresh promise. I won’t say that the Earth moved, but not long later I invested in my own ‘ system’ and experienced a pleasing spike in my popularity as people who had previously not bothered much with me suddenly started popping round to marvel at the wonders of the technological revolution.

But my strong start ultimately came to nothing and, like each new generation of computers, I was swiftly overtaken on the fast lane to technological domination.

The truth is that if it wasn’t for my children, particularly my son who – if I believed in outside forces, I would say has been programmed by Apple Inc for slavish devotion and obeisance to its product range – I’d probably still be working on that now vintage computer, oblivious to its ability to do anything other than a simple ‘cut and paste’.

The world of gigabytes and apps, of bluetooth, mouses – or is it mice? – and notebooks would still be a foreign land and I would not be seized with something like low-level panic every time I hear this jargon.

And I would not now, probably like thousands of other parents, be steeling myself for the annual pre-Christ- mas t echnological arms r ace whereby a bewildering range of ruinously expensive products promising to do everything for ‘users’ apart from declaring a surely long overdue halt to the frenzied evolution of the digital age, shriek and holler for our attention from the marketplace.

The talk in our house is now all about the iPad Air, which as far as I can make out has absolutely nothing going for it other than its newness.

I read somewhere that it has voice dictation which means that you needn’t type anything at all, you simply speak and the words miraculously appear before your eyes.

But why, I ask myself, would there be mass market interest in that when we have just been handed the gift of txtspk, an art form that makes writing so fast and painless that it has become practically obsolete? In any case, knowing me, I’m probably wrong about voice dictation being a novelty. It’s probably been around for aeons. I must ask the kids.

But so much for the iPad Air. There is also the latest iPad Mini, which has even more bells and whistles, as well as cover cases with built-in keyboards, targeting those who want to replace their laptop altogether. The other computer giant, Microsoft, also has two new tablets for the market: the Surface 2 and Surface Pro2. Then there’s the Smartwatch, which instinct tells me is a wristwatch and small computer and possibly even a phone, all in one.

And that’s before we even get to r ousing debate between t he Androids and iPhones or the new fangled phablets – apparently a huge phone that looks like a tablet.

The head-wrecking speed at which catchily named gizmos are developed is bad enough but once you make the tortuous decision about what to buy, you then have the armchair computer geniuses to deal with. Let’s just say that if I had a euro for every person who tut-tutted about how I should have invested in the Kindle Fire, instead of the ordinary Kindle, I would have enough money now to buy my son the iPhone 5s that he hankers for and which, I hasten to add, he has about two chances of getting.

And while we are on the subject of smug computer-savvy people, could someone explain to me why calling a Samsung smartphone an iPhone is so sidesplittingly hilarious? A few years ago I bought a smartphone – or was it an Android? – because the shop had sold out of iPhones. Quite honestly I would have been treated more kindly by my pals had I worn a shell suit into a top restaurant.

Last Christmas I bought a tablet for my son and I’m afraid to report that it did not go down well at all. To be fair, a brave face was put on the matter for Christmas Day but the tree had barely started shedding before the non-stop narrative about the iPad’s glories had been rebooted. I didn’t realise how much my pennypinching decision to go for the tablet over Apple’s equivalent was going to cost me in other respects.

I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent outside the Apple Store in Dublin city centre while inside a young boy ogles the stock while staring out at me, half-accusingly, through the window.

And if I’m introduced to another 12-year- old brandishing his brand new iPad or iPad Mini, I think I’ll scream.

I bought the Nexus tablet as well as a Norton security package, of which the latter is still in its packaging today because no-one seems to have a clue what to do with it or what its purpose is, because as far as I could tell it did everything that the other gadgets did at a fraction of the cost.

BUT the j oke was on me because efficiency – or ‘functionality’ as it is known in the trade – is ironically the last thing that counts i n the money-no-object mindless technological frenzy. Like high end consumer products, from a Celine snakeskin bag to a diamond Cartier watch, expensive technology is all to do with emotion and aspiration. It seems that like the BHP of a fancy Jaguar SJ for instance, the technotalk in computers is often just a con trick to add credibility, to elevate stuff beyond mere branding.

Of course I could be wrong. There could be radical differences between all these handsets and tablets: perhaps one is genuinely and indisputably superior to the other. Perhaps it might not be, as all the sales assistants drone, ‘a question of how much memory you want’. Perhaps I’m a fool to believe that, even with children, I can get through the next few years with my head in the proverbial sand, technology-wise.

Earlier this year, in a fit of guilt, I went with my son to a computer shop, fully prepared to be persuaded to fork out for the coveted iPad, particularly if there was the flimsiest pretext for it coming in handy in school.

The shop was an oasis of calm compared to the pre-Christmas hysteria, but I was none the wiser after being passed around between three salesman, each with an exponentially declining interest in giving a middle-aged woman a crash course in computers.

OK, one chap volunteered how I could rig up my guitar to the thing if I had a special cable and even download a full synthesiser and mixing desk quite cheaply. Funnily enough, that wasn’t a strong selling point for me, although if my son showed any inclination to practise the piano I probably would be convinced.

We left the shop empty-handed because I could not fathom what gap the iPad filled in a home which, like most nowadays, comes equipped with two traditional computer setups, two laptops, two iPods, Kindles, a just-about tolerated tablet and too many mobile phones.

The answer is that it doesn’t do anything, of course, other than give enjoyment, like a new toy.

And perhaps that’s why I fear I can no longer defer buying one. It will make a certain youngster very happy indeed.

Well, happy until next year’s iPad hits the shelves, anyway.