Apple products: I have well and truly crumbled

Two years ago I said that I 'absolutely' wasn't going to buy any Apple products.

 I loved my Samsung Galaxy Wonder (The Ace's paired down cousin). And, quite frankly, if there's something that absolutely everyone else has or wants, (an iPhone is a case in point) then I am less likely to want to get it.  It's an 'individual' reaction. I was taught to go my own way, to not worry what everyone else was wearing, doing or listening to. In short, I was taught to want to be different.

So whenever there is a product that hits the mass market, be it the Ford Focus, One Direction or Corrie, I, by default, will hate it.

So how did Apple products manage to infiltrate this barrier?

My husband got an iPad. He let me have a play on it. He popped a couple of films on it. And then he added a couple of children's apps. He let me surf the web on it. Before I could frenzily shout "get that mass-market crowd-pleasing over-hyped product out of my house" I found myself addicted to iPad online surfing.


So much easier than waiting 10 minutes for the Netbook to boot up. Now I could Google anything in seconds. The battery life is amazing, it stores your entire music, film and photo collection if you so desire, and for a social media butterfly like me, it makes connecting with your mates easier than ever.

Not only that, but my daughters started fighting over who got to play "Maths Bingo" first; a great little app that encourages children to do sums in order to tick off the numbers in a grid until they have Bingo and collect a Bingo Bug. Well worth the 69p and anything that teaches children Maths in a fun way has my vote.

And so, when asked what I wanted for my birthday this year, I ummmmed and ahhhed. I debated the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but had discovered that the Android apps collection on my phone was far behind the collection available on my husbands iPad. I thought about whether I wanted to keep my Samsung phone when the contract came up for renewal and thought I might upgrade to a larger phone, like the Samsung Note, to give me the similar surfing experience I was enjoying on the iPad. I dithered and procrastinated, until, one day, we wandered around our local town and my hubby suggested we take a look at the mini iPads to see if I might want one of those.

Ooooooo... I thought. Aaahhhh. I held one. I noticed how perfectly it would fit in my handbag; so much more portable than my Netbook or his iPad. The version with 3G was available to take away.

I wanted it.

Within 20 minutes of getting it home I'd linked it to our Wi-fi, downloaded the eBay app and ordered a Ted Baker cover for it. It is far faster than my Netbook, easier to surf on than my phone, and super easy to type this post on.

Only 2 months later and the Samsung phone has fallen victim to an Easter weekend offer by Carphone Warehouse who were offering up an iPhone 4 on O2 for only £22 per month. Of course I knew what case I would get for it.

How quickly the barriers crumble!

Do you have a particular product that you never thought you'd buy?

What is it, and what convinced you?