Inlast workweek ’s Think Retro — and with my excuse to him for bringing it up yet again — I told the story of Kenny gouging a track in the eyelid of his brand new 12 - inch PowerBook G4 within 24-hour interval of buying it , and I depend you too have your own tales of woe about that first time your perfect , beautiful bit of Apple hardware got its first scratch .
Today , though , I want to lionise those scar .
Those kale are the signs your iPod , your iPhone , your Mac isyours . They show it haslived — with you . They show it hasworked .
These are n’t froufrou museum pieces , kept , switched off , in rarefied air behind sheets of Plexiglass . They get marred as they go through life just like you , and just like the scratch on your body , you ’ll often commend where , when and how your Mac got each one . Each one is a story .
Some Apple devices , though , get so scratched that it ’s insufferable to keep track of when each mark was made , even if you want to . showing A : the iPod .
Without a type , that shiny , mirrored metal back would take up attracting scratches and dings as shortly as you took it out of its box . Scheol , I buy an iPod classic which conk straight from its boxful into a feel sleeve my wife fashion , and then directly into our machine ’s glove box where it has exist ever since , and even its back did n’t abide pristine for long .
But to me , an iPod whose metal grammatical case has been dulled by habiliment and by function is a matter to cherish . As a face lined with wrinkles and bear the evidence of a sprightliness lived can be as beautiful as a baby ’s , so your iPod ’s ravaged visage is just as lovely as it was when you first prize it from its box .
It came with you every twenty-four hour period on your commute . It was with you when you vacationed in Europe . When you took a former flight on your fashion to a reunification , when you journeyed home after a funeral , when you just sat on slothful summer afternoons and watched people pass by , it was in your pocket . On it you played the medicine that you were obsessed with when you match your boyfriend , the music you ca n’t hear to any more because it reminds you of the separation with your girl . You took it with you on good mean solar day and on bad ; it was your constant comrade , your salve and your escape , your friend . And the mule , the dinero , the dirt built up in the seams — all of that happened when it was with you . You .
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus do n’t really get dinged - up in the same way , and of course of action I ca n’t in good conscience plain about that . The dim surface of the iPhone 5 and 5s easy got nick to show the bare metallic element underneath , and though they were comfortable in the helping hand , the soft charge plate hindquarters of the iPhone 3 yard and 3GS does n’t age graciously .
As so often in Think Retro , though , I can pine for the past times while appreciating the present I live in , and I retrieve myself in the odd position of miss something that has n’t go on yet ; I have sex that even if I were to keep my iPhone 6 for as long as I keep my former iPod , it would n’t accrete the same grounds that we ’d journeyed together .
All this is the same impulse behind one of the understanding I get laid my marriage ceremony annulus so . Wherever I ’ve been , whatever I ’ve done , and through the tough times and the joy since I married my wife 10 years ago , my ring has been with me , the countless scrape and barely visible scuffs that corrade its gentle surface bearing will to all that time .
I actually have a tip for wee your scratch iPod depend less beaten up — and it ’s to carefully rub the back with a move over sandpaper block in one direction , which render it an surprisingly professional - see brush metal gist — but alternatively , I urge you to get laid it for what it is , an encoded record of everything you did and everywhere you went for the years you have it . Go : unearth your old iPod from a draftsman , and call up .
