Justification
Justification is an art. When you’re short of funds, though not so short that buying something is entirely unlikely, you need to be able to justify it to yourself. You can’t just spend money on things that you just fancy having; you need to convince yourself, and, perhaps more importantly, you need to be able to convince others, and that’s always the hard part.
Like most Windows users, my first real Apple experience was the iPod. Well, not true; my first genuine experience was with Quicktime, which went from being a clunky, unfriendly media player to a clunky, unfriendly media player with a metallic look and feel to it. But my first real positive Apple experience has to have been the iPod. I wanted one for a long time and eventually hit upon the idea, one birthday/xmas not so long ago, of creating an iPod fund — when somebody asked me want I wanted for a gift, I’d ask them to donate to the fund and eventually I had my iPod and could get rid of the brick-like Creative Zen.
The difference between the two players was huge. Though, in terms of features, the Zen could easily beat the iPod, the difference in usability was the key; controlling the iPod after about a year of using the Zen was a revelation — it just worked perfectly. Intuitive, lightweight and reliable, it was a good advert for Apple.
The problem was, the rest of the Apple range of products were, though highly desirable, too expensive. I wanted a Mac but this wasn’t an impulse purchase, it was too much. So, the process of justification began. Months ago.
If not years.
It always begins with the Fantasy Buying Game. This game takes place when you’re bored at work and find yourself browsing ebay, Amazon, or in this case the Apple store. You start looking at the various products and imagining what you would be buying if you were buying anything at all. Then you start doing the maths and working out if you can afford anything, and you start mentally wondering what you could sell or how else you could finance what you want. After that, it becomes a slow game of chicken, with each play resulting in you getting closer and closer to hitting that final ‘confirm’ button. It is for this reason that I never take advantage of any of the various ‘one click’ purchase options; it’s just too dangerous.
Sometimes you might find yourself hitting that ‘confirm’ button but on, say, a Sunday, or late on a Friday, or a Bank holiday — some day in which your order won’t actually be processed for 24–48 hours. This gives you time to cancel, a safety margin, but it also allows you an opportunity to feel what it might be like to have actually purchased the thing. It might feel awful; you might be overwhelmed with guilt at having squandered your hard-earned, er, earnings on fancy shimmerings, Alternatively, you might feel really good about yourself. Either way, you will often, 90% of the time, still cancel the order at this point. After all, you weren’t really serious…were you? It’s ok, you cancelled the order, you’re fine, you’re safe. Breathe, whhheeewwwww.
Eventually, you lose. You always lose, because as time passes whatever you intended to buy only becomes more desirable. The price may drop a fraction, or you may discover how to knock a tiny, tiny percentage off with some sort of coupon. More features may be added, or the specifications may improve. Either way, you’re going to lose, and that was inevitable from the very start.
You need it because you’re weak.
Another three-paragraph diversion; let’s return to the Plot. I desired a Mac, and why not? The things look great, everyone raves about how usable they are, they…they look great. I’m a designer, and it seemed to be the designer’s platform of choice, so there had to be something in it. But I couldn’t afford one! The anglepoise iMac came and went and I longed, and the iBook and Powerbook set up residence and I continued to long, and then the tablet iMac turned up, and then the Mac Mini. Ah-ha! The Mac Mini! Now this had potential, until I realised who it was actually aimed at; it was a low-powered, feature-poor attempt at getting Ordinary Joe to switch from his virus- and porn-riddled Tiny, and bumping up the specs meant the price went too hgh. Foiled!
But then, there came a point when I could start justifying to myself why I needed an Apple Mac. For business reasons. Yes! That’s a killer. And it was true! I was working on websites that had to display correctly in Safari, which was made trickier by not actually having Safari. I was having to make random changes to my CSS, upload, email the person I was doing the work for, tell them I’d made some changes, ask them if that had fixed the display bugs, receive a screenshot, and repeat. It wasn’t easy. Thus, having a Mac meant I could save valuable hours by doing my own testing and debugging. Cunning, no?
I decided on an iBook, because it was good enough for testing on and having a laptop meant I could wander around Oxford’s Famous Oxford with it, take it with me when visiting friends and relatives, and basically display to the world that I’m a giant, stinking ponce. I reasoned that I could almost, sort-of afford the £700 iBook as well; it could be paid off with a couple of design jobs fairly soon. So, I had justified the purchase to myself, and the ‘business reasons’ argument would be good for shutting up the naysayers.
But!
There were rumours of new iBooks coming out. The iMac was updated, as was the eMac, so I waited…and waited…and waited…but nothing happened. This was frustrating; I’d convinced myself that I was buying the damn thing but the waiting went on for months with no end in sight. Luckily, convincing myself that I could afford to spend £700 meant that convincing myself to spend £1000 wasn’t nearly as difficult. And now, I type this on a 12″ Apple Powerbook. And it’s gorgeous.
Sure, it’s gorgeous – but only for businesss reasons.
Actually, this reminds of an article I read several years back–I think Tognazzini wrote it–about purchasing decisions. Unfortunately, I can’t find the article on his site.
There’s a psychological phrase for it–I don’t remember what it is–but it breaks down into that there are three aspects of our personality involved when we make a purchasing decision: the Parent, the Adult, and the Child.
The Parent is the “No-no” type. No, don’t spend your money. Save it for a rainy day. You don’t need that, you can make do with a cheaper model. The Child, conversely, likes neat and shiny things that are cool. The Adult is the calm and logical one.
The article talked about selling TVs with remotes. For those of you who are too young to remember, back in the late 1970s or so most TVs had knobs that you had to turn to change from one channel to another. You had one knob that did the “gross tuning” (say, from channel 3 to channel 8) and another knob that did the “fine tuning” to make channel 8 come in better.
Well, remotes were cool. But when they tried to sell these TVs based on the remote, people came up with one reply:
“I’m not so lazy that I can’t get up and change the channel.”
As a salesperson, how do you respond to that? “Yes, you are”? The problem was that the remote appealed to the Child. It was cool. But then the Parent stepped in and said, “It’s not worth the extra money–besides, the TV you have now is fine.” Deadlock.
How do you break the deadlock? Appeal to the adult.
Rather than showing off the remote at the beginning, the salesman would wait until the end. Instead, the salesman would talk about the technical advancement–Digital Tuning. Digital tuning removed the need for those knobs. It automatically tuned the channel–you didn’t have to futz with the “fine tuning”–a little microchip inside did it for you! And while the TVs are a bit more money, you’ll actually save money because you won’t have to have the TV repairman come in once a year and oil up the knobs! You do have your TV maintained once a year, don’t you? (Of course not–nobody did.)
Okay, so the Adult is sold on the benefits of digital tuning and, if we’re going to buy a TV, it will definitely have a digital tuner. At this point, the salesman would whip out the remote and say something like, “..and with digital tuning, the whole system can be put in a little box like this!” The Child is saying, “Yeah! That’s cool! I want it I want it I want it!!!” The Adult can see the advantages of digital tuning and how they’ll actually save money. And the Parent is effectively sidelined.
It’s pretty entertaining to look at your purchasing decisions that way.
it is a beautiful machine and worth every penny, but then I love Mac’s. Should be picking up a 20-inch iMac next week – very exciting!
I once found myself idly browsing Amazon after a long, leisurely dinner involving several bottles of wine, and spent a bit of time clicking through some albums I wanted and just…coveting them a little. A couple of days later, they came through the door. I hadn’t remembered buying them, it just…happened.
As you said, very dangerous.
The moral of this tale is to only covet really, really expensive things: a small bedsit in Mayfair, a Ferrari Enzo, the Dallas Cowboys, etc.
iCapture could have saved you £700. Kind of.
Not really; all that does is give me a screenshot, after a wait in a queue. I can’t make quick source code edits and then have another look, I have to wait for my turn to come around again, and the more complicated the problem the longer it will take to find a solution.