The year was 2016. I was an eighth grader and top dog at my middle school. Today was the first day of my new life. I was finally going to trade in my 2012 Motorola phone for a brand spanking new second hand iPhone. I had saved up for months to be able to afford my preowned iPhone 5. She was magnificent. Sure her battery only lasted for 2 hours, sure the speakers didn’t work; but she was mine. No longer would my peers ridicule me for having an android. Things were looking up. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of a long and tumultuous relationship with Apple.

Allow me to provide you with some context. Since Freshman year, I have gone through 5 phones. Three iPhone 5’s and two iPhone 7’s. Other than the time that I dropped my phone in the toilet and didn’t fish it out for another hour (because ew), none of my replacements have been my fault. Until a few weeks ago, I had never cracked a phone screen. I had to get the other one’s replaced because of faulty cellular antennae and other issues that the company caused. My MacBook Air had to be replaced twice, the first time because I spilled tea all over it, and the second time because it just died!  In the past six months, I have been to the Apple store with a serious issue or repair NINE TIMES. I’m basically a regular.

In June, I needed a new phone case so I decided to buy one from Apple. I assumed that because it was coming from the company that made my phone, the case had to be more resilient. Boy was I wrong. In my 5 years of owning an iPhone, I had never cracked a screen. In the 4 1/2 months since I’ve been using an Apple case, I have cracked my screen five separate times. Clearly Apple has been making faulty cases in order to get their customers to buy new ones and get their screens replaced. Well, joke’s on you, Apple. I’m just going to put packaging tape over the screen and call it a day.

According to Clara Cullum, as she was getting her laptop fixed, the “geniuses” took it to the back to figure out the problem. They diagnosed it with mild water damage and gave her an estimate on what the repairs would cost. The lady said “it’ll be seven fifty”, to which Clara replied, “$7.50?”. The lady then scoffed at her, saying, “haha no. $750”. She “felt broke, dejected, and enraged”.

Apple products have been a constant drain on my time and money. Not only does Apple push out useless new updates and minor changes to a phone with an exponentially increasing amount of cameras, but they phase out the old ones by slowing down their batteries and making them incompatible with new updates. The alternative is even less enticing. Androids are weird and blurry and even the adequate ones are as or even more expensive than an Apple phone. I wrote this article because I was upset that my phone is broken. I am now realizing that I am complaining about a problem that has a solution. Do I like this solution? no. Will I continue to buy into empire that Apple has created? More likely than not.