Eva Bradley: Feeling iDependent to the core

I can't believe it. Or should that be iCan't believe it? I'm dating an iJerk. He's just so iHave-it.

Way back in the good old days when my boyfriend and I owned 3GS iPhones and not a lot else, there was a blissful sense of iQuality and iHarmony between us.

Then came the iPhone 4. And the iPod. The iShuffle. The iPad 2. And this week came the final nail in the coffin ... he got a MacBook Pro. Which is so "i" it doesn't even need to use one. It just goes without saying. Or is that without spelling?

Suddenly I have found myself in a wasteland of uncool, a place populated by mouldy old PCs, Microsoft and Android owners (the latter being especially irritating due to their inability to be quiet for a single moment, such is their determination to rant about the perceived equality of Androids compared with iPhones, (which is, as any iPhone user knows, a total waste of breath).

Due to a significant investment in PC software over the years, I remain committed to the platform despite the natty little whizz-bang Apple interface and sparkly silver cases and pared-down accessories.

But that doesn't mean I'm not in love with Apple. I just won't admit it. Which is easy to do when it floats only around the periphery of one's life, with a phone and no other iExtras.

The trouble with Apple, though, is that it's not enough just to own the equipment, one then has to be seen owning it.

A cool cafe can now be identified not only by the amount of stainless steel it's sporting, but by the number of iWankers parked out front reading the paper on their iPads while talking loudly on their iPhone 4s.

And as my boyfriend demonstrates with every excited gasp as he discovers cool new features on the Macbook, even if you're trying to be nice about it, and not make your girlfriend feel inadequate as her life passes her by while she waits for her PC to boot, it's impossible not to be iSuperior and make everyone else feel iEnvy.

Now that our various Apple devices are synched, we have entered a new phase in life which I call iDependence. Such is the usefulness of all of the various applications we've downloaded that we simply can't function without them.

Verbal directions to unknown location feels utterly antiquated when you can type an address into Google maps on the iPhone and be mindlessly led there.

We don't rent movies or dine at restaurants before we've looked them up on a host of various ratings applications and ensured they've received enough stars, and when we do choose to dine in we register our presence on another app altogether that tells our connected friends what we're up to and earns us points in the process.

Such is my dependence on Apple now that it feels as if a once-valuable part of my brain has been sliced off and stored off-site in a tiny motherboard.

Which is fine, until the battery dies and leaves you totally incapable of doing virtually anything except sitting still and contemplating life.

Which is really quite a lovely thing when you find yourself forced to do it.

And frankly, that's going to be my new iArgument when my boyfriend next starts waxing lyrical about how i-frickin-fabulous all his iDevices are. Seriously, I'm iOverit.Eva Bradley is an award-winning columnist.