The last few months have been a time of soul-searching, of sleepless nights, of bouts of anguish and ruthless self-examination to determine who I am and what I want to be in the future.

What I am now… is a man with an iPod Touch.

Up to this point I had successfully avoided the Apple cult, sometimes with the aid of diversions and clever disguises. I've just always used a PC, mostly from the inertia of always having had one. My MP3 player has been whatever was selling for 10 bucks at Wal-Mart that was marginally capable of pushing a song into my earhole. And my handheld needs have been more than adequately filled by my series of increasingly complicated Palm Pilots.

Besides, Apple fans are… let's face it, they're a little scary. I've used Macs in college and here at work, and yeah, they're decent machines, I've got nothing against them. If you don't gush about them, Mac fans simply regard you as a lesser being who simply doesn't get it. But God help you if you even slightly disparage anything with a shiny, half-eaten apple on the side or hordes of rabid iPod people will swarm hand-over-hand across your column, blog and Twitter feed to click and hold you until you submit and endlessly sing the praises of Steve Jobs and all that he holds dear. Even if I was interested in a Mac, I would feel like someone slightly intrigued by Scientology who was freaked out by Tom Cruise.

But Palm seems to be walking away from their PDAs, preferring to stumble forward with smartphones in their eyes, while friends with iPhones and iPod Touches (iTouches?) have been flagrantly fondling their shiny toys at me. "Look," they say, dancing in monochromatic poses. "We are Bright and Futuristic and Good. Join us!"