Last week I was feeling very proud of myself. I had decided in the face of overwhelming temptation not to buy one of the new iPads.

I was standing in the Apple Store. The perky, painfully over-familiar sales clerk had confirmed they had my preferred model in stock, and was offering to fetch it for me. My girlfriend (who had previously declared that she saw no value whatsoever in the upgrade) was even actively encouraging me to buy it.

And I said no. The retina display was a nice feature and all, and I was very impressed by its clarity and detail, but really I didn’t see it making a huge difference to my life.

Then I had to say no again, because the salesman obviously didn’t believe me the first time.

The next morning the strangest thing happened. I was standing on the station platform in Milsons Point waiting for the train, reading a (Kindle) book on my iPad, and for the first time ever I could see the pixels. I mean I obviously had seen them before, but now I was noticing them every time I looked at the screen. My eyes were tripping over the slightly blurry sub-pixel text rendering when they should have been flowing easily from word to word.

So now I am feeling far less proud of myself. But according to current tracking data, my new iPad should arrive in the next couple of days.