Recently I saw one of my friends tweet that she was still debating on upgrading her 3GS to either the iPhone 4S or the iPhone 5.

Umm, duh! It's a NO BRAINER. iPhone 5 is twice as fast, offers 4G LTE, sports a better camera. And the thing just feels mind-boggling ability to look big but feel small in your hand.

But when I talked to her about it, she brought up a totally valid point: the iPhone 5's new Lightning dock connector will not work on any of her accessories. (Well, she could buy adapters but seriously, who wants to spend that much money?)

So if she gets an iPhone 4S, she'll essentially be getting an extra two years out of her accessories. Assuming she upgrades to the next iPhone in two years, she'll be faced with the same dilemma. But hey, she would've gotten an extra two years out of use out of her accessories.

I've been in this situation before and I've learned to protect myself.

When I'm looking at buying a new device, I don't simply think of it as a device — I look at it as an investment into a platform.

Back when I was still in college, before the modern smartphone, I was big on the Windows Pocket PCs. Specifically, I had the Compaq iPAQ. I loved the thing. It could play music, videos, games…and it developed a nice ecosystem of "sleeve" accessories that I could slide onto it for extra functionality (e.g. GPS).

At one point, on top of the $500 device, I had dropped another $500 on accessories.

And a year after, they changed the design of the next-gen iPAQ; just like that, my iPAQ and $500 worth of accessories were outdated.

From that point on, I vowed to never lock myself to a hardware platform like that again.

As of today, I'm running on my third iPhone. I've also had three iPod shuffles and three iPod classics. And the only accessories I've ever bought for any of these devices are:

• cases
• USB chargers
• external battery
• replacement headphones
• iPod-enabled car stereo adapter

For the most part, these accessories are either under $30 or they can be used over the span of multiple generations. (The iPod-enabled car stereo adapter has an additional auxiliary port.)

As an early adopter that loves to stay on the cutting edge of devices, I've made a conscious effort to never commit myself too much to any one platform.

Even with my Mac, where I have spent a few hundred dollars on apps, I know that all of my data — music, photos, photoshop files, etc — can be liberated at any time and can be used on any other platform.

All of this forward thinking, in a sense, grants me a lot of freedom. So in times like this when Apple moves to a totally new Lightning dock connector, I know I can stay on the cutting edge without pissing away a few hundred dollars worth of accessories.