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| Shiny and clean look. |
I've always maintained that Apple sell overpriced form-over-function style-over-content gizmos to an army of monied iMugs. Due to this stance I was secretly saddened by the launch of the original iPhone because I couldn't have one of the wonderful things without being a hypocrite.
Then I got my Android HTC desire and won anyway because it pissed all over the first few generations of iPhone.
My dear employers have got us all iPhone 4s for work and I was looking forward to the thrill of having one without selling out.
The shiny lovely black thing was unpacked & set up & I played with it. The interface is very good and the touchscreen keyboard is better than the htc. The screen is smaller & not as good. Battery life similar (i.e bad)Sadly my one (itself a replacement for a duff unit delivered to the company as 1 of 4) had a speaker that did not work making it useless as a phone.
Back to Vodafone it went. Swapped the next morning. The replacement iPhone was charged up and attached to my laptop to be restored from the hated iTunes. I was thick & refused to 'register' it a few times & assumed that was why it kept restarting. Then I got with the program & restored it and even painlessly upgraded the OS from itunes.
Freed from its usb to Apple-specific (ffs) cable I eagerly began trying to phone a colleague. It was soon apparent that we'd got another lemon as the touchscreen was not properly responsive and sometimes turned red as the phone crashed down to the black Apple screen. The thing just continually rebooted every few minutes even after a full reset.
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| Hook-up for a buggering with iPhone |
Yet another iPhone 4 arrived this morning and its a good-un. But 3 out of 6 delivered to this office have been duds. Thats a very poor hit-rate for apple. I guess the quality control guy at the terrible Foxconn factory in China where they make them was off killing himself instead of inspecting them when that batch went through.
I'm not that upset by the piss poor quality of manufacturing as it gives me a smug feeling that I've been right about apple all along but I would be very annoyed if I was one of those iTards that queue up outside apple shops for days to get the latest iThing only to find it doesn't work.
It strikes me that Apple's greatest asset is their uncritical customers. These people are not worried that the gadget they've just paid a fortune for does not do many things that it should (like wifi/usb etc). They are not disappointed because they don't know what they wanted the iProduct for. They just wanted the latest iProduct. A new iProduct2 will be along in a few months offering some basic functionality that they should have got with the iProduct1 and they will queue up and pay through the nose for that as well.
This old spoof sums it all up rather nicely.
I've spent a bit more time with my iPhone4 now and it really is rather nice. The reason why my boss got us iPhones is to use the 'Connectwise' cloud based application that we use to manage our jobs/projects/time. I can report that the iPhone connectwise app is very good indeed and works beautifully with the iphone. The camera is first class.
Would I buy an iphone 4 with my own money? NO As with most of Apple's offerings it just costs too much and I don't want to be part of the apple wankworld. I'm afraid I've still got less money than sense and would prefer to pay less for a phone/computer that does what I want it to do instead of what it wants to do.
iPads with no USB or SD card slot? No need for Apple to include these 2 industry standard interfaces as the iMugs will pay through the nose for adapters.
And then there's iTunes. Years ago I got given an iPod and was forced to install iTunes so I could listen to MY OWN MUSIC. iTunes then royally fucked up the cataloging of my music to the extent that I have only just managed to manually reconstruct 'the Orbs adventures beyond the ultraworld' years later and some tunes are lost forever. So you can buy music from the iTunes store? oh. It comes in a wank poor quality proprietary format and is copy protected so its not exactly yours and isn't a lot of use if you move away from Apple.
One mouse button? - Oh just fuck off Apple.
While the devices (iPhones, iPads, iPods,mcbooks etc) are undoubtedly handsome and innovative there is just too much wrong with Apple's attitude for me to hand them my money. I couldn't really enjoy my iThing knowing that there's an American billionare laughing all the way to the bank having just taken the piss out of me. Apple is the greatest example there is of the earning power of a brand but I just do not understand what it is that people think they are buying into. I know lots of Apple devotees and they are, by and large, intelligent and nice people (with money). There must be something that I just don't 'get'.
If anyone actually read this blog I would probably be inundated with abuse from Apple suckers after this post but I don't mind. I won't argue and this is just my opinion. If an apple lover can explain it all to me I'd be interested to understand.
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