Iphone and Apple cult culture
Having grown in the dawn of the person computer age, I have never bought a single Apple product. Yes, I am a PC guy. As an electronics geek, PCs always made sense, software and hardware were always plenty full. The rule of thumb with PC based computers has always been: if you think of it, someone has already made it. And that rule has been generally true. With that, we all know of the hate culture that evolved around the “poor” PC platform and the “evil”, “unreliable” Microsoft Operating Systems and applications. We are also well aware of the cult culture around Apple product. Hear no evil, speak no evil has been the rule by Apple fanboys.
Well, last month, I purchased my first Apple product – the iPhone 4! Having been told time and again by Apple fanboys about how great Apple products are I expected nothing but the perfect product. Shortly after receiving my iPhone, I had it activated and started playing with it. Here are my first impressions.
First the good: the user interface and the screen are phenomenal. The page layout is well done, very pleasing to the eye, and the resolution is above expectations. The touch screen user interface is also pleasing, and rather easy to pick up on. Swipe scrolling, and pinch zooming are both nicely done features. I would say that in general, I was very pleased.
Now to the bad:
iTunes sucks!!! The is no polite way to say it. Apple has made iTunes into the end all, be all application for interfacing to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod. It is slow, clunky, and unresponsive. The synchronization options are amateurish at best. Apple should have definitely picked up a trick or two from Palm. Application conduits is a concept Apple hasn’t heard of, but I suspect there is an anterior motive to that – control. A synchronization utility should be simple and invisible. Apple receives a big FAIL on this.
Then we get to the apps store. Apple has made finding applications as difficult as possible. You can only search by search terms and that’s it! Once you have the results, there are no further refinement or sorting options. I suspect Apple did it for one reason only – to make sure you can’t do comparison shopping and just buy the something from the first few results.
Next, there is the whole jailbreaking thing. Only applications approved by Apple are allowed to be listed on the apps store. They tell us its done to ensure we get quality apps, but in reality it’s done to ensure they have a monopoly on the apps market. Otherwise, why would they not allow jailbreaking? For those not in the know, jailbreaking is a term used to describe having the ability to load applications without iTunes, with 3rd party utilities.
WiFi: iPhones have WiFi, and if enabled, it tries to hop onto a WiFi network before using the Edge/3G data network. Previously configured networks should connect automatically – or so they tell us. A few days into iPhone ownership, my iPhone started to forget it’s WiFi settings. So things aren’t working as well as they should (I’ll post a separate post about things I did to attempt to fix it).
The orientation sensor (accelerometers) control the screen mode (landscape or portrait). It has the tendency to flip orientation during unexpected times. It seems that just a minor non intentional tilt can cause it to change orientation when the intent isn’t so. In phone mode, the cheek detector seems to have a tad of a delay. Both seem to be algorithm related software issues.
Next up is the outgoing server mail setup. Secondary server configuration is just hokey. If you play around with email account configuration, you will discover that the only way to remove some secondary servers is by deleting all email accounts all together.
Last, the now world famous antenna problem. All I can say about that is – what were they thinking?
So, what’s the point of all of this? Apple fanboys love to vilify Microsoft for being a monopoly, and producing buggy products. Well, guess what – so does Apple. They are just like any other hi-tech company. Their products have their highlights, but they also suffer from bugs. As a corporation, they are just as monopolistic as Microsoft, and Steve Jobs is as “evil” and Bill Gates. but now, I better understand why Apple owners are so cultish. In reality, they are afraid to admit in public that they overpaid for a product that is just as good as any other product out there. Furthermore, they are scare to admit that they have a product that will only do Steve Jobs allows it to do.