iPhones And iFools
iPhone
Airtel introduced the iPhone in India for around Rs. 30,000. For this price you can get an awesome computer, a decent laptop or even a motorbike! This price was not surprising to me since all Apple products are overpriced. Only filthy rich people can afford Apple products anyway. Airtel claims that the phone is cheaper in developed countries since they have contracts there that tie to you long term plans and help subsidise the cost. Not convincing. If you buy the iPhone I will consider you a rich fool who doesn’t know what to do with money.
Found an article about a guy who bought the iPhone 3G. I’ve quoted in it full since it echoes most of my sentiments about Apple products.
Cranky Windows Guy: Apple’s iPhone Bugs Stopped Me From Switching to a Mac
Adam FrucciI’ve always been a Windows user, which means I’ve always been subjected to the ridicule of holier-than-thou Apple fans. You know what I’m talking about: blue screen of death jokes, spelling Microsoft with a $ in place of the S, saying “it just works” with a smug, chubby-faced smirk. It’s always been annoying, and it’s always made me want to avoid using Apple products just so I wouldn’t turn into one of those people. But then the iPhone came out, and I wanted it. But I being a Windows dude, I knew to wait a year for what I thought would be a more complete, less buggy version. It was Apple’s opportunity to get me into the fold, to make me a member of the cult. And boy, did they blow it.
I really would love to know where Apple got this reputation of creating lily-white products that never need fixing, created by a company that cradles its customers in fluffy clouds of superior technology. According to my first experiences with an Apple OS, that’s a whole lot of bullshit.
The iPhone 3G is infuriatingly buggy. It crashes. It doesn’t get great speeds when it should, switching to EDGE in areas that have 3G coverage. Coming out of the subway, it takes minutes to find a signal again and stop claiming to get “No Service” in the middle of Manhattan, often requiring a restart. Requiring a restart to get service! What is this crap? And when I do have service, calls still drop and fail all the time. The keyboard lags so much that writing text messages is more annoying than using T9 texting on a number pad. The orientation switching when you rotate the phone is inconsistent at best. Backups take minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes, the audio output dies and it needs to be restarted to listen to music through headphones. If you’ve got an iPhone 3G or have been reading news on Giz, none of this will come as a surprise to you. What’s surprising to me is how they’re reacting to to the problems.
I called Apple famed customer support to see if they had any solutions for these bugs. Their fix for my problem getting service when coming out of the subway? Turn Airplane Mode on and off. If there’s a more ghetto fix for a problem than that, I’d like to hear it. Last time I checked the C train didn’t have wings. As for when all of these bugs will be fixed, the guy on the phone said “Sooner or later it’ll be working to its full potential.” Oh, great. How helpful. When asked if I could revert to a previous firmware version, I was told to just wait for the next release. Great, thanks for nothing!
Overall, the customer service reps I talked to were friendly, but they’ve clearly been overwhelmed with calls about the iPhone (my average wait time was about nine minutes for the iPhone support number). They’re overwhelmed because they’re the only facet of Apple that’s available to talk about just what’s going on with the iPhone. Officially, Apple hasn’t recognized any problems, only releasing two patches that say they offer “bug fixes” without going into any more detail. It’s the standard Apple technique; giving no information whatsoever unless they feel like it suits them. And this arrogant company causes such heart palpitations in you fanboys?
If you try to go through the PR channels, you get the Apple standard “no comment.” Supposedly, Steve Jobs himself emailed one single person and promised fixes next month. That doesn’t count as an official statement. In fact, that’s worse than nothing at all, because it just shows how little respect Jobs has for all of us. He has time to tell one jerkoff who files a bug report that fixes are coming in September but can’t release a statement that says just that? Screw you, Steve.
When the Playstation 3 got some new firmware that bricked a number of consoles, Sony didn’t keep mum on the subject. They rushed a new firmware out in a matter of days and kept in touch with reporters about what was going on. They even apologized: “We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and appreciate your understanding and continued support.” Apple hasn’t acknowledged the iPhone issues to the press, let alone saying sorry for them. Because saying sorry would mean admitting that they screwed up.
The problem is that Apple has this reality distortion field that they use, which is a brilliant handling of PR most of the time. They give out tiny amounts of information, and by being so stingy they make everyone beg and salivate for little scraps But in the end, Apple is just a company like every other company. They screw up, they release things before they’re ready and they botch crisis control. The reality distortion field can’t cover for things like that. Their shit still stinks.
Before I got my iPhone, I was actually considering buying an Apple laptop. Can you believe it? Me, the Windows guy on the Giz staff, thinking of switching. Eventually, when the time comes to buy a new computer, I probably won’t want to jump to Vista, after all. Why not try a Mac?
Now, after this experience, there’s no way I will. I don’t trust the computers to “just work,” and if problems arise I don’t trust Apple to handle them in an open way with customers. In fact, I expect them to try to keep things from me, I expect to continue to feel disrespected by King Jobs and his merry minions. And I’m not alone on this one. What could have been an amazing opportunity to introduce thousands of people to the Apple OS experience has turned people off rather than getting them hooked.
Overpriced
I will never buy Apple products. This isn’t because I am prejudiced but simply because they are too expensive. I don’t give a damn if ‘it just works’ when I can’t afford it!
Overhyped
The hype that becomes before any Apple product is insane! Even if the product turns out to be flop (MacBook Air – no optical drive!) media and fanboys build up the product to extreme heights. I had to turn off the Apple category on Digg to get rid of the iPhone articles clogging up the main page. One in five articles was related to the iPhone.
Hardware Vendor Lock-In
Apple sells hardware and software together. No wonder they can claim their operating system is far superior. They design the hardware and can optimise it for the software. I want to be able to replace the parts of my computer that stop working with alternative parts from the market and not send it to Apple support every time.
Fanboys
This is the main reason I will never buy Apple products. Apple fanboys can be found everywhere. They will defend the company with their dying breath, buy every single Apple product and are basically the only reason for the company’s success. They will refuse to listen to fact and make fun of Windows and Linux users alike with such fanaticism that it annoys everyone else. These are the people that somehow find blog posts that talk about Macs and iPhones and start lengthy discussions on the subject that often beat the word count of the post many times over. No doubt some of them will arrive here and comment on this post. I hope that they don’t.
This kind of hero worshipping behaviour is just annoying. Even though they are a minority the persistence of these fanboys makes people think they are right. I am no Microsoft fan but recently I hate Apple even more since they portray an image of being above criticism which is a position that no company should ever take.
