08 July 2011

Sayonara iPhone

I was an early adopter of the iPhone. When it came out I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But two years into my relationship with iPhone Apple did something I wasn't expecting them to do. What they did was release a software upgrade that hobbled every handset they considered to be obsolete.


Mine was a perfectly useful telephone and it worked better than any handset I'd ever owned. But Apple wanted me to buy an iPhone 4 and to make their point, the software upgrade they released last year all but destroyed the earlier generation iPhones.

What was once the most elegant and smooth piece of technology I'd ever owned became a nightmare of crashing operating systems every time I turned it on.

Apple wanted me to buy a new $300 handset and they were determined to force my hand. Screw Apple and screw Steve Jobs. How dare you hobble perfectly useful hardware?

Well after a year of work arounds and a phone that crashes every time I need it I just bought HTC Insight and I'm getting off the Apple train. I've spat out the Kool-Aid. It's only after making this purchase that I realize that Apple pretty much owns my music and the apps I've spent too much money buying. Damn them.


I'm looking forward to exploring the wold of Droid and I'll let you know how I do.

9 comments:

  1. Heretic! And Amazon owns all your books. Let me know how it goes.. my iPhone contract expires in June next year...

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  2. Hmmm. Do you hear your phone ringing? It's Steve Jobs saying, "Come back to me, Paul. Gimme another chance."

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  3. Never having owned a smartphone before, I'm pretty in love with my LG Optimus V. It's not an IPhone, but it is an android phone that has access to every app I want. More importantly it's a Virgin Mobile phone so I'm only paying $25 a month for unlimited texting and data. Love!

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  4. Apple should make it very easy for people to roll back an iOS upgrade on an iPhone or iPad with which it's incompatible. That said, all phone manufacturers want you to replace your phone every two years or so, and you can't count on a manufacturer making OS upgrades available for your handset once it decides it's obsolete. Google is reportedly trying to create a system that allows you to update components of your Android phone's OS, but if your manufacturer has modified that portion of the OS there's potential to have a similar experience to what occurred with your iPhone, and an inevitable point at which your phone won't support the latest Android OS.

    There's no perfect option. I avoid the problem by using a phone that's as dumb as a brick.

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  5. Call me a curmudgeon (offstage voice shouts, “You’re a curmudgeon!”), but the only thing I want to do with my cell phone is make phone calls. That said, though, I totally agree with what you have to say about this endlessly built-in obsolescence of products these days. And now, with computers and such, the thing they’re doing, as you point out, is to make sure you “need” something new. To add insult to injury, I just Googled it and found a page devoted to “green initiatives” for i-Phones! No doubt to be implemented after you throw away a perfectly good phone!

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  6. I love "spit out the Kool Aid".

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  7. Please keep us up to date. i'm going to make the leap to one or the other from my BlackBerry, and I need honesty, not a sales pitch!

    Aaron: Dumb as a brick made my night!

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  8. My post tomorrow is a follow up from this one. Hint: I love my HTC.

    Melody: What other expression is there? I feel like I've been in a cult!

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Talk to me!