iHate Apple

Ever since I was a young grade-school lad, I’ve always had a dislike toward Apple. I’m not really sure as to how it began, but the earliest memories I recall involve using an Apple ][ in the school computer labs to do basic word processing and playing Oregon Trail. I was also first exposed to Windows PC's around this time (Windows 95 had been a brand new release around then). In school, we would continue to use the old Apple ]['s while I would use Windows elsewhere. My preference was to use Windows, with the two-buttoned mice and much nicer user experience than the Mac OS of the early 90s. This seems to be the earliest memory of my dislike of Apple.

Now, most people would say that memory is a terrible reason to start disliking a company, and I agree. There is no real arguable basis in that other than what a young grade-school child preferred to use. It gets better, though... and the reasons and rationale starts to build in later years.

So the years went by, and I would continue using Microsoft Windows for my computing use. I used every version of Windows that was released for consumer use. Windows 95, 98/98SE, Windows ME (Millennium Edition, released in 2000), and Windows XP (2001) were the various versions used throughout the years. While Apple had always been on the side doing their own thing (Mac OS 9, and the first release of OS X in 2001) the entire time, but it never piqued my interest enough to use it. Something else happened in 2001, though.. something that would forever change the tech world and would really become the flashpoint of my real dislike against Apple. It wasn’t the release of OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)… but the release of Apple’s first foray into the digital media player market, the iPod.

Remember this thing?
Now, I didn’t start to dislike Apple just at the release of the iPod.. it took a while. I was still using my Sony CD player heavily at the time and wouldn’t invest into an MP3 player for another couple of years. In fact, my first MP3 player was much more than just a music player. It was a full fledged media player. It was an Archos AV320 (click for pictures). It played music, movies, was a picture viewer and did most things today’s media players all do, except for Internet browsing and a few other features such as a touch screen… and this was back in 2003/2004. There was no syncing to do or nothing fancy.. I just plugged in into my PC via USB and drag and dropped songs right onto the player (which was seen as a portable hard drive by the computer). It was simple, and did more than the average device of it’s time. I thought that what I had would be the device everyone would be using (I was correct, but it would take a few years.. we had to wait for Apple to catch up). Apple’s iPod was in it’s 3rd or 4th generation by now and just started to introduce the newest iPod (originally called ‘iPod photo’) with *gasp* A COLOR SCREEN! Around this time, it’s when I started to really notice how ubiquitous the iPod had become. Most of my friends had one and everyone was using iTunes (introduced in 2003) to buy their new music which were only playable on their iPods.

That made no sense to me at the time… why would you pay for songs that were only playable on the computer you bought it on and the device you put the songs on? If I bought something, I’d want to play it wherever I wanted. Little did I know that DRM (Digital Rights Management) was only just beginning to become a trend at the time, and Microsoft would later come to use it on their ‘Plays For Sure’ devices. Hearing the news about the restrictions on this iPod just made me shy away from using it. As I kept trying to tell people about this and explaining how it’s wrong.. it was to no avail. Almost everyone wanted the iPod, it was getting great press because it was ‘simple’ to use… as long as you used what Apple wanted you to use.

Over the following years, Apple would release new iPod versions (the Shuffle, the Mini and later, the Nano) and keep churning out new revisions of each version on a yearly basis with the odd new feature here and there, mainly cosmetic changes to the hardware. It was obvious that they were simply (and still are) just trying to milk their consumers for what they could…. and it worked. Everytime a new iPod would come out, there’d be a rush to discard the old one and get the new one. If you were going from the 3rd gen with no color to the 4th gen with color.. or 4th to 5th with a bigger screen, that’s a worthwhile upgrade. From 5th to 6th gen however, they just changed the look of it and increased the hard drive size. Unless you were seriously going to use all of that hard drive space, there was no real reason to upgrade. YET, most people did. This trend would only continue over the years… and it always irked me that people would fall for the crap Apple was pulling. I still had my Archos AV320 (which still had more hard drive space than any iPod at the time, and even to this day) and chugging along with my entire music collection on it as well as videos. In 2007 however, Apple took things to yet another height. If I thought things were bad now, they were about to get much worse. On July 29, 2007, Apple released the iPhone.

Apple’s first-gen iPhone

The world went insane… actually, they went (excuse my language) BAT-SHIT INSANE. The “first” phone ever with a multi-touch device… and not only was it a phone.. it was an iPod, a web browser, and more! In fact, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was quoted at the 2007 Macworld Conference as saying – (quoted from Wikipedia)

Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”; a “revolutionary mobile phone”; and a “breakthrough Internet communicator”.

Almost immediately, people started tossing out their iPods that they had just gotten a bit over a year prior, signed a two year contract with AT&T (the sole provider of the iPhone in the US, to this day) and started falling in love with Apple all over again.

Now, let’s pause history for a bit here. I don’t have a gripe with Apple innovating technology and moving forward. They’re a hardware/software company and it’s what they do. They helped push touch-screen devices into the mainstream and I commend them for that. What I don’t commend them for is milking people on a yearly basis with a rehash of what they got a year before.. or releasing an incomplete device. What do I mean? Let’s remember back to 2007 and the original iPhone. It was released, but there were certain things you couldn’t do with it. What were they? Cut/Paste, No MMS (picture/video messaging) support, multitasking, stereo Bluetooth support and even the ability to add a background wallpaper (lock screen wallpaper was there) just to name a few. Over the years, support for the these features were slowly added in via software updates and new hardware revisions. Not until this year, 2010… did Apple finally get it right. The iPhone 4 (released last week) is the phone that should have been released three and a half years ago. It’s shocking (to me and most other non-Apple sheep) that it took THIS LONG to get it right. Not until now.. was someone able to add a wallpaper to their background (but here’s the best part), but you must have a 3rd generation iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS or an iPhone 4 to do so.

WAIT, WHAT? *record scratch sound* My 2nd gen iPod Touch, which is fully upgraded to iOS 4 can’t do something as simple as have a wallpaper in the background? What kind of crap is that? Now, I can understand the multitasking only being available to the newer hardware.. it’s got more memory and is faster. I had an old flip phone back in 2008 (my first phone on Sprint) and I changed wallpapers to my hearts content… but my fancy iPod Touch which surfs the ‘full web’ and is an iPod and everything else can’t? There’s been no explanation as to why, either… but here’s why. They want you… the person who’s been with Apple since the first iPod, to keep buying their latest and greatest creation. That’s the only reason why. There’s nothing different aside from internal hardware upgrades that makes my 2nd gen iPod Touch any different from the 3rd, besides a couple of small features.

It’s THAT kind of crap that has me not liking Apple. The fact that every year (around the same time), they release a new version of what’s been out, hail it as the coming of Christ, entice everyone to get it… rinse and repeat. They know damn well they have a lock on the market and are doing what they can to fill their pockets while the masses keep drinking the kool-aid. It’s also the dumbass sheep consumers who are all about ‘my friend has the new iPhone, and I need it too!’ trend of thinking.

My first smartphone was an HTC Touch on Sprint (with Windows Mobile 6.1). I had cut and paste, multitasking, ability to change wallpaper and everything the iPhone 4 does now.. and this was back in early 2008. I wasn’t ‘cool’ though.. no one thought anything of it, simply because it wasn’t Apple’s product. The consumers who hail Apple as the almighty are among the other group that I strongly dislike. They stand up for Steve Jobs, his creations and his company as if it was the only thing in life worth living for. They adopt Jobs’ smug, smarmy attitude and basically become one of his drones. Now, they hail the simple thing of changing wallpaper as a ‘feature’ that is groundbreaking and is worthy of shitting on competitors everywhere.

My first smartphone – the HTC Touch on Sprint

Now, along with the recent launch of the iPhone 4, there’s been a few issues with the new iPhone revision. First up, was that the screens on some new iPhones had a yellowish haze spot in certain parts. It ended up being that was a temporary issue with the bonding used to hold the screen down. They apparently shipped out the new iPhones too quickly after manufacturing to allow the bonding to dry enough. The second, and bigger issue was with the reception and the new design of the antenna. Rather than try to explain myself, here’s a quote from an article on Neowin.net -

Steve Jobs’ first reply to the issue was somewhat arrogant and void of any responsibility. “Just avoid holding it that way” he said in a reply to a customer email. The problem occurs when you grip the phone in your left hand, bridging both sides of the black strip in the metal band around the phone. Apple’s PR outfit tried to play down the issue by claiming “gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance.” Apple’s official response is to “use one of many available cases” to halt the issue.

I recommend reading the full article for the full explanation of the reception issue… but the way they designed the antenna, and the possible problem of holding it with your left hand.. all to be told to ‘avoid holding it that way’ by Jobs is madness. I’m a lefty, and if I bought an iPhone 4, I’d be holding it with my left hand… and I should avoid that because YOUR product doesn’t work the way it should? Fuck off, Steve.

In closing, that is my real major beef with Apple… their attitude toward competitors and the way they treat their consumers. They think they’re hot stuff and that they’re right when they’re clearly not, and that attitude tends to rub off on some of their consumer base… while the rest of the sheep just continue to drink the kool-aid and give their money subserviently.

Thanks for taking the time to read this… hopefully now you can understand a bit better why I intensely do not like Apple.

FOOTNOTE: Yes, I own an iPod Touch… but I did not pay for it. I won it in a contest and I mainly use it for purposes of testing out iOS, using certain apps and viewing how my websites work in Mobile Safari. I use a few apps, such as AOL Radio, Wunderradio and a couple of games but it is not my primary media device. That would be my Microsoft Zune HD 32GB.

My current media player of choice – the Zune HD