Philip Littlewood, potential switcher writes a blog post about his second thoughts about switching to the Mac.
His reasons are below but ca be summed up as Apple having lost it’s soul. I must say I agree (which, if you know me, is a bit deal).
His criticisms:
Overcharge for the iPhone
Is it an overcharging? The Nokia N800 doesn’t have a phone component and yet cost the same (UK pricing). The smartphones out there are not cheap either. What are we comparing it with? I don’t think it’s too expensive for what it is.
Reduce the iPhone bye $200 after only 2 months
It seems sudden but don’t think the rebate for early adopters was not previously thought of. Apple seldom is caught by surprise. They’ll have had measures in place. Technology will always get cheaper. It seems sudden but you’re talking about some of the fastest moving technology areas.
Charges an extra 99 cents for a ringtone
I hear you but we get charged £3.50 for a ringtone whether or not we have previously purchased the song over here in the UK. That said – I think it’s criminal that we can’t just use GarageBand to whip our own ringtones. But this is like other things – Apple is working with the two most consumer-hostile markets – telecoms and the music business. You can be sure that Jobs both checks for his wallet and for the blood in his veins after negotiating with these people.
Putting a chip in the new iPods that renders nearly all 3rd party video accessories useless.
There’s a lot of fluff here. It’s not quite as cut and dried here. Any why worry about it? I’m not particularly upset about the accessories I’ve bought over the years for my various mobile phones. Sure, I’d love to be able to re-use some of them but it’s not the end of the world by any means. Note – not ALL video products are disabled (as you say “nearly all”) so it can’t just be due to “a chip” and may be more to do with cost-cutting on the part of the manufacturer of the video cable (maybe they’re not using the right pin-outs).
Releasing an update for the iPhone to deliberately break 3rd party apps.
I disagree strongly here. Especially the reason you give. It’s a limited, first generation device with a whole new API. You want to hack it, fine, you change essential system files and voila you have access to the system and can do neat things. Apple releases a software update and expressly says they will not be testing to see if their update breaks applications but will not be deliberately trying to break third party apps. Some apps break. Sometimes they just need rehacked.
I don’t believe Apple is doing this deliberately. They’re just not willing or able to put the time and effort into certifying their software updates with every hack out there.
His main criticism seems to be:
attitude of the sales staff in the Apple Stores, now I don’t know if this just applies to the Netherlands and Belgium, the staff just do not seem interested in whether you buy something or not.
Philip – these people are NOT employees of Apple. They’re employees of small businesses which sell or repair Apple products. You should really take your criticism to the owner of the business and make it known. I own a Apple-Authorised Service Provider and I’m always interested to hear when my employees are not acting in the best interests of our customers. I’m happy to say that the guys will often put themselves out and even lose a sale if it serves the customer best. But then we come from a lineage of people who love the Mac and love to see people making the best of it.
Now he admits he has only tried Mac OS in a hacked X86 version on a third party laptop but seems underwhelmed at how it looks so basic and sees unsure about the everpresent menu bar at the top. And resizing only from one corner – yes, Philip, Apple could make it so you could resize from any edge or corner. It’s not for techical reasons that the Mac OS has always resized from the same corner.
Philip – either you get it or you don’t. Not everyone is going to love the Mac just like not everyone is going to be happy with Windows.