On iHype

I think I have become less and less impressed with Apple and its products over the years.

Before I own any Apple products I was quite impressed with its design, all the way back in the first iMac and iBook. But back in the days Apple products are way too expensive for our home so we were not very tempted to buy it although it does look good. I actually managed to grow up without ever touching a computer running Mac OS, but everyone's using Windows back in those days anyway.

The first time that I used a Mac was in a computer lab in Melbourne Uni, when i had to finish the week's genetics homework there. I was not impressed with the experience at all. I could not find a power button on the iMac, so turning it on took me more than 10 minutes. I tried to maximize a window and kept clicking the green button and that was another 10 minutes before I gave up. The mouse have no right button which really annoys me. And when I finally finished the work I had trouble finding a way to turn either the program or the computer off. I remembered it took me like 10 minutes to get used to Windows and do all the basics when I hadn't even touched a mouse before, and spending 10 minutes to find out how to turn on a Mac with 10 years experience with computers is just ridiculous. And not being able to maximize a window, no right mouse key and weird way to turn off a program or the computer, I don't get the point (it's not that it hadn't been invented and used on a rival for more than 20 years by then). And one thing Mac users kept bragging about is actually the ease of use comparing to Windows.

And then I owned an iPhone 3GS when it just came out and I am still using it atm. I am generally quite comfortable with the phone with a huge library of apps to enjoy and stuff. I don't have to worry of getting lost in the city anymore for one thing. And it did start to change my life a bit, like I'd have Wikipedia in hand when I'm in the middle of an argue so we know who's right instead of arguing all the way on, I'd recognize music that I don't know on the streets and so on. It started to get to me though when I realized how closed the iOS is. I can't access flash contents on the internet only because Apple doesn't like it (don't talk to me about HTML5, I don't see it replacing flash for at least 5 years - it's not only about video streams either, too many company websites have adopted flash in their beautiful homepage framework, which is just stupid to ignore all those), I need to pay extra just for tethering (which I didn't), I can't make my phone any more customized than a wallpaper. Of course you could change most of that by jailbreaking (which I did). I believe I bought the iPhone when it was the best in the market, but it's not anymore, not even the iPhone 4. I could get an Android which does everything my iPhone does plus more, simply because that one is open source.

And yes Apple's attitude towards its mistakes annoys me. I first noticed this when problems arise with iPhone 4's antenna. It's a hardware problem caused by insufficient testing prior to release. Apple's response? a cosmetic firmware fix to "improve display of signal" and free release of ugly covers. Come on, this is a hardware problem! They are just working to cover there mistakes instead of actually doing something to solve it. A responsible company would have recalled all the affected products and repair, replace or if not possible refund for the product. And for all the inferior technologies that apple adopts and argues that were not useful, they just make it an even bigger hype when they are finally releasing it a years after Apple's rivals. Right mouse key, multitasking and wallpaper on iOS, high resolution iPhone camera...

Btw, multitasking for the iOS is FAKE. Most background applications could not continue to run when they are in the background (such as an in-progress task stops processing when you press the home key and only continues when you switch aback), not to mention a lot of apps don't even try to support it. Calling that multitasking is ridiculous. Do you reckon me stop typing to pick up the phone and returning to typing after the phone call multitasking? I'd reckon typing while you are making the phone call multitasking. Not many people can multitask really well and that's why we want the iOS to do it, if it's just switching we could do it better than the iOS.

I have hence determined that Apple products are for the low intelligence, not me.