Yup that's me, the Apple fan boy. I have been an avid user of Apple products for over 20 years, in fact, one of my first jobs out of college was running ad sales for a listings magazine, and I remember how our lives changed when the Apple Macintosh "I "arrived in our office. It allowed us to type copy into a layout and save that to a disc, then take the disc down to the printer...it saved us days in putting the magazine to bed.
My first Apple computer was their first laptop the "Blackbird". I still have it today, it still works. It wasn't sexy like Apple products are now, this was before Mr Ive and Co, but the OS beat the crap out of windows.
Through the years a succession of Apple computers, (I'm typing this on an Air), from desktop to laptop, 15", 17" and now 11". Apple is a brand to fall in love with, a relationship mixed with flushed blood flow due to the sexy design, and practicality over OS and UI...so why am I thinking of leaving?
I have an iPhone 4S. That might not seem particularly enormous news to you, but if you knew me well, you would realize that me not having an iPhone 5 is amazing. I was in line for the original iPhone, and every subsequent upgrade. I paid over the odds for the latest phone...it was always exciting, fun and WOW look what you can do now. Then the hype around the iPhone 4S. Siri turned out to be a joke, (do you know anyone who uses it, do you use it?), it wasn't particularly fast, and the design was identical to the 4. When the 5 came out, it looked like an oddly stretched 4, and had no feature that made me have to have it.
But why leave?
To be honest the only thing keeping me with Apple is the fact that my content is in their eco sphere. My contacts, music, movies, photos. There never used to be a real competitor, a company that actually gave the iPhone a run for it's money...then Samsung came along.
Samsung has actually brought out a really cool phone, the Galaxy 4 that makes me for the first time really think about ditching the iPhone. I will still use Apple computers as the OS still beats the crap out of Windows, but Apple have been failing in other major areas. The iCloud is terrible, clunky, drops out and limited in use, for some reason the new re-design of iTunes confuses the hell out of me, I can no longer iChat, I have to FaceTime but that doesn't synch with my moms Apple that is still on iChat, FaceTime drops all the time, iChat drops all the time, is it me or is something broken at Apple?
I own Apple stock. I would love them to bring something revolutionary out to get that stock price back up, but my confidence is waining. When was the last revolutionary product, the iPad, three years ago? Where is my Apple TV, (an actual TV not the box that keeps breaking), the Pebble killing wrist watch, a sexy new iPhone?
I might jump to Samsung...and if I'm thinking about doing that, with my love and 20 year relationship with this company, Apple is in real trouble. There's something rotten at Apple, some might say to the core.
Samsung has dominated the smartphone and the Note II and Galaxy S4 are pretty awesome, but Jonny Ive (a mate 4x removed of yours, no?) will not disappoint with the new OS. He's saying that the wait is worthwhile and that iOS 7 will rock your tablet and phone to the grown.
ReplyDeleteGranted, people of our size can pull off a phone the size of most mortal's shoes, but that does not mean that everyone else can.
Samsung batteries deplete rapidly and they Android (a flavor of Linux) is quite easy to hack, break and a damage base don the software installed. Additionally, the response time to upgrades, updates and problems is sad compared to that of iOS.
However, I am typing this from my Samsung Galaxy Note II and it took an external keyboard and a bottle of Coke Zero and more to calm my typing to make it spell properly and behave.