I've never been comfortable with Apple, even though I did have Apple computers before seeing the light and moving to the world of the PC.
Despite the larger and higher profile Microsoft coming in for most of the adverse publicity regarding underhand tactics with regard to its software, these are largely anecdotal, and even those that are 'proven' can lead those with a knowledge of software and the industry scratching their heads, and glad they're not having to deall with the same lawyers.
I've longer held a personal view that Apple is much more guilty of anything Microsoft is accused of, but being a smaller and less financially attractive target for the lawyers is left alone.
This week has produced a fairly nice example. In a move that would have squadrons of legal teams descending on Microsoft, Apple recently launched the iPhone. Unlike most mobile phones, iPhone buyers had no choice but to take out a long contract with AT&T in the United States. Imagine the storm of protest had Microsoft produced a PCPhone and told buyers they had no choice of network provider - dozens of lawyers could have put in their orders for million dollar homes on the strength of forthcoming court cases.
However, not content with deciding which service their loyal iPhone buyers should support with their subscription fees, it seem they are not stealing their phones back from their less trustworthy faithful followers. Although it took some time, hackers have produced mods for the iPhone that free from the AT&T lock-in, and allows owners to choose their own service provider.
No, No, says Apple, and are now packing software revsions with updates to the operating software for the iPhone that will effectively turn it into a $400 paperweight by killing it internally if it is found to have been hacked to use a provider other than AT&T.
Will there be an outcry similar to that we'd see if Microsoft did something similar? Or will we see teflon Apple get a pat on the back for whacking those nasty people that wanted the freedom to choose their provider, but lost 400 bucks when the their phone was rendered inoperable - OOPS - missed out a word! Apparently I should be saying PERMANENTLY inoperable.
Aren't Apple people nice people?
They'll get another $400 (or whatever they've rigged it to be by the time I type this, they already ripped buyers off with the intro price) if the loyal fans decide they were naught and nasty and at fault, and buy another iPhone.
Is the same thing not true with the Ipod? An acquaintance bought an MP3 player and discovered that many tunes were not available unless you have an Ipod.
I thought the usual moan was the other way around - non Apple fans buy an iBog and find it doesn't want to know about their MP3 files, and they have to go and replace them all with Apple's format of the same material they already have iSomething, which alone is one reason I wouldn't touch any of their stuff, apart from being forced to use their file format, and because it's yat another clique - being seen with 'The Label' again.
The shops now sell earphones in white, with white cables, to 'Make your MP3 player look like an iBog, while the local papers carry warnings for parent to make sure their kids don't go out with the white earphones and cables showing, as they're likely to be attacked and have the 'Must Have' gizmo ripped from their ears.
To use Daggy's term, it's 'hip' to have, so I have little interest. I don't like the taste of Sheep Dip
I have an acquaintance who dislikes PCs intensely, and only buys Apples. Which is largely fine, as he works mostly on the web, which is 'blind' to your means of operation. There are programs installed to allow the Mac to pretend to be a PC, but he says in the 'real world' you better not be in a hurry for any PC programs to run, or do so without hanging repeatedly.
While I have no time for the yaka yaka yaka generation of mobile phone user that run around with the things clamped to their ears discussing "He said to her she told him he said she was told he heard...", don't forget there's still those that use the technology for what was intended.
Broadband speed (or perhaps better described as faster then WAP) is a a gem for using internet access when out in the field. For example, how about hunting down some of the sites we are interested in. Lug a laptop and its short battery life (or inverter as I do, and stay in the car), or access online maps and aerial images while you're standing within a few metres of a site you can't see.
email is a godsend, again freeing you from a desk or laptop. From your phone, you wouldn't want to compose and send an email, but the ability to hook into your email accounts and read the contents without having to drive to the office or home is a gem.
I used to have to convert all my info databases into a format that would suit a PDA when I went out on field work. Time-consuming, and only possible because I can program and convert database, so no use to 'normal' folk. Had web access been possible them, I could have used a fairly simple web site (even SeSco pages would have done) and had the info to hand. It would also always have been up to date. Doing a conversion from PC database to PDA database meant that the one I could take with me was only as up to date as the last conversion I could be bothered to sit down and create - even if it was semi-automated, it still had to be ported over.
I might happily kick the those that trivialise the mobile phone, but that's because I scorn them for trivialising what could be a more powerful and useful object if the brain-dead hadn't hijacked it, and took it that trivial direction, leaving the useful applications to be lost to those considered boffins.
And I also realise that although I may have contempt for those users, they are also the reason that we have pocketable, colour, web-enabled phones. I just regret not having something like the Glorious 12th, where we can go and bag a few That would be Darwin's natural selection at its best, with a few days of open season, and those that couldn't resist the urge to clamp their phone to their ear in public for a few days being fair game.
It's quite funny sometimes, and not just kids. I've been working in my front room for a while now, and every day, around the same time, there's a slightly tubby little white-haired old man trundles up and down the road, shirt-sleeves (well, we did have a few sunny days), umbrella in one hand, and other clamping his phone to his ear as he goes up and down the road, always hollering down the phone almost continuously.
By contrast, most of the kids are more likely to be injured walking into things, as they're head down, intent on the drivel on their screens, and frantically punching the keys, or more accurately, thumbing the keys - roll their future RSI and 'dead' or 'frozen' thumbs when they get older
I can tell you from experience that when they are older they won't be able to use this technology. Eyesight deteriorates with age as does manual dexterity ( not to mention brain capability in many of us).
Well, not really, but I'd been mulling over (yet another) Apple anniversary, and has decided not to waste any time writing about it (since I've already wasted too much of my life just by owning Apple computers in the past).
However, I do have two Apple computer that have sat and gathered dust since the day they were bought, and the article below does a pretty good job of fairly summing up just what was, and is, wrong with Apple computers...
The whole article is worth spending a moment or two to read, the author hits many rusty Apple nails squarely on the head, and does not suffer the blindness many Apple owners do thanks to the rose-tinted glasses they all seem to wear:
I've included the ending below, in particular the Smugness section, as it (and the rest of course) really does just say what I would have, has I taken the time to rattle out a similar article. This also includes the final summing up, which you may be surprised to find is actually positive, and in favour of Apple, but does well to highlight all the flaws too. Apple could have been really great, but was just too keen to think outside the box, and ended up falling out of it, and probably only survived (and survives) because it could con people into paying over the odds for its stuff because its "KEWL".
Don't believe me? Well, how about the all the mugs who queued to by the iPhone when it was released, to be followed in what seemed like only weeks by a the upgraded version which cost less and had all the toys the first version forgot. What did the faithful do? Bought it as well because it was so much "KEWLER" than the first one, and they had to be seen with the latest one, which means they were well and truly stung, since no-one wanted to buy the old clunkers they'd had for but a period measurable in in weeks.
Smugness
One of the key reasons I hate Macs are their users. There's a certain kind of smug, snooty Apple user that makes me want to reach for the EMP cannon. Apple's fan base bears more resemblance to cults like Scientology than many would like to admit.
These people think that, because they paid vast wodges of cash for a machine, it must be better, and who buy into the whole advertising campaign malarkey that Apple has fed them, from the 1984 advert to assuming that they are 'Thinking Different'.
I urge those outraged by this to read Neal Stephenson's excellent essay In the Beginning ... was the Command Line, which skewers this issue better than I can.
This kind of Apple user thinks they are being a rebel by using a Mac, and are sticking it to Bill Gates. This ranges from the slightly annoying (abbreviating Microsoft to M$) to the utterly childish (Windoze etc).
Say what you like about Microsoft, but the company only wants to control all the software in the world. Apple wants to control the hardware, the software and anything else it can lay its hands on.
Another screed from this crowd is that Apple must be better because it doesn't get hit by malware. Macs are perfectly susceptible to malware as it turns out, but no-one is bothered to write it for them. Why would a profit-minded criminal try and infect only seven per cent of computers, when he could reach 90 per cent instead?
Now, I can explain all this till I'm blue in the face and the Apple fans just look at me pityingly and say: 'You just dont get it,' usually adding the word 'Man' at the end. Either that or I'm accused of being a paid Microsoft stooge. But the fact is, I do get it.
And finally ...
Now, you may be under the impression that I'm hideously biased about Apple and shouldn't be allowed to carry on writing about them. You'd be wrong, although I do voluntarily ban myself from reviewing their products.
Actually, I think that a lot of what Apple does is great. The original idea behind the Apple computer did more to kick-start the industry in the 1970s than any other invention, and the Mac, for all its faults, created the desktop publishing industry that has employed me for nearly two decades.
When it comes to designing hardware that looks good and is easy for ordinary people to use the company is unbeatable. The iMac was and is a design classic, the iPhone and the iPod revolutionised their sectors (and I'm very happy with my iPod touch).
Steve Jobs, too, is one of the pioneers of the industry and has done much to change it. He's a far more interesting character than Bill Gates or Tim Berners-Lee, and a revolutionary thinker.
But, like many great people, Jobs is sometimes blind to other viewpoints. Had he played his cards right Apple would now be the de facto standard and Steve Ballmer would be a sales manager at a low level software company struggling to pay the mortgage.
A lot of Mac products were good, as our top 10 list will show, but when I look at a Mac I can't help but feel that they could have been so much better.
You may have seen the recent wailing, moaning, chest-beating, and general moral outrage expressed by some special interest groups when a small app was released for the iPhoney.
Baby Shaker was a 99 cent download for the iPhone that used the motion sensors to allow the user to shake the phone, and cause two red Xs to appear over the eyes on a number of hand-drawn sketches of babies.
The righteous few were outraged, protested about the promotion of Shaken Baby Syndrome, and Apple withdrew the download.
I think the point has been missed...
The problem is not with worries about anyone that downloaded this app being a baby beater or child molester, as if a pencil sketch and a couple of red Xs are going to gratify such people. Serioulsy, I've seen the app, and was waiting for something terrible to happen, and barely noticed the appearance of the red Xs - I was waiting for something tasteless like a picture of a battered baby or the like, given the amount of attention this app received.
The real thing that is revealed here is that which I always believed, and that is that anyone that buys an iAnything lacks the ability to make any sort of valued judgement.
After all, who in their right mind would pay a single cent, let alone 99 cents, for a trivial piece of code that does nothing but flip a couple of image, or if it even approached being worth 1 cent, overlaid the red Xs over the existing image, so needed at least a little programming skill?
Note to the BBC
PLEASE ditch the "kewl" iPlayer name and change it for something sensible!
Someone I know was getting an iPhone and I was told about the damned thing for about 2 months in advance in how it could play a vast array of tunes, browse the net, cure cancer, sold global poverty (okay I made the last two up) and so on. I answered with "Can it call other phones", basically because thats what a phone is meant to do. Texting and phoning is the main functions in my opinion. Sure, I like to have a nice ringtone to stand out and be easily available, but apart from that....
It is a bit nice to have "Broadsword calling Danny Boy" play when you get a text message and have the Where Eagles Dare theme as your ringtone, but I digress.
This guy has a page that has a few strong opinions, and his piece on the iPhone is rather blunt but good.
In the real woprld, where you actually USE your phone and don't just wave it around to look "kew;", Nokia's offering have walked all over the Apple jewellery since it was launched.
Has everyone forgotten that launch? Apple messed all over its own faithful and sold them a half-baked iPhone, missing features, short of memory, and lord know what else if I cared to look. Then, after only waht seemed like a few weeks passed, released what should have been the initial product. Unbelievably (or maybe not, since they are only buying stuff to make themselves look "kewl") the folk who had bought the half-baked iPhone almost immediately all went and "upgraded" because the new one has all the missing features from the first version, and was even "kewlah" - and lost their money, while Apple rubbed its coporate hands and listened to its coffers fill again.
The chap is right about one thing, the virtual keyboard is one of the worst features in the world. As he say, something better has been around for years, proper buttons and tactile feedback of key presses.
It's unfortunate that there has been an apparent development of two camps: one for tactile keypads with real buttons; and the other with the tap and slide operation of virtual systems such as seen on iStuff.
What we really need is a sensible combination of the two, with something that lets you know you have pressed a key successfully without either having to look and see it happen, or try and hit a programmed area on an otherwise featureless panel, combined with a virtual panel where things that should be tapped or slid by finger could be displayed and manipulated.
Heck, I'd like to take this one on myself but for the low chance of success.
Well, there's the cost to create a suitable demonstrator, and the fact that that you'd have to convince the Nokia world to adopt something with tap and slide (which is possible, since they care about things working effectively), and convince the Apple-heads that their virtual, featureless, tap and slide panels are not the bees-knees, and could be improved by the addition of some tactile options (and that's probably all but impossible, since they only want to look "kewl", and don't care if things work, just so long as they look good).
I'd be as well burning my money to keep warm in the winter, than investing in that, doomed to failure before it even started
All the mugs that have already bought 2 or 3 iPhones so they can look "kewl" will be throwing their latest ones in the nearest skip because they are no longer "kewl" and will be splashing out on yet another one so they can look look "kewl" again - mugs:
New iPhone details: video capture, twice the storage, faster CPU http://bit.ly/19oqP6
You'd think if Apple was half as bright as it was made out to be, they'd get the design and technology right before they launched their stuff, and not lumber their clueless zombies with overpriced MP3 players that can't play MP3's, but can have their silly little screens easily scuffed to the extent that they can't be read, or that the rather than give them devices that can have their batteries replaced for a few pounds, and in a few seconds, cost a small fortune, and need to be sent back to the factory.
I think the only reason I don't die of shame because I have two (old and probably dead) Apple II Computers up in my loft is because Apple actually was the innovative and smart company it is still portrayed as today, when it has become a purveyor of little more than overpriced style icons.
All the mugs that have already bought 2 or 3 iPhones so they can look "kewl" will be throwing their latest ones in the nearest skip because they are no longer "kewl" and will be splashing out on yet another one so they can look look "kewl" again - mugs:
Of course a certain (temporary?) occupant of 10 Downing Street is said to have to frequently get a new mobile phone after throwing them at people
I think I'll be keeping my Motorola V3 Razr around for a while. However, I was down the street today and passing a Carphone warehouse there was an ad in the window which showed a phone that looked eerily similiar in looks to the iPhone. Okay, I haven't checked it out wholly but its a hell of a lot cheaper.
We got our 14 yr old a Tocco [the version above the one in the link] for her birthday a few weeks ago, she's delighted with it, the touchscreen is fabulous, it is some gadget, far too complicated for a greyheid like me of course I paid £176 for it off the net rather than renting one on a contract and paying about £600.
Talking about Motorola they seem to have pulled out of the UK market, very few mobiles from them on offer these days.
Apparently, if you read their statement, you will learn that if you actually use your wonderful iPhone...
IT WILL GET HOT
And if the battery is new and you use it in a hot car on a hot day and use all the functions it will get so hot that it will dispaly an automatic temperature warning.
What a piece of junk.
You don't even have to make things up about iGotcha gear to have a laugh at it and the mindless zombies that keep buying it without thinking so they can look "kewl" - or should be "hoat" now?
It used to be laptop batteries that threatened to burst into flames spontaneously, looks like iGotchas are due to follow
An employee at a factory that makes iPhones in China killed himself after his house was raided and he was allegedly beaten up following the disappearance of an iPhone prototype.
Responding to the allegations today, Apple gave a subtle warning to its suppliers, insisting they are required to treat workers with dignity and respect. The dead worker, Sun Danyong, 25, worked in product communications at Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese firm that makes many Apple products at a massive factory in the southern city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.
Sun, who was responsible for sending iPhone prototypes to Apple, reported to his bosses that he was missing a unit early last week. His apartment was then raided, he was beaten and imprisoned by security guards, his friends told a local newspaper.
Three days after reporting the missing iPhone, in the early hours of July 16, Sun jumped from the 12th floor of his apartment building, the paper said.
Is the same thing not true with the Ipod? An acquaintance bought an MP3 player and discovered that many tunes were not available unless you have an Ipod.
i use the prog 'Floola' for my IPOD.my kids have had some horror stories using ITUNES. 'Floola' had some gremlins at one point but it seems stable now. I nominate Real Networks and Adobe, amongst many as corporate pests, every time you open any Adobe program, it tries to access the internet under the illusion you think it is checking for updates. As for the IPHONE , the fact they 'simulated/shortened/removed' sequences from their UK adverts smacks of falseness, they look amazingly fast in the advert, don't they ?
A number of Apple adverts have received complaints, and been forced to be withdrawn - not all though.
iPhone adverts are heavily modified in contrived ways to ensure that the screen displays appear to be much better in ads than they might be in real life. This has lead to complaints. Again, some withdrawn as a result.
I consigned Real Networks to the scrapheap years ago, when someone kindly pointed me to something called "Real Alternative". Installed years ago, and forgotten about.
Adobe doesn't deserve to be included in this particular thread, as there is not pest component to any of their software, unless it is not configured properly.
Apple - as many, many software sources do, provides automatic version checking and flags up out-of-date version. Users may choose to install the newest version, or ignore it.
The update checker can be disabled, uninstalled, or configured to be silent and never seen.
My own system checks once a week, and is only seen if there is a version issue - after which I am free to accept or decline any offerings.
This does not seem, fer me at least, to be a valid qualification for a "corporate pest".
More of a nuisance is window-stealing by Microsoft's own windows updater. After it installs periodic updates, it issues a reminder to "Restart your PC to complete updates". This question/option cannot be closed or dismissed, and has to be accepted, or deferred for a few minutes, when it will pop up and nag again.
If you're busy, with a number of files open for edit, you might not want to stop, save, restart, wait... when asked, and defer the update operation for a while.
Unfortunately, standard Windows operation places the focus on the window asking if you want to restart, and it does it without regard to what you may be doing when it pops up that question, so if you happened to be typing away, and hit Return, and the focus was on the "Yes" option, then you will suddenly find your PC heading off for a restart while all your files are open.
Fortunately - for the old blood pressure at least - a mod can be downloaded to turn off the window thief, meaning the application just flashes for attention in the Task Bar, rather than stealing the focus.
A genuine iGotcha quote - and I didn't even make it!
Quoted Text
It's easy to point the finger at the likes of Apple and say that it should be producing products with a longer shelf-life – in an ideal world, it should – but consumers also have a responsibility not to be suckered into always buying the very latest model.
The price for such a service varies according to the model, but ranges from £36.13 for an 1GB iPod Shuffle (second generation), up to £176.13 for a 32GB iPod Touch. Battery replacements range between £36.13 and £66.13, depending on the model.
Geez... I'd want an entire brand new media player for that sort of money - not just a repair. Suckers indeed.
Pay a fortune for a repair, or ditch the junker and buy an even more overpriced replacement to keep on looking "kew;" in the eyes of others, as you sport your white earphones and cable - or pay a couple of quid and pose with just the earpieces in view... connected to nothing.
But don't forget, those white items are an open invitation to muggers - who like "kewl" stuff, but don't like to pay for it.
Apple has to approve apps for the iPhone, and the company has come in for some flak over its approval policies.
Should we be surprised that Apple knocked back a Google app?
Apple has rejected the Google's Voice application for the iPhone saying that it duplicated features in the popular smart phone. The move has called into question the control that Apple exerts over approving applications and whether the rejection and others constitute anti-competitive behaviour.
And it's not just Goggle's own, but also Google related apps too:
As Apple rejected Google's own official Voice application, it also pulled Google Voice apps from third party developers, such as GV Mobile, VoiceCentral and GVDialer
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That would be Darwin's natural selection at its best, with a few days of open season, and those that couldn't resist the urge to clamp their phone to their ear in public for a few days being fair game.
and change it for something sensible! 
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