It's no secret that I have been a big hater of Apple, no not the fruit, I love the fruit infact, but it's the popular electronics manufacturer and service provider that I am talking about. Such has been my hatred that I have not only refrained from buying an Apple product but I have also debated at lengths with a friend of mine who is a big Apple fan. After abstaining from some of the best selling Apple products for over 8 years what made me finally take the plunge into one. Let's find out.
Before you judge me let me first tell you why I hate Apple in the first place. It's not that I don't like their products, I do like their products. Infact I think they come up with some of the best products every now and then, but always, I repeat always they leave out something very basic to that product, a feature which is pretty common among the competing devices from other manufacturers. Don't agree with me? Let me give you 2 examples with which one can easily identify: iPod and iPhone.
These two devices are just so popular that you would wonder what I am going to brag about here, but let me assure you that these devices are far from perfect. Let me start with iPod for starters. iPod has been such a market phenomenon that ask people what a portable music player(PMP) is and they would have no idea what you are talking about but ask them about iPod and you can see the sense of familiarity in their eyes. Many a times, even PMPs from other manufacturers are referred to as iPods which is rather unfortunate for the competing devices. It's pretty much the same case as with Xerox in photocopier industry. How many times have you spotted a Xerox board on a shop and saw a Canon photocopier at work inside? Innumerable times for me! Coming back to my point, ever wondered what's wrong with Apple's iPods? I can list several but let me first start with the hardware. It took Apple 8 long years to finally put a FM receiver on one of their iPods, not all mind it! All the while when competing PMPs have been offering FM built in out of box. My Apple fan friend would always tell me that one just needs to buy a FM enabled headset for that, but my concern has always been the absence of an out of box solution along with the lack of software for easy management of FM stations, that is assuming you get a FM enabled headset.
Let me now come to the software aspect of iPod: iTunes, this is one big stumbling block that has been preventing my migrations to the Apple domain. Being a windows user for over a decade now, I have always used the Windows media player for managing my music. What I love about it is that it auto searches and applies cover art to all my albums as long as I have the right meta data on all my media files. iTunes on the contrary has no such feature and being a non US resident you can't even use the iTunes store for auto finding your album arts. Now that's one big headache for me. I have like 20 GB of music in my library and manually finding the album art for each of them is something I don't have time for.
I ain't done with my rants about iPod yet but there is something which is common to both iPod and iPhone about which I will talk later. Let me spit some fire on iPhone now. The smartphone from Apple when it was launched in 2007 lacked 3G. That was like building a car without power windows those days. Alright may be I went a little overboard with the analogy but you get the point right? Okay, my apple fan friends would say talk about the present. I won't disappoint my friend, here face the fury of an Apple critic. First the Bluetooth on iPhone is as good as the appendix on my large intestine! Ok there is stereo bluetooth but tell me what percentage of iPhone users fancy a stereo Bluetooth headset? 10%? 15%? And yeah there are also a handful of apps/games that let you play around a little with bluetooth. But the interactions are mostly in between iPhones and that too only when each of the interacting iPhones have the same app/game.
Moving on, the app store has one of the most arbit acceptance policies. While apps like google voice get rejected, trash apps continue to flood the store. Am not sure the policy makers are themselves sure of the guidelines they have set. Apple has always maintained that they are against porn and yet soft porn apps like Asian Busty babes get approved. Approving porn apps is not a problem per se but hey you gotta stand by the policies you frame. The policies of the app screening committee are so absurd that some of the better known developers are either quitting the platform or adopting the increasingly popular jailbreak community.
One of my biggest complaints against Apple is that they always tie down their devices to their services. Wondering how? Let me illustrate: iTunes with ipods and iPhones! The album art faux I talked earlier is easily dwarfed by the much bigger limitation in iTunes sync: one device can be synched with only one iTunes. How frustrating is that! I juggle between three laptops/desktops on a typical day and I find it terribly frustrating not to be able to sync my iPhone with all my laptops/desktops. Well the restriction comes into picture only when you want to sync your iPhone applications, as long as you figure our how to manually manage your music on your iPod/iPhone, which I should say is not easy to find in iTunes when you connect your iPod/iPhone to iTunes.
Now let me come to one of the most frustrating policies of apple. They add software limitations which restrict the usage of their devices. Let me take the case of iPhone here. I have already talked about the Bluetooth limitations on iPhone, add to that list: absence of multi-tasking, lack of support for some of the most popular formats of media files etc. I dont understand the logic behind making such a powerful device and then limiting its usability with several software limitations. It's like selling a Bugatti Veyron with top speed locked at 80 km/hr!
You know what amuses me about Apple? Their tendency to block other manufacturers from using their services. We all know how they sued Psystar for selling Mac OS equipped desktops more popularly known as Hackintoshs. Another example is Palm's struggle with Apple over iTunes sync on Palm Pre. While they did win the legal battle with Psystar but the Pre sync saga continues to drag. With every iTunes update, apple kills the itunes sync with Pre and Palm prompltly follows with a quick firmware update that puts the sync back on. Why would Apple want to block other manufacturers from using their services is something that defies my logic. If anything it's a testimony to their software but Apple tends to think differently.
Now let me tell you, what made me go for the iPhone 3GS, yeah thats the device I fell for! It works like a charm, no second thoughts on that! After toying around with smartphones like Nokia 5800, Nokia N97, Nokia N900 (just over a couple of days as of now), HTC Dream, HTC Hero; I gotta say the 3GS is all about speed, as their punch line said when it was first announced in June. While the processor is blazingly fast, the UI of iPhone is one of the most intuitive for a smartphone. You may be wondering what about all that fire I just spit on iPhone and iPod? Well, I have found my way around it. For the iTunes faux, I came across this very intuitive and easy-to-use iPod/iPhone sync tool called CopyTransManager. It's everything I was looking for in a iPod/iPhone sync tool. Its portable, fast and makes a no-brainer of transferring songs to your iPod/iPhone from multiple desktop/laptops. What would you do if your Bugatti Veyron was locked at 80 km/hr? You would find a mechanic to break the speed lock for you, right? That's exactly what I did, I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS, thanks to Geohot's amazingly simple blackra!n. It took me like 2 min to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS. So now I have customized my iPhone the way I want it to run and not how Steve Jobs or some Apple executive wanted me to. To all those Apple guys, common guys just stick to making and selling your products, for you are good at it. Don't be too greedy and force the users to use your services, and yeah get over your absurd app approval policies.
Coming up next: Why you Should Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch?
Stay tuned!
P.S- I could only fix the software glitches of the iPhone for some of the hardware flaws like lack of flash and FM receiver are just way beyond my capabilities to fix. I now miss my daily dose of local FM during my daily transit time :( but I make up for that by tweeting and facebooking and yeah this entire post was composed and published from my iPhone 3GS! :)
Before you judge me let me first tell you why I hate Apple in the first place. It's not that I don't like their products, I do like their products. Infact I think they come up with some of the best products every now and then, but always, I repeat always they leave out something very basic to that product, a feature which is pretty common among the competing devices from other manufacturers. Don't agree with me? Let me give you 2 examples with which one can easily identify: iPod and iPhone.
These two devices are just so popular that you would wonder what I am going to brag about here, but let me assure you that these devices are far from perfect. Let me start with iPod for starters. iPod has been such a market phenomenon that ask people what a portable music player(PMP) is and they would have no idea what you are talking about but ask them about iPod and you can see the sense of familiarity in their eyes. Many a times, even PMPs from other manufacturers are referred to as iPods which is rather unfortunate for the competing devices. It's pretty much the same case as with Xerox in photocopier industry. How many times have you spotted a Xerox board on a shop and saw a Canon photocopier at work inside? Innumerable times for me! Coming back to my point, ever wondered what's wrong with Apple's iPods? I can list several but let me first start with the hardware. It took Apple 8 long years to finally put a FM receiver on one of their iPods, not all mind it! All the while when competing PMPs have been offering FM built in out of box. My Apple fan friend would always tell me that one just needs to buy a FM enabled headset for that, but my concern has always been the absence of an out of box solution along with the lack of software for easy management of FM stations, that is assuming you get a FM enabled headset.
Let me now come to the software aspect of iPod: iTunes, this is one big stumbling block that has been preventing my migrations to the Apple domain. Being a windows user for over a decade now, I have always used the Windows media player for managing my music. What I love about it is that it auto searches and applies cover art to all my albums as long as I have the right meta data on all my media files. iTunes on the contrary has no such feature and being a non US resident you can't even use the iTunes store for auto finding your album arts. Now that's one big headache for me. I have like 20 GB of music in my library and manually finding the album art for each of them is something I don't have time for.
I ain't done with my rants about iPod yet but there is something which is common to both iPod and iPhone about which I will talk later. Let me spit some fire on iPhone now. The smartphone from Apple when it was launched in 2007 lacked 3G. That was like building a car without power windows those days. Alright may be I went a little overboard with the analogy but you get the point right? Okay, my apple fan friends would say talk about the present. I won't disappoint my friend, here face the fury of an Apple critic. First the Bluetooth on iPhone is as good as the appendix on my large intestine! Ok there is stereo bluetooth but tell me what percentage of iPhone users fancy a stereo Bluetooth headset? 10%? 15%? And yeah there are also a handful of apps/games that let you play around a little with bluetooth. But the interactions are mostly in between iPhones and that too only when each of the interacting iPhones have the same app/game.
Moving on, the app store has one of the most arbit acceptance policies. While apps like google voice get rejected, trash apps continue to flood the store. Am not sure the policy makers are themselves sure of the guidelines they have set. Apple has always maintained that they are against porn and yet soft porn apps like Asian Busty babes get approved. Approving porn apps is not a problem per se but hey you gotta stand by the policies you frame. The policies of the app screening committee are so absurd that some of the better known developers are either quitting the platform or adopting the increasingly popular jailbreak community.
One of my biggest complaints against Apple is that they always tie down their devices to their services. Wondering how? Let me illustrate: iTunes with ipods and iPhones! The album art faux I talked earlier is easily dwarfed by the much bigger limitation in iTunes sync: one device can be synched with only one iTunes. How frustrating is that! I juggle between three laptops/desktops on a typical day and I find it terribly frustrating not to be able to sync my iPhone with all my laptops/desktops. Well the restriction comes into picture only when you want to sync your iPhone applications, as long as you figure our how to manually manage your music on your iPod/iPhone, which I should say is not easy to find in iTunes when you connect your iPod/iPhone to iTunes.
Now let me come to one of the most frustrating policies of apple. They add software limitations which restrict the usage of their devices. Let me take the case of iPhone here. I have already talked about the Bluetooth limitations on iPhone, add to that list: absence of multi-tasking, lack of support for some of the most popular formats of media files etc. I dont understand the logic behind making such a powerful device and then limiting its usability with several software limitations. It's like selling a Bugatti Veyron with top speed locked at 80 km/hr!
You know what amuses me about Apple? Their tendency to block other manufacturers from using their services. We all know how they sued Psystar for selling Mac OS equipped desktops more popularly known as Hackintoshs. Another example is Palm's struggle with Apple over iTunes sync on Palm Pre. While they did win the legal battle with Psystar but the Pre sync saga continues to drag. With every iTunes update, apple kills the itunes sync with Pre and Palm prompltly follows with a quick firmware update that puts the sync back on. Why would Apple want to block other manufacturers from using their services is something that defies my logic. If anything it's a testimony to their software but Apple tends to think differently.
Now let me tell you, what made me go for the iPhone 3GS, yeah thats the device I fell for! It works like a charm, no second thoughts on that! After toying around with smartphones like Nokia 5800, Nokia N97, Nokia N900 (just over a couple of days as of now), HTC Dream, HTC Hero; I gotta say the 3GS is all about speed, as their punch line said when it was first announced in June. While the processor is blazingly fast, the UI of iPhone is one of the most intuitive for a smartphone. You may be wondering what about all that fire I just spit on iPhone and iPod? Well, I have found my way around it. For the iTunes faux, I came across this very intuitive and easy-to-use iPod/iPhone sync tool called CopyTransManager. It's everything I was looking for in a iPod/iPhone sync tool. Its portable, fast and makes a no-brainer of transferring songs to your iPod/iPhone from multiple desktop/laptops. What would you do if your Bugatti Veyron was locked at 80 km/hr? You would find a mechanic to break the speed lock for you, right? That's exactly what I did, I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS, thanks to Geohot's amazingly simple blackra!n. It took me like 2 min to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS. So now I have customized my iPhone the way I want it to run and not how Steve Jobs or some Apple executive wanted me to. To all those Apple guys, common guys just stick to making and selling your products, for you are good at it. Don't be too greedy and force the users to use your services, and yeah get over your absurd app approval policies.
Coming up next: Why you Should Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch?
Stay tuned!
P.S- I could only fix the software glitches of the iPhone for some of the hardware flaws like lack of flash and FM receiver are just way beyond my capabilities to fix. I now miss my daily dose of local FM during my daily transit time :( but I make up for that by tweeting and facebooking and yeah this entire post was composed and published from my iPhone 3GS! :)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0010c2a0-2a82-46e0-be1c-c3b550c49668)
Posts
11 comments:
November 30, 2009 12:57 PM
There's no perfect product in the market. You can only find the best product that suits your lifestyle and budget.
A lot of people rant about what are missing in a device although they rarely use them. Some want a 3G phone although their sim card doesn't support 3G.
Apple is greedy for sure. If I were Jobs, I'd also do the same. Why would I bother to adjust my products when they are so popular that despite the high price and missing features, people still buy!
And of course, if you ask me what PMP I wanna buy, the answer'll be iPod. I am willing to sacrifice the radio and pay a little more (as I can afford) to get the iPod. I don't wanna go out there in public and take out my Creative Zen Player, which is actually almost as pricey as iPod. LOL!
November 30, 2009 1:03 PM
I am interested in N900s capabilities in terms of speed and multitasking as compared to the I-phone? Any comments?
November 30, 2009 4:22 PM
@Pong: Apple is good at selling their products but that doesn't mean they can take the customers for a ride.. Competition is catching up and if Apple don't fix some of their shortcomings, am afraid they are doomed.. And you can give Sony's PMPs a try, after all they were the ones to bring music on the move with their legendary "walkman"s
@horizonguy: Well the N900 and iPhone basically have the same processor but iPhone is faster and gives you a more fluid navigating experience.. This is partly because of resistive touchscreen of the N900 and the immaturity of the Maemo 5 platform. However, things can only get better for Maemo as its a very hacker friendly platform as opposed to iPhone OS. Coming to multi-tasking, as I have mentioned earlier there is no out of box multitasking solution for the iPhone. Backgrounder and multiflow work great in tandem on jailbroken iPhones though. But I would have to give it to N900 when it comes to multitasking, which works very much like expose on Macs..
November 30, 2009 5:15 PM
As a user of Macbook and Nano as well as a big fan of Steve Jobs, I think Apple is the company focusing more on their own thoughts for novelty and perfectionism than marketing strategies. That's why Apple product is not that "friendly" to users who are trying to make devices and accessories as compatible as possible. When switching to Nano from Sony, I was actually quite disappointed by the sound quality nano produced and also frustration abt the sync limitation. Same thing happened when I changed my laptop to macbook. But after a while, I was amazed by functions apple supported. Macbook is user-friendly, except the part if you need to make everything compatible with Windows. Apple products are without a doubt absolutely excellent in Apple world, but not resilient enought to beat out in the market where everyone is playing and watching.
December 1, 2009 3:13 PM
@Sushant: I totally disagree with you that Apple cannot take the customers for a ride and that Apple is about to be doomed. Steve Jobs is very smart and he won’t let the company fail so easily. You should know that for PMPs, there are not many things to be added as an update. Radio has already been added to Nano and it is likely that radio will be added to the other iPod lines later as well. Apple actually delivers the memorable and impressive experience for me. First, I was totally impressed by the Artwork concept in the PMPs and the cover flow in iTunes. Second, it also introduced the new concept of PMP as a game device and mobile internet on iPod Touch and iPhone. None of these are perfect products like I said. But among the other products in the market, Apple’s PMPs are the most influential and fashionable of all.
Actually not only Apple has this kind of keeping the technology for the next models, Nokia is also one of the most notorious members for this. From the time that Nokia launched the early Symbian phones, it never gives complete specs or there must be something lacking behind the others for some time. For example, at the time of 6600 or 3230 or 6260 (which I owned once), we cannot listen to MP3 through the stereo headphones (support Mono only). Or when the other Korean phones like Samsung introduced very beautiful screens (65K colors), Nokia got stuck with 4K color screen for some time. Why did I buy the 6260 (Symbian clam shell with rotating screen) at that time and I still bought 6630 as my next phone after that? Because I considered Symbian was the best phone platform at that time. There were so many apps which were very useful and compared with other normal phones at that time, I felt Symbian phones from Nokia were the smartest choice. This is same with iPhone now. No matter what you tell me that oohh Nokia has radio or its Bluetooth is not restricted or Nokia has more apps or blah blah…, I couldn’t care less. Symbian is now super-outdated and Nokia also knows this. That’s why it introduced Maemo, which was previously developed for mobile internet. Symbian looks out of place for me now. And iPhone OS has replaced Symbian as my favorite platform in spite its imperfectness. I still remember the bad experience of my Palm Treo 550v (Windows Mobile 6 (non-touch screen)). It had no Wifi. Connecting the phone with 3G drains the battery so fast that it went dead after 2 and a half hours. I also faced the problems syncing it with my Macbook. Not many applications were available for this phone (due to it not-standard Win Mo type).
BTW, I only like a few models from Walkman. Considering the same price tag, I’d still prefer to get an iPod or go for Zune HD if it’s available here.
@Mengmeng: I couldn’t agree more with you. The problem that I experience most of the time is just that people are afraid of new technology and are not willing to try any new things. Some people only read the product reviews on the internet and believe what other people say about the products. Some even condemn the products harshly without even trying them before.
December 1, 2009 4:25 PM
@Pong: Why are you dragging Nokia and Symbian into this? Symbian is outdated, I agree with that but thats not the reason for Apple not to improve their OS.. Anyway coming to iPhone apps, believe me if Apple doesn't change its policies, it's heading nowhere.. As I mentioned in the post an increasing number of developers are quitting the platform. Joe Hewitt (facebook app developer)tweeted his outburst on Apple's app screening policies.. Infact several developers expressed their disappointment over this in the just concluded iCE Conference in Amsterdam..
I never said Jobs is not smart.. Infact he is very smart, for only he can sell an ill equipped device to the masses and go on to make it a benchmark against which other devices are gauged.. and yeah Zune HD looks super cool with its Tegra processor and all..
@Mengmeng: I don't really agree with your Apple believes in novelty and perfectionism statement. I have already highlighted how their devices lack basic features and as such they are no where close to perfect and coming to novelty, let me throw some light on Apple's investment in R&D and ad campaigns. Apple invested USD 1.1 billion in R&D in 2008 and MicroSoft invested USD 8 billion. Coming to ad campaigns, Apple spent USD 501 million in 2009 and MicroSoft around USD 1.4 billion.. Do the math, when it comes to R&D, Apple invests almost 1/8th of that of Microsoft but coming to ad campaigns it spends 1/3rd of that of Microsoft. Now tell me who is market oriented and who is innovation oriented?
December 2, 2009 10:58 PM
Sushant: thanks for the numbers. Pls allow me to clarify my thoughts over Apple.
Firstly, you might have noticed that Apple has a very strong and stable customer base which is comprised mostly of professionals in the filed of fashion, photography post-processing, etc, say "image users" for better understanding. And in those areas, Macbook(Apple's 1st and most important product) has almost become the monopoly product. And there is no sign that those user will be shifting to Windows. That's where my thinking of novelty and perfectionism came from. Apple makes lots of efforts in perfecting image quality and the corresponding control system to facilitate those users. As for windows, it's been widely used in the industry and government where compatibility and effectiveness are highly required. They are not asking for the "fancy functions and decorations" and only aiming at how to achieve the goal within the shortest time and with fewest resources. Windows is definitely No.1 and better than Apple in this market.
When it comes to the computer market, there is no doubt that Microsoft possesses bigger market shares than Apple as users in industry are way much more than that in fashion and design. Microsoft fits more market than Apple. Personally, I do not think there is any need for Microsoft to invest too much in sales. They have the customers who are loyal to the operation system(Good for them=)). Let's take a look at Apple side, I have to say that Steve is actually quite a showcase-guy who enjoys bringing their products to as many people as possible. He does not do it just recently, he has been doing this from Day 1. In addition, how much a company spends in sales may can tell how much the company intends to promote their products to the population. But when justifying whether a company is market-oriented or not may need to trace back whether their design targets as many potential customer as possible. In this way, Apple failed. And, remember that Apple is not just in computer business, they also have several other products to push into the market which incurs the cost as well.
December 2, 2009 10:58 PM
Thirdly, as mentioned earlier, Apple has been covering more areas comparing with Microsoft. No need to name them all. Microsoft has been producing software and mouse and they are doing it perfectly well and obviously more competitive than others. Apple's products are so diversified because they devote themselves in invention and breakthrough in the field. And all the products are still being sold and I believe will continue being sold in the future. They may lack some functions which users of windows or other brands(Nokia, Sony...) values. But as Pong said earlier, no product is perfect. Other products are not flawless. But at least Apple has managed to lead the industry (even they may fail to set the standard) and push others to innovate (or just simply duplicate) technology.
Fourthly, users who are criticizing Apple's products are mostly only at their first time trying Apple products for testing or just fun. Is there slight possibility that the product is actually ok but the user is fixed with the logic infiltrated by other brands earlier and expect Apple can do the same or can assemble all the merits of other products. But other products are not flawless either as I mentioned earlier.
Lastly, choosing Apple but not other brands for users who are not fashion professionals is just their own preference or taste. I go for Apple because it's simple and elegant. I prefer things being as simple and clear as possible. Apple meets and sometimes exceeds my needs. I will not say Apple is good and other brands are not. Because we all have our own preferences in life, in anything. I cannot criticize others for not choosing the same thing as I chose. If the product could serve the customer, it is good. If it could be kept improving and updating to better serve the customer, it is great. That's why I feel so sorry about users of Canon and Nikon being fighting all the time. No point! Any camera and lens that can produce good image is great. Why wasting time arguing which one is better? Why not saving time of fight for exchanging knowledge instead?
December 3, 2009 6:51 PM
@Pong: Why are you dragging Nokia and Symbian into this? Symbian is outdated, I agree with that but thats not the reason for Apple not to improve their OS..
Pong’s Reply: I dragged Nokia and Symbian into this discussion to show the example of other companies that deserve to be criticized as well.
Anyway coming to iPhone apps, believe me if Apple doesn't change its policies, it's heading nowhere..
Pong’s Reply: Apple is very bad for not releasing full-featured products at one time, I agree. But that’s also what other companies like Nokia (as I mentioned) do. And the point that Apple is so stubborn and it will fail in the market is proved wrong with iPod. iPod is limited to be used with only iTunes and has no radio but it still prevails for long time. It’s obvious that when its popularity drops, Apple will have to do something else to freshen it up.
As I mentioned in the post an increasing number of developers are quitting the platform. Joe Hewitt (facebook app developer)tweeted his outburst on Apple's app screening policies.. Infact several developers expressed their disappointment over this in the just concluded iCE Conference in Amsterdam.
Pong’s Reply: I agree that Apple has bad policies about this and developers hate it. But do you think despite their complaints, they will actually give up on very popular platform so easily? If Facebook actually stops supporting iPhone, I’m sure there will still be a lot of other developers who want to come in the empty space. (Whether it will be as good as the orginal app is another issue.)
I never said Jobs is not smart.. Infact he is very smart, for only he can sell an ill equipped device to the masses and go on to make it a benchmark against which other devices are gauged.. and yeah Zune HD looks super cool with its Tegra processor and all.
Pong’s Reply: I didn’t mean to say that you thought Steve was not smart. I just raised this to object to your argument that Apple is leading nowhere and will fail because of their greedy behavior. Also, it’s ill-equipped product that inspire a lot of manufacturers to imitate the design and appearance, isn’t it?
My point is when you are an Apple hater, whatever bad points Apple has, you will try to emphasize on it while neglecting all the other bad points in the products you like. I agree with all Apple’s bad points that you mention but totally disagree with what you predict about the future of Apple. This is the same when I mention my view about N900, for example, you will try to protect it by saying that I needed to give more time to Nokia, or you are just not used to it yet. When you say that iTunes is not easy to use, I also told you the same to give it a try.
Actually, you need not complain about all the bad points just to give bad impression about Apple products to others. The competition is now very tough and do you think Apple will stay still doing nothing? If other platforms become more popular and powerful, the market will change and this will force Apple to move in the better direction.
December 4, 2009 3:17 PM
@Meng and Pong: You guys are totally awesome..I love a good debate and thanks to you, we are having one here. I have never enjoyed blogging as much as in the interactions we are having in this post. Bring it on guys, let's see where this goes.
@Meng: I disagree with two of your observations. The first one being that Apple has a more diverse customer base than that of Microsoft. Think about it what all does Apple make? PMPs, Computers (macbooks and macs), OS and other software utilities. Microsoft-OS, office suite, software utilities (which outnumber that of Apple), PC accessories (keyboards, Mice, Gaming accessories), PMPs (Zune), Gaming Consoles (Xbox), Games (PC and Xbox based)...
Second being Apple products/services are simple and elegant. Most of their services are, but not each. Take the case of iTunes for example, of which I have talked at lengths in the post. This is what amuses me, I always thought Apple products were supposed to be intuitive and easy to use and yet iTunes continues to be a painful experience.
I agree that each product has its own target customer base but when Apple is invading the products that I use in my daily life, I expect them to meet my requirements and am just listing where they fall short on my list.
@Pong: If you read my post you will realise that am not an Apple hater after all. Infact I made it very clear that Apple comes up with some of the best products every now and then. My tone keeps changing throughout the post and have given rational reasons that prevented me from migrating to the Apple world.
I am afraid you cannot compare my judgement on iTunes/iPhone with yours on N900. First, I gave iTunes/iPod 8 long years to grow on me and itself and iPhone 3 years to evolve, and I actually bought one and after 2 months of using it, did I give my verdict. On the contrary how long did u use the N900, 5 min?
Again I have to remind you it's not fair to drag Nokia into this discussion. It's like when your Mom is reprimanding you for not cleaning your room, you are telling her to go and see your friend's room which is way messier than yours. As a customer, its my right to complain about a product, I actually bought by paying full price in a legal setting.
My statement of Apple being doomed always implied that their future is doomed if they don't change their policies. Going by their track record in putting a FM receiver on iPod, am afraid they take a long, very long time in realising what their products are missing. Am just afraid Apple will be too late in fixing iPhone and it will lose the position its enjoying in market today, which is rather unfortunate for I really like the iPhone.
December 7, 2009 6:51 PM
It seems a never-ending discussion here. I find it subjective to judge the user-friendliness of iTunes. I started using iTunes on windows when I first got my iPod video 30 gb. I was totally impressed by its look and ability to manage my entire library. And I have always found it very intuitive and easy to use.
After that I moved to use Mac, which even made me love iTunes more and more. Seriously iTunes on mac is faster and smoother than the one on Windows. And you can feel this very clearly with the newer version of iTunes, which has become more and more bloated and consume more resources.
I still don't get you what is so difficult about iTunes. When you can use a lot of other complicated apps, iTunes is such a piece of cake. Personally I find windows media player more difficult to use though. And are you sure you really tried iTunes for that long time?
I complain about the maemo os not because I have a bias on nokia. You have to accept that compared with the other new platforms say Android, Maemo is out of league in terms of phone usability and ease despite it's powerful hardware and fantastic browser. I also wait for iPhone for 3 years because iPhone was also full of flaws at the beginning. But now it's much improved and I really enjoy using it like when I used my Symbian 6630 5 or 6 years ago
Post a Comment
Post a Comment