iPods – for better or wose
The iPod completely changed the way that people thought of portable music storage and single handedly created the music-download business. Through incredible hardware design and an intuitive and easy to use interface, the iPod because synonymous with mp3 music and introduced the concept of an mp3 player to the general public. Based on it’s huge success iTunes became on the most popular music players on Mac or PC, the Apple Mac as a platform became trusted and cool again, people rushed out to buy Mac desktops and laptops and now Apple is the second biggest company in the world. So, what’s not to like about Apple?
Well, they are protectionist, untrustworthy, secretive and abusive. When they discovered a fault with the reception on the iPhone 4, they blamed the users and their users didn’t care because they love Apple. When that didn’t work out, the slandered a load of other smart phone makers and claimed that all smart phones suffer from the same reception problems (which they don’t). Instead of saying that they couldn’t get flash working on the iPad, they attacked flash and called it insecure. The list goes on…
Well, the reason I thought of this is because my sister recently sold her old used iPod. I needed a new mp3 player and thought that an old iPod touch might be just what I needed, but even second hand the iPods are more expensive than their more functional brothers!
Stealing my sister’s iMac now and then when I needed to use her printer has also exposed me to Leopard and quite frankly I’m not impressed. I know a lot of graphics developers that love the mac as a platform and find it difficult to go back to a PC after using one, but personally as an experienced user of Windows and Linux, I find the Apple OS clunky, confusing, counter intuitive and hard work. Perhaps for graphics work it’s a different deal, but for standard desktop work I’m just not sold.
I’m going to try to keep an open mind and see what Apple pulls out over the next couple of years, but to be honest I’m putting most of my hopes in Win7 for desktops, Ubuntu for servers and Android for phones and netbooks – there just isn’t room for Apple in my hopes and dreams nowadays.