iLove-iHate iRelationship with iCrap
I have a Love-Hate relationship with anything iPod, especially the iPhone.
I’m currently in the market for a new mobile device. I need something that is capable of receiving email and other things from our central email servers. Blackberries, Windows Smart Phones, and the iPhone are a few of the devices that come to mind… I would jump up and buy an iPhone right away if it wasn’t so laden with bullshit software restrictions/requirements and wasn’t tied to ATT. I can get over the ATT part.. I’m currently with them, it’s OK, not great, but none of the cell providers are great.
The iPhone is a very sexy device. That is the love I have for it. It is, bar none, the best looking cell phone on the market (my opinion). It definitely does some nifty tricks, it’s sexy, and has the features I want in a phone, for the most part.
It also has the aura of douchebaggery tied to it (see photo on left to see representation of both the iPhone and of a typical douchebag)
The iPhone is a typical representation of Apple creating a beautiful device and then crippling it horribly with software(see Apple TV, Apple Newton, iPod, Pippin). I can actually live with the fact that the iPhone is locked down with what you can install on it and such, it essentially does whatever I want it to do so I’m fine with that (for the most part, I would love GPS), my problem is with the huge hunk of crap that they like to call iTunes.
I have an 60GB iPod currently. I hate having to use iTunes for anything at all. It cripples the device so badly. You can’t 2-way sync your music, iTunes (you can not get any music off of an iPod by default when using iTunes) will try to wipe your device if you try to sync it. I only purchased an iPod because, at the time, it was the only device that was both small and had a 60GB storage capacity so I could port all of my music around with me and still have some room for shuttling some data too.
The other thing about iTunes is it tries to take control of ALL of your media. It installs quicktime, it tries to take all of your preferences for media playback by default. Say you like to use Windows Media Player for watching videos.. install iTunes, by default Quicktime will take that preference from you. Never mind what happens when you try to listen to a MP3 within a web browser, quicktime launches embeded in your browser and it runs it. You change your preferences back to your desired behavior, and the next time Quicktime or iTunes comes out with an update, even a .0.0.0.0.1 update (which, by the way, almost always requires a full reinstall of iTunes) then Quicktime/iTunes will take the file preferences over again.
The other thing is, when you install iTunes on a windows computer, it installs 2 or 3 services that run all the time on your computer when you start the computer. Why does it need to do this? Normal plug-and-play should be enough to detect when the ipod is plugged in and should then launch iTunes for you.
Why all the bitching about iTunes when I’m talking about an iPhone? Because in order to do ANYTHING with your iPhone (and make no mistake, it is YOUR device, you should be able to use it as you please) you MUST install and USE iTunes. You have to have iTunes to activate your phone initially, you have to have iTunes to get any firmware updates to it, you have to have iTunes to put any music on it, you have to have iTunes to put wallpapers on it. Never mind if you want to use a custom ringtone. You can’t. You have to buy it from Apple (the iTunes store). On my current phone, and many previous phones, I could take any MP3 I wanted and make it into a ringtone — the way it should be (yes I know that there are ways around that, but that’s not the point).
I guess all I’m saying is, I sure wish the iPhone wasn’t tied down to so much crap… it’d be a no-brainer for me to buy it. Now I don’t know what to do. I wish there was a windows mobile device that was as sexy as the iPhone. Blah.
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Comments
good point. I totally forgot about the whole battery thing. Also Apple’s unwillingness to update their devices once a new device is out. So iPod Gen 4’s can’t get the OS for iPod gen 5’s…. for once they should take note from microsoft and their backward support from zune1 to zune2.
amen brother. allow me to add, must send in and pay $60 and not have a phone for a week to replace the battery.
One other reason not tied to apples crappy policies and software that I’m not to keen on is how I think I’d break it if it was in my pocket and i hit the corner of a table. Last week I drove off with my HTC TyTN II on the roof of my car and it fell off on the pavement and it still works.
Windows mobile may not be sexy but as an OS its very capable if MS would get off their asses and support it a bit and make a browser that doesn’t blow it would be so much better.