Mark Pilgrim has written a now-dugg post on the iphone, and how people should learn to stop buying products from Apple in the hopes that they will get a clue and truly open them up.
Although the blog post is nice, I prefer the simplicity of his delicious comment:
“Doctor, it hurts when I buy Apple products.”
The punchline, for those that don’t recognize the joke: “Then don’t do that.”
Or take the digg comments when Steve Jobs took X+200$ from people for an iphone, then gave them 100$ back so they can spend it at the Apple store. Commenters were falling over themselves praising Apple for doing the right thing, even though customers have still spent X+200$ at Apple, and the only thing Apple loses is the equivalent of a few months iphone subscription revenue. My response: “Thank you sir may I have another!”
Similarly, I often describe buying a Mac as a deal with the devil. You get the best-available computing experience money can buy, but you’ll have to put up with Steven P. Jobs’ odd whims — some of which cost money
But I think the most apt analogy for Apple and its users is the abusive relationship. Apple will slap you around and beat you up, but it’ll always come back with a bouquet of flowers and promise that this time things’ll be different.
Update:
Now apparently Apple is saying “I’ll buy you a bouquet of flowers, and you can choose the flowers, but only if I think they go with the drapes.”
Yeah, I was kind of enthralled by the iPhone, but after the update/iBricking debacle... no thanks.
I've also thought about the Mac. But it makes me pretty nervous. If I am going to spend that much money I don't want to be quite so nervous.
In case anyone doesn't already know about it, there's a pretty awesome open alternative to the iPhone out now. It's called the Neo 1973.
http://www.openmoko.com/
p.s. I'm not a spam bot I just really think it's awesome and people should know about it if they're in the market for a new high-end phone.
-mike
Steve Pomeroy (http://staticfree.info/steve/) said he took a look at the Neo 1973, and was underwhelmed at the build quality. He pointed out that if they had ever cracked open a Nokia they might have seen that all of the components are mounted on rubber for shock protection, but instead the Neo is screwed together. If you drop it it's probably toast.
Although this particular example could be a patent issue, I worry that it might not perform up to spec on regular phone-type features. I can handle linux / open source rough edges on my laptop, but I'm not sure I can handle it on a phone. I'm going to wait for some reviews before putting my eggs in that basket.