Apple makes some of the coolest gadgets on the planet. However that is their biggest downfall in my eyes. All of their items are exactly that - gadgets. When it comes down to it their stuff is more show than go. They take form over function to the extremes.
Let me explain why I feel this way.
I have an iPhone. I love my iPhone and I hate my iPhone. Everybody loves lists so here are the reasons for both.
Love:
//It looks good
- Shiny black with a big bright screen
//It has real internet(most of the time)
- No more looking at only sports or stocks
//It is the best looking portable music player on the planet
- Cover flow is awesome
//Games have nice graphics
- Better than the Nintendo DS, almost as good as Playstation Portable
//Thousands upon thousands of apps
- Anything you can think of from books to games to golf range finders
Hate:
//No user replaceable battery
- Apple tried to make the phone look as good as possible that means no seams for a battery cover. That big bright screen is a battery hog. Most days my iPhone is limping to bed with 10% battery left.
//iPhone specific sites
- The iPhones popularity had made it so a lot of websites are being converted to iPhone friendly websites. Why? Because the iPhone doesn't support flash. FLASH. So now I can't look at the real NBA.com I have to look at a crappy iPhone specific NBA.com with less features.
//That awesome music player has to use iTunes
- In order to make cover flow look good you need all the covers to your music. Is iTunes good at getting album covers when you don't buy the music right from iTunes? No not even close. Before I even got my iPhone I spent about 10 hours fixing all my music to have the right covers. Then I had to move the folder where my music collection was located. iTunes decided that I just doubled my music collection. Who cares if every single song was on their twice and it couldn't find the location of one them. iTunes does have a feature if this happens that shows you all songs that have duplicates. However there isn't an easy way to delete the offending duplicate other than go through the entire list one by one and delete the bad song.
//Those good looking games aren't implemented that well
- It doesn't matter how good a game looks if it's hidden behind your fingers. This makes it so you can't really have games that require too much precise control as you can't really see what you are doing and you have no tactile feedback either. Give me an analog stick and a couple of buttons any day. Some games try to make up for this by using the accelerometer to control what's happening on the screen but it's just to imprecise for anything too complicated. It's great if you want to bounce a sheep into outer space though.
//The app store approval
- Give me Google Voice. I don't care if AT&T is threatened by it. It's awesome and I want it. I'll tell yo what I don't want. I don't want to pay $230 to turn my phone into a turn by turn GPS. I want apps that are going to help me do my homework and save me money.
Now, I know you are looking at my list and thinking that I must despise my iPhone, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. I expect the iPhone to do cool little things because that is how Apple operates. They take normal stuff make it cool looking and easy to use and make you pay out the wazoo for it. As far as phones go I think the iPhone is perfect for people that don't rely on their phone for their business. It's perfect for all the little things like listening to music and browsing the web for the answer to a question that suddenly comes up, but it's not going to solve all your problems.
