5 Things that I hate about Apple, iOS and iPhones

Posted by nkbish0p at 19:12

Tweet Todays post takes a a slightly different approach to the majority of my posts, where as a rule, I tend to champion Apple's products, particularly the iPhone and iOS. There are several things however that I hate about Apple and I will highlight these in the list below.

iPhones are too expensive


An easy inclusion and one that would probably make the number one slot on most peoples list, regardless of whether they like Apple or not. Forgot what people say about "paying for quality" or "craftsmanship", yes the iPhone 4 is well made, yes the software is excellently polished but I still consider the iPhone 4 to be overpriced in todays market. For a start, the frankly ludicrous £428 price tag of a two year old handset (the iPhone 3gs) is a stupendous waste of money and I believe that it is probably set that high to encourage consumers to spend an extra £90 or so to buy a 16gb iPhone 4. Equally ludicrous is the extra £102 a 32gb iPhone 4 costs over a 16gb iPhone 4, an upgrade I did not even consider due to the massive overpricing. When equally competent Android handsets can be bought for much less, I grow more and more tempted to make my next phone a non-Apple model.

You may question the relevance of these prices if you bought your phone from a network provider on contract, but a quick look on Vodafones UK website shows that the probably superior Samsung Galaxy S II can be taken away for free with the purchase of a £36p/m contract. Remembering that the iPhone 4 is now a year old handest, it seems ludicrous that to get a free iPhone 4 customers are expected to pay £40p/m. Expect these prices (And price gaps) to grow even larger with the debut of the next iPhone handset.

You cannot (easily or officially) downgrade the firmware on your device


To most people this may seem irrelevant. However, as an owner of an iPhone 3g I found my phone to be incredibly slow once updated to iOS 4.0, (and I am not alone) and promptly downgraded it back to iOS 3.1.3. There are rumours going around that in iOS 5.0 Apple will make it almost impossible to downgrade your phones firmware once you have updated it. I will find it incredibly annoying if I witness similar problems that I experienced with iOS 4.0 on my iPhone 3g with iOS 6.0 on my iPhone 4, especially if I have no choice but to live with it. I find it appalling that Apple can sell a user a device that is rendered practically useless by a so called "update". Users should always have the choice of returning their device to the software that they purchased it with.

Innovation, although fairly frequent is slowly paced.


Take for example the addition of MMS, cut copy and paste and video recording that took an entire two years for Apple to implement. Apple should listen to their users and it was clear for an extremely long period of time before this that people wanted to see some of these features on their device. The increased competition from Android is great as it is forcing Apple to include features such as these that they may not have even bothered with if good alternatives were not available.

Banned apps


I think it is fairly ridiculous that Apple wishes to operate a "family style" app store and not allow certain apps to be sold within it. I believe that customers that pay this much to use an Apple product should be allowed to install applications of their own choice at their own leisure. Alternative app stores (that do not require a jailbreak unlike Cydia) would be a fantastic addition to iOS. Personally, I can't see this happening as Apple takes 30% of all revenue generated by sales in the App Store. However, other mobile platforms such as Android do benefit from this option.

Apple "fanboys" and Apple "haters"


They exist and they are annoying to non users and users of Apple products. It is unfortunate to be labelled as a "fan-boy" purely due to a usage of Apple products and it is annoying when people make judgements about products, be it Apple or non Apple products without considering the benefits and drawbacks first. I bought my iPhone 4 because I genuinely believed it to be the best all around smartphone on the market when I made the purchase, though as this post demonstrates I believe Apple should not be immune to criticism. There are pros and cons for each mobile platform and each has unique features that make it suitable for a certain person or a set of requirements. Competition is good and it is great that there are a multitude of options available on the market as this makes sure that each manufacturer is required to work hard to stay competitive.

What don't you like about your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad? Leave a comment below!