I’m not the world’s most ardent Apple supporter. I didn’t unquestioningly buy into the iPhone, for example, I held off until it had GPS and installable apps, two things any decent smartphone should have in 2008. That said, I do appreciate their high-quality products with a usually problem-free hardware-software interface. My MacBook, iPhone 3G and old 30GB iPod are all fantastic and I love using them.
Recently though I’ve found myself feeling like Apple’s holding me back. They’re letting me crawl along in dumb luxury when I should be able to run with their products. They have indeed cut my legs off. Of course, Steve Jobs hasn’t been round to see me with a sword and mutilated the bottom half of my body, but sometimes it feels like he has. I feel like this in two distinct ways that actually contradict each other.
1. There are things I can’t do with Apple products that I really should be able to.
- Why can’t I send an MMS from my iPhone? Why can’t I even receive an MMS? Come on Apple, the public has been crying out for this basic feature since the first iPhone over a year ago. It’s not even like it’s a difficult thing to implement! They’re cutting my legs off.
- Why can’t I capture video with my iPhone when the camera and operating system can easily handle it? Qik and Flixwagon for jailbroken iPhones show its easy if you just allow developers access to the right bits of the phone. They’re crippling their own product and cutting my legs off!
- If I buy an album on iTunes I can burn it to CD without a problem. How come I can’t burn a film bought on iTunes onto DVD? The only way of watching a film bought on iTunes on your TV is by spending £200 on an AppleTV box. That’ll only work with an HD-ready TV so that’s another £400-ish in order to watch a film on TV. Apple have therefore cut my legs off. It is of course the MPAA and other stuck-in-that-past rights-holding organisations that stop Apple offer DVD burning (even though DRM could easily limit the number of DVD burns and even stop the DVD itself being copied afterwards). Still, by making the only solution a £200 set-top box (that doesn’t even work with all TVs) they’re cutting my legs off, spitting on me and laughing in my face.
2. Once you’re with Apple it’s hard to leave.
In the examples above, Apple have made it difficult to truly ‘run’ with a device’s true capabilities. On the other side of the coin, Apple are also cutting off their users’ legs by making the Apple ecosystem so good (problems I’ve mentioned aside). Very few people who try OSX ever want to go back to Windows. That’s simply because it makes many tasks a lot easier and more fun. Try an everyday task like burning a data DVD natively in Windows and you’ll tear your hair out until you buy a 3rd party product. Compare that to how simple it is in OSX. Then there’s the iPhone 3G, the best web browsing and email-handling device I’ve ever used despite its drawbacks. In this case Apple have cut my legs off and I’ve willingly laid back and thought of England until the hacking was complete.
So, if you’re an Apple user you have no legs – whether you’re happy about it or not depends on your point of view.
