Comments on: Dear Apple: You’re ruining the iPhone

By: Tim Bobo

Tim Bobo — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:45:55 +0000

I was originally hacked at Apple too for some of this stuff, but now I am not, at least for most of it. When I read the recent WIRED article about the behind the scenes craziness it took to try to get this product ready. Apple barely got it done. O think they are just catching there breath and making this incerdible hack into a stable device that van handle 3rd party development in a stable way.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:14:37 +0000

Thanks for stopping by to voice your opinions and to complain about “complainers”.

As a shareholder in AAPL, I have every right to dislike their business decisions and practices. Just because you enjoy getting screwed over by Apple doesn’t mean I do.

Again, thanks for stopping by.

By: Constable Odo

Constable Odo — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:50:58 +0000

I insist you do not buy an iPhone if you don’t like it. You think Apple is smart for designing it and stupid for not allowing you to do whatever you please with it.

Yes, you can accuse Apple of ruining it’s own products. The company has done many seemingly stupid things with it’s products. Not licensiing it’s OS, not allowing clones to continue to be built. Not allowing Windows to run on their hardware. Maybe these things kept the company from being a giant.

But if you are unhappy about it, then stay away from their products. How could you not know that it was going to be tied to a particular carrier before you bought it? I’m a long term Apple investor and I’m mostly pleased with what Apple is doing. If I wasn’t, I’d invest elsewhere. I have more at stake than a single iPhone.

I just wish you people would sell or trade your iPhones and get a nice unlocked Nokia or BlackBerry or HTC. Then you can do whatever you want and skip the whining, griping and badmouthing of Apple. Just remember that no company is perfect and sometimes things get better if you’re patient enough.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 03:18:37 +0000

Thanks for your intelligent comment Oz… may I ask why you even bothered?

Apparently you didn’t read my post. Please try again.

By: Oz

Oz — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 03:13:38 +0000

You people are a bunch of ridiculous whiners. If you didn’t like how the iPhone was set up, you shouldn’t have bought it in the first place. It’s ridiculous to blame Apple for your own stupidity.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:17:15 +0000

Bill, it’s the little things that Apple does which increase frustration dramatically. I never did install any hacks like AppTapp, but I was very interested in doing so. I think ringtones need to be unlocked, I have a Sony phone sitting next to me that supports any MP3 file as a ringtone. Apple just won’t do it because of their lack of muscle. As more and more companies leave Apple’s world of iTunes they will lose any and all ability to call the shots.

The thing that really ticks me off most though is Apple’s active attempts at stopping the user community. This is what Sony and Microsoft do daily.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:03:59 +0000

Thanks Tim =) I typed this on my iPhone so I expect some word funk.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:00:46 +0000

“I’ve been a user of Apple products since grade school where I feel in love with them.” I think that is fell in love with them. I couldn’t help it, I’m an editor.

By: B Hartman

B Hartman — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:11:03 +0000

I have a similar story and here’s the letter I sent to Apple…

Mr Jobs

I’ve been an Apple “fan boy” since 1978 when I first bought an Apple ][ and have been recommending Apple products for 30 years and this is the first time I’ve been really pissed off at Apple.

I bought an iPhone but AT&T service in my area was spotty at best and I was forced to cancel the contract for the phone. AT&T allowed me to keep the phone which I’ve been able to enjoy as a laptop replacement using wi-fi in my home.

You have developed the most important and potentially useful device in decades with the iPhone. However, the lack of software and developer tools as forced me (and thousands of others) to look elsewhere for useful software. I didn’t want to “hack” my phone to install 3rd party software but the availability of useful software made it necessary to install the Installer.app on my phone and the usefulness of the phone was dramatically increased. I didn’t install the SIM or Ringtone hacks (which I do think you should stop, you have contractual obligations).

I am trying to understand what is gained by not allowing software development. There is no way that Apple can create all the software that people want to
use on a pocket device and you’ve got a LOT of excited people wanting to develop for this product. This is not the time to think small. You need to open the iPhone for development or you are going to lose your lead to other platforms that do allow development for their pocket devices.

But that’s not what I’m pissed off about…

It’s this Apple USB cable that I got with my G5 Mac PowerTower, it’s a cable extender for the keyboard. The iPhone’s USB cable is a bit short for my needs so I wanted to use the cable extender to give me some extra length and guess what… the female end of the cable has a small “v” that prevents the cable from being plugged into a standard USB cable, not even an Apple USB cable.

I realized, that in a nutshell, this represented the reason that Apple has so many detractors and why Windows (a pile of sh*t) was able to beat out a clearly superior computing experience, it’s that you go out of your way to make things that would be useful and make them incompatible with standards. The cable extender not only doesn’t work with a standard USB cable the production cost of this cable had to be more than a generic one.

You are currently riding a high, creating some great products, but just like in the 80’s you’re going to piss off enough customers that they won’t buy Apple products, no matter how good, just because it came from Apple.

Bill