Apple Showing Warning Signs

by David Risley on Aug 28, 2008 | 10 comments

As many of my readers know, I have converted pretty much everything to Apple products. I am now a Mac user and recently I switched to the Iphone. As of a few days ago, even my keyboard is built by Apple. I am a fan of the company and their products, but I am seeing big red flares that are showing signs of trouble on the horizon.

Why I Like Apple

It continues to be funny when I witness the emotional reaction Apple can get out of people. A lot of non-Apple geeks are quick to dismiss me as a “fanboy” because I like Apple. Such a reaction is really asinine and, ironically, often comes from people who would buy Apple if not for monetary reasons. But, why I like Apple products come down to a few key reasons:

Their products are designed with the end user in mind.
Their products are easy to use and I don’t have to battle the thing to do what I want.
Their products abstract the hardware and allow you to concentrate on what you do with the machine, but not on the workings of the machine. Windows users do not realize how much time they spend on maintenance, optimizations and tweaks on their PCs until they don’t have to do it anymore.

As a blogger, Apple is an intriguing company to cover, too. The company releases new things pretty regularly and sometimes the stuff they release is pretty exciting. Microsoft, comparatively, is dirt slow at anything new (at least when it comes to the desktop).

But, There Are Warning Signs

While I have admired the user-centric design of Apple products, the company has been showing some signs of losing touch. Some examples:

Iphone battery life has been a complaint, and it seems really stupid not to have it be user replaceable.
The Iphone software has been a bit buggy, worse for some than others. I’ve had my Iphone crash many times. I’ve had it slow down or features stop working that required a restart to fix.
No copy & paste on the Iphone? Stupid, stupid stupid. This is OS design 101.
The MacBook Air hasn’t been that high quality and many have been reporting stupid problems with it.
MobileMe has been a huge ball of fail since it launched, showing once again that Apple is horrible when it comes to anything on the Internet. And the fact that they’re charging money for it when it can all be done for free elsewhere is dumb. Apple tossed users some free time for their troubles, but all that is is free time using a barely functional service. Also, the fact that all the .Mac customers were automatically moved into this crappy service is a case of very poor customer service.
There have been complaints about decreased built quality on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

What I’m sensing is a bunch of Apple users who really want to continue liking Apple, but are having to find ways to explain the parade of bonehead moves and buggy products coming from the company.

In all fairness, most computer companies release crappy stuff. I guess Apple is held to a higher standard because of their marketing and the loyal following that they have. Perhaps Apple is just showing us one thing: they’re a computer company just like any other computer company.

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http://kkomp.com Sharron (kkomp)
Of course it’s only fair to expect to pay good money for crap service; after all this is Apple, the infallible company with the great Jobsweh at the helm! Dare ye criticise and encounter his wrath, oh mortal?
Everywhere I go I hear nothing but moan moan moan about Apple; followed by “But it is Apple we’re talking about; so we can excuse them now and again.” -
In June I blogged in my scoop about the inside information I’d been made privvy to about the platform being rushed to get ahead of the LG Viewty. All the Apple fanboys shouted “Blasphemy!” and some even boycotted my blog.
Later I blogged about other Apple issues; this time at the same time as the other commentaries were saying it:
“Oh you’re just anti-Apple” they said to me with a sneer.
Now even the Apple Fan Club are complaining about the same things I’ve been on about for ages; followed by”
“Aw but it’s sweet little cuddly Apple so we don’t mind that they took our money in exchange for a heap of crap. We love you Jobsweh: Kissy kissy”
What is it with fanboys? Earlier this century it was the Linux fanboys:
“Oh you Microtards are so yesterday: Linux is growing and soon Microshaft will be defeated by our great Open-Source supremacy!”
No I totally agree: Linux was growing: It grew from 0.4 to 0.7% in 5 years: It was free, but people would rather pay Microsoft $$$ for their o/s instead.
They couldn’t even give it away; and for a free o/s, 0.3% market-sector growth in 5 years is totally abysmal!
Now the number of Linux distros has exceeded the number of users and M$ have shot themselves in the foot by producing an o/s that was even worse than most distros in many ways and that costs money; people are starting to say that Linux isn’t such a massive fiasco. Nevertheless Linux usage still hasn’t even got as far as 10% despite the above.
It’s a similar scenario with Mac/Apple. I don’t have any actual data because pre-Vista there were no Mac users to speak of: They were even in a minority to Linux followers IIRC.
Jobsweh let a limited amount of success go to his head and he became greedy: He had a lot of say in the new iPhone and I think I can say with a good amount of certainty that he purposely let the iPhone be made without a user-replaceable battery in order to increase the amount of cashflow coming in: I blogged about that too, and the Apple faithful glanced at it down their noses: I quoted from Apple’s own site: $110+ to change the battery FFS!
“WE can afford it,” They chorused. “We pledge our allegiance and all our financial resources to our leader; the infallible Jobsweh, master of all and god of all things Apple.”
What a joke!

David Risley
What would an Apple post be without the kkomp Mac attack.

hitchface
What better thing to say after kkomp than…ZING!
Pingback: Beyond » Apple Fanboys Joins the Moaners
http://kptechblog.com Kyle Potts
Every company will not stay in the top. Apple has had it’s prime time and now its becoming the face in the crowd. Of course Kkomp would come in with an anti apple comment

http://kkomp.com Sharron (kkomp)
On the contrary; I don’t think that comment was anti-anything: If it was then it was anti-Microsoft, anti-Linux, and Anti-Apple. In my opinion it was a balanced view of the shortcomings of three operating systems and/or companies.
I award myself few marks for positive content; but award you few marks for observation. lol

chris
What are they going say if Apple every folds (not) O its Apple so we can forgive them for it…It just goes to show you that their no better than any other pc company. But because it is called Apple, people but it up on top of a higher mountain than it really deserved
http://igneousquill.blogspot.com Adam G.
I like being able to tinker and even fight with hardware, but that’s part of being a geek. I really don’t mind if someone prefers Apple, though I think it’s funny the site is PCMech but the man behind it uses a Mac. The humor is too obvious. Love the site though.
People gripe a lot about new devices like the iPhone, but the bugs eventually get worked out.
Michael Crispin
How do any of these problems with Apple hold a candle to the brute negligence and corporate malfeasance of MicroSoft and any number of their hardware partners?
I find this list to be a tad petty. Cutting edge technology always has bugs, and not every piece of hardware does exactly what we want it to. For every iPhone problem (3 out of 6 of your issues). there are a thousands (if not millions) of perfectly working iMacs, XServes, Mac Minis, not to mention iPods, as well as all the other Apple branded hardware and software products available.
Yes, MobileMe was a true screw-up (one that Jobs admitted to) – but suggesting that Apple users can get the “same” for free is dishonest. To my knowledge there is not a serious provider out there who has a integrated solution for OSX where I can migrate my user library in such an efficient manner between the mac in my home and the mac in my office and my iPhone. I like the usability, and am willing to pay for it. It’s not perfect, but slowly it has been getting better.
Apple’s market share has been getting much bigger, and yes, they have been getting some “big boy” problems. All in all considering the rapid growth, Apple has done a decent job when compared to the likes of Gateway, et. al.
Are you sure your attitude isn’t really about pushing back on the “fan boy” label, and you desire to have street credibility with your PC/LINUX brethren? Perhaps if you say something critical about Apple, they will stop calling you names?
Won’t ever happen. The PC world has its culture, and Apple has theirs. I have no need to be understood by the PC people.
Apple has a great OSX, excellent product integration, and the best customer satisfaction in the industry. Yes, Apple is fashionable right now, but a company that has been around since the late 1970s is hardly a fad nearing it’s point of burn-out because of few mistakes.
Oh.. and if you think this is bad, I remember the case of the exploding PowerBook 5300s in the early 90s… we’ve survived worse than this.
I’m happy to have the kinds of problems you mention.

Jah
“…and the best customer satisfaction in the industry.”
Well… What can I say?
What about when Apple screwed all their early iPhone customers? I personally think that Apple does NOT care about their customers.
And Dave, “2. Their products are easy to use and I don’t have to battle the thing to do what I want.”
I went to a friend’s house (an apple fanboy) and I wanted to show him some pictures. So I plug in my Hard Drive (into his mac) only to find out that I have to go through a bunch of weird voodoo in order to play the images as a slideshow… I ended up having to open each image, close the window, and open up another image… That is just one small example, but it is really pathetic on the mac side. Any OS I can think of could have done what I wanted it to do, but why wasn’t the superior mac able to do it?