iPhone? No - just no

I was having lunch with a colleague today and we were talking shop. As it was over lunch, I didn't have a notebook with me so I pulled out my phone and used it to take a couple of notes. When he saw the keyboard, he asked me which phone it was and then asked me why I didn't use an iPhone.

Why is it that everyone seems to think that the iPhone is the bee's f$&king knees?

Maybe its just me but although the iPhone does some things right, there are some absolutely shockingly bad moves by Apple which really just rub me the wrong way. So, rather than explaining to people the next time they ask me, I figured that I would put some of the reasons I dislike the iPhone into a blog post and then just send this link to them in future.

iPhone provider
The first thing about the iPhone which severely cheeses me off is that I am forced to use the telecom provider as dictated by Apple. In US, this means AT&T. In HK, this means 3. Guess what - I choose which telco I use and I will NOT have this dictated to me by some tinpot tech dictator.

Yeah, I know that the iPhone has been cracked and that I could choose another provider. However, why the f$&k should I have to go to all that trouble just to use a phone!

iPhone security (or lack thereof)
The iPhone has a shocking lack of security which has been well documented online. Basically, ALL applications on the iPhone run at the root level which means the app has full system access (granted - you could think of this as a plus as it allowed people to crack the iPhone for use on other networks).

Another issue is that its not as if Apple are taking security concerns seriously as the new iPhone 3G still suffers from security issues.

Apple sucks
The last point I want to make here is that Apple, as a company, sucks. The level of hypocrisy from Apple is just astounding.

A good example of this is the iPhone app store. There was a recent firestorm of criticism of iPhone over how they handled Nine Inch Nail app which you can read about here. And more recently, they banned an ebook reader because it gave access to a public domain book about sex. Granted, Apple reversed their decision after another shitstorm of criticism but it is worth mentioning that this only happened after a shitstorm of criticism.

The fact is that Apple and hypocrisy seem to go hand in hand. Just go into google and type in Apple hypocrisy and marvel at the number of hits. You could also do this for other companies and many of them won't have the same number of hits. As an example, I tried microsoft and it had less hits. That's right folks! The "evil" microsoft is apparently less of a hypocrite than Apple - draw your own conclusions.

Also, considering that Apple are lobbying to make it illegal for people to install software on their iPhone outside of the Apple app store, does anyone really want their iPhone to be completely reliant on Apple. Or as BoingBoing puts it:

"It's amazing to think that in 2009 a phone manufacturer wants to dictate which literature its customers should be allowed to download and read on their devices."