Apple, My Love, My Hate

I’m sitting here on my MacBook Pro, watching Chuck on my Mac Mini media centre as I track the status of my iPad order on my iPhone. Suffice it to say; I’m an Apple fanboy. And that puts me in something of a quandary.

So according to Deliveries on my iPhone and MacBook Pro, my 64Gb Wifi iPad should be arriving sometime in the next few hours. The iPhone has revolutionised how I’ve used my phone. Before the iPhone there were horrendous interfaces and even worse Java apps. Then Apple came along, slapped the entire market around the face, and took my money. So the decision to get an iPad, an iPhone with a larger screen (which is all it needed) was a no-brainer.

And yet I hate myself for buying Apple products. This entire article is going to be one giant hypocritical rant and confession.

I love Apple computers, that includes my Mini and MBP. Being able to run all of my normal *nix commands on my main machine is brilliant. My feelings towards these devices are solely positive (well except maybe the heat).

Where I get a cold knot in my stomach is thinking about the iPhone and what it’s doing to developers and consumers. As it stands the iPhone will prevent me from working how I’d like to. Take this example; I have a webpage open to the left of this Word window. On the iPhone OS that would mean constant switching back and forth.

Or how about the app approval process? Already in my day job I have had Apple reject an iPhone app I’ve made. Should a company be able to control “everything” that goes on with their devices? Heck, am I even buying the device or just getting a very limited license to use it?

The arguments for are many; the iPhone has unarguably the best interface, it has the highest number of apps of any app store and it’s only managed to keep that quality because of Apple’s demands.

But on the flip side; I’ve had to download source and deploy it myself for certain apps, I constantly wonder about jailbreaking my iPhone (and probably will do for the iPad as there is no cellular carrier to worry about barring me) and wish, wish, I could sync with multiple machines as always with Apple products.

And yet for all of these faults I could not consider using a phone or device not made by Apple. The only other OS I can even begin to stand is GNU/Linux over CLI (the various Linux desktop distros are improving but still lag a long, long way behind OS X and even Windows).

Should lack of competition really be one of the key reasons for choosing a device? I want options, I want to do what I want with the hardware and software that I have.

There isn’t a coherent argument in here for either way. It’s just a geek venting the frustrations of no longer been in control. The iPad is designed for a new class of users, those who have always been too scared by the complexity of a “computer” to use one. It doesn’t favour us developers, the ones who know what’s going on behind the pretty lights and touch capacitive screen.

So, until a rival comes out with something of equal merit to the iPhone OS, I will stick with my iPhone 3G (soon to be 4G), iPad and other assorted Apple knickknacks.