A few months ago, despite not being the biggest Apple fan in the world, I bought an iPhone. Once again Apple had created something unique and I decided I had to have one. Being my first Apple product I was pretty impressed. Unfortunately my phone had a screen issue out of the box, but five minutes on the phone to Apple and I was given a coupon to take to the post office to get it sent back for free. A week later I received a brand new iPhone (not a refurbished model) which was pretty good considering postage times from Adelaide to Sydney.
The iPhone itself is amazing. The touch screen is intuitive and easy to use and the App store is fantastic, there are so many different apps that are available for free (or for around a dollar or two, encouraging impulse buying).
But it’s Apple’s closed off nature that really lets down the iPhone. It didn’t take me long to jailbreak my phone, opening the door to additions like the awesomely useful SBSettings, the 5 icon dock, battery percentage indicator (I have the 3G model) and a whole bunch of other useful apps not available through official Apple channels. I will say this now: if you have an iPhone and it’s not jailbroken, do it now. You’ll be asking yourself why you didn’t do it sooner.
The biggest annoyance I’ve had so far with the restricted nature of Apps has been a usage meter I bought (paid app, not free, hence my anger over this issue). This particular App allows me to keep track of my mobile phone credit usage and home Internet download usage. I use this app at least once every two days. Unfortunately a couple of weeks back, Virgin Mobile Australia decided to redo their Web site and made changes to their authentication system. So now my usage app can no longer log into their site to get my mobile phone usage. The developer of the usage app, who is a legend for support, fixed the issue later that same day, but due to Apple’s infuriatingly slow approval process the update has yet to make an appearance in the App store, over two weeks later. If Apple must insist on approving all applications they will need to hire a hell of a lot more staff to do it, and should implement some sort of fast track program for application updates.
The second annoyance came about when I wanted to plug my iPhone into the TV. I went to the Apple Web site where they wanted $60 for a composite cable. That’s right, $60 for fifty cents worth of cable. “Screw that”, I thought, and went to have a look on eBay where I found generic iPhone-compatible composite cables for $10 with free postage. Unfortunately these listings have a small disclaimer: “will not work with iPhone firmware 3.0″. It seems that Apple has started including authentication chips in their cables, so if you plug a cable into an iPhone that doesn’t have one of these chips it will not work. These sort of business practices should be illegal and pretty much highlight Apple’s success: suck people into buying a really cool new toy and then squeeze more money out of them by charging ridiculous prices for accessories without allowing for competition.
Overall I am really happy with the iPhone and the above experiences have not made me rule out buying an iPhone again. Before I become an Apple “fanboy”, however, Apple are going to need to improve their business practices. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.
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