Apple’s reputation is taking a beating from two prominent Web personalities–Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.
Arrington ditched his iPhone in favor of T-Mobile and its myTouch 3G, which works with Google Voice, something the iPhone overlords rejected outright (a move which now has Apple in hot water with the Feds).
“I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple,” he says.
For his part, Calacanis rails against Apple’s monopolistic practices in telecommunications, among other things.
Apple’s iPhone is a revolutionary product that has devolved almost all of the progress made in cracking-wait for it-AT&T’s monoply in the ’70s and ’80s. We broke up the Bell Phone only to have it put back together by the iPhone. Telecommunications choice is gone for Apple users. If you buy an Apple and want to have a seemless experience with your iPhone, you must get in bed with AT&T, and as we like to say in the technology space, “AT&T is the suck.”
On the home front, my iPhone stopped working last Friday for no apparent reason, after a brief 19 months of service. I took it to the Genius Bar on Saturday and was repeatedly quizzed about my phone getting wet, something that did not happen. To make a long story a bit shorter, there’s nothing Apple can will do, other than ask me to buy a new phone. They won’t repair the one I have. Can you say, PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE?
Here’s the deal–I can buy a new iPhone, but I need to wait until December when my two-year contract with AT&T matures to receive the special upgrade pricing. If I want a new iPhone now, I pay full price–for a phone that might only work another 19 months, give or take a few.
Sometimes I long for a simpler time. I didn’t have a cell phone until October of 1999. I was fine without one and radical though it must seem to the always on device loving networker of today, I would be fine without one now. No one talks on the phone anyway, it’s mostly just a way to send and receive Tweets, which is a fun thing to do, but again, it’s totally unnecessary. As is Facebook and a host of other popular services.
