It was with great excitement that me and a colleague watched Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 key-note speech.
Multi-tasking in particular is a feature that adds a great deal of extra functionality to the phone. The key-note was fantastic, and 45 minutes in, we were left chuffed to bits that we’d bought the right phone, and that it would remain the greatest phone in the world thanks to great updates like this. Oh how wrong we were…
At around the 50 minute mark, good old Steve-o announced that the updates would only be compatible with the iPhone 3GS and later.
I have (and this has been verified by a third party), the most immaculate iPhone 3G anyone has ever seen. It is 1 year old, and half way through a 2 year contract, this being the cheapest way to get one at the time. Now it’s being made effectively obsolete. No more updates will be available for it, and pretty soon, apps will start being available for iPhone OS4 only. However, reports soon started circling of Jailbreak users successfully using OS4 on a 3G.
This isn’t the first time Apple has done this to me, in fact it isn’t the first time in the last month!
Last month, after reading on the Apple site that bootcamp 3.1 was to support 64bit Windows 7, I immediately purchased it. It installed perfectly, but upon trying to install bootcamp from the Snow Leopard DVD, I was told that 64bit Windows wasn’t supported on this iMac. Outraged, I searched the net and found a very easy work-around which bypasses the check and installed the bootcamp 64bit software without a hitch. Then updated it perfectly fine from Apple software update.
Earlier on in my mac life, I wrote about Time Machine backup not allowing you to use any old network drive, but instead requiring Apple’s own network drive. Again, a simple hack, and there’s no reason you can’t aside from Apple saying you can’t!
So, how am I supposed to react to these acts of bullying from Apple? ” Oh, ok Steve, of course I’ll go out and spend hundreds of pounds on your latest product”. No, I’m sorry, I won’t. In fact, I will never buy another Apple product again.
Say what you like about Bill Gates and Microsoft, but Apple are scamming even their own faithful customers. Is it any wonder they are a minority?