Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

Apple updates everything

04.10.2012 17:05

Lunch comic by Børge Lund, translated from Norwegian to English by me, no permissions whatsoever, as usual

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last week or so, Apple has released their new iPhone 5, alongside the big update iOS 6 for older iPhones and iPads. And from what I hear, although the new iPhone is quite a bit better hardware-wise compared to the older iPhones, the software has quite a few disappointments. The dedicated YouTube app is gone, and the builtin map app no longer uses Google Maps, but rather their own Apple Maps solution.

And boy, what a disappointment new the Apple Maps is. I haven’t tried it first hand myself, but given all the problems I’ve heard in the tech news lately, Apple has made one of their biggest mis-steps of recent times (not counting the lawsuits, that is). Even if only less than half of the problems reported in the news are true, it’s a huge mistake, brinking on a scandal (if it isn’t already). Google Maps has taken Google years to perfect, and Apple Maps seems more like something that was slapped together last minute, which is very unlike Apple to do. Also, this big change in the maps app was as surprising to Google as it was for the rest of us, considering the news has reported that Apple had over a year left on their license agreement for Google Maps.

These particular changes are the two main reasons I’ve postponed upgrading my iPad to iOS 6, and I won’t be doing that until Google has officially finished up and released native iPad apps for both YouTube and Google Maps. I’ll just have to deal without the other improvements until such a time comes.

I still won’t consider buying an iPhone 5, though. As I mentioned before, I recently got the Samsung Galaxy S3, and after living with it for a few months, I’m still happy about the upgrade. I’m not too thrilled with the attack ads I’ve seen from Samsung and Nokia related to the iPhone 5 release, though, but that’s more related to how they attack Apple and their customers.

If you managed to get ahold of the iPhone 5, or you’ve downloaded iOS 6 to your existing iDevice, what do you think of it?

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Don’t be evil?

01.02.2010 17:21

According to Wired, Steve Jobs recently lashed out against Google on their self-imposed mantra of “Don’t be evil” (along with critizism against other big companies). Yeah, like he’s one to talk.

If you look closer at the history of Apple’s products over the recent decade, Apple is a smidge more evil than Google. They don’t allow others to run their software, they’ve tried restricting their customers to a single platform (not just with music, but with their software and devices as well), they don’t allow for competing products on their platforms (and not just from small-time developers), they’ve tried silencing third party developers from discussing matters relating to Apple with others, they try to run the blame game on their customers (for product problems, they’ve been accused of stealing (not only user interface designs) and they even twist the truth in media just to generate over-hype about their coming products, just to name a few things.

This type of corporate culture is one of the reasons I don’t own any Apple products. Even though their computer products are slightly more enhanced for media production, these computers are just too restricted (software-wise) and high-priced for me to bother. As for the other portable devices (iPod, iPhone, and now, the iPad), the above-mentioned corporate culture and behavior is the main reason for not choosing Apple products on my part.

The iPod and iPhone may have been somewhat superior products when they were launched, but even back then, I could see several flaws and things missing with the iPhone in particular. Besides, when their competition launched their “similar” products under a year later to compete with the iPhone, these were already vastly superior to the iPod and iPhone in features, hardware, software and freedom. Still, Apple seems to have a “fanboy” following that can almost be compared to a semi-religious sect, with Steve Jobs as their almighty savior (something that has, thankfully, been pariodied on more than one occasion).

Yet, Steve Jobs dares to criticize Google for having evil traits, contrary to their own slogan. That may just be a case of the pot calling the kettle black – he should probably take a closer look at his own organization first.

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