August 26th, 2008
Rotten Apple? | Is Apple Ready For That Many Users?
by: Stuart

I personally think that Apple is not ready and has not been prepared for mass success. Even the kill-switch and 3G connection problems will piss off the most zealot Apple fan boys and girls:

From the Slate (full story here):

The half-price fib has been obvious for some time: When you add the price of AT&T’s required two-year contract, the new phone costs slightly more than the old phone. In a lawsuit filed last week, an iPhone owner named Jessica Alena Smith argues that Apple hasn’t been honest about the phone’s speed, either. Smith, echoing thousands of complaints logged on Apple’s Web site, says that her iPhone rarely connects to AT&T’s fast 3G network, instead staying fixed to the pokey EDGE service that was the bane of the first iPhone. Smith’s iPhone doesn’t just fail on tasks like downloading e-mail and surfing the Web, she says. It also drops many of her voice calls.

Smith lives in Birmingham, Ala., but I’ve had the same problem with my iPhone 3G in cell-tower-rich San Francisco—more dropped calls than I’ve ever had on a cell phone (including on the original iPhone) and terribly spotty 3G service. Last month, I raved about the great third-party programs available on the iPhone’s fantastic built-in App Store. But I’ve since soured on that system, too. As many iPhone owners have noticed, the phone often mysteriously refuses to load these apps, rendering them useless. Smith is asking a judge to grant her lawsuit class-action status. I hope it’s approved. Apple has reluctantly acknowledged flaws in the iPhone and has , but there’s no sign that it’s taking the complaints very seriously. The lawsuit might be just the kick it needs to fix the world’s broken iPhones.

But the company’s troubles go beyond the iPhone. Last month, Apple launched MobileMe, a $100-per-year online service that aimed to sync documents and e-mail across computers and Internet devices. MobileMe failed spectacularly in its opening weeks, with some users reporting losing years of saved e-mail. In a widely circulated post, Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington claimed last week that Apple’s PCs aren’t doing so well either. Arrington, a longtime Apple fan, says he’s had four new Macs break in different ways—one refused to connect to Wi-Fi networks, one suffered a keyboard flaw, and two shut down mysteriously…

Do go read it all, it is an interesting POV.

Come on Samsung Instinct, it’s time for a “I’m a iPhone and I’m Instinct” commercial parody.

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