Welcome to the world of the Apple "smartphone". If you are even a moderately sophisticated user of smartphones, you might want to stay well clear of this phone, and forget about the hype--as well as the reverent lemmings that kneel at the feet of their god, Mr. Jobs. I have had the displeasure of using an iphone 3GS as my principle phone for the last eight months. Whilst it does do some things admirably well, such as music  (ipod function) and general OS interface use, there are such substantial drawbacks to using an iphone that this is likely to be my first and last foray into Apple products, period. The recent feats of poor engineering (antenna / signal strength / "death grip" problems) and premature release of the iphone 4 (not to mention the company's utterly lame way of dealing with the problem by trying to drag other manufacturers into their issue) help to cement this in my mind as THE premier phone, and company, to stay away from.

Similar to Apple's spawn upon the desktop, the iphone is overpriced: it is underspecified in hardware terms compared to what you can get elsewhere; and to do the same thing with software inevitably costs you more too. Where the iphone and ipad are different to their desktop environment is in the huge amount of applications available: the outstanding marketing machine of Apple, and the subsequent victims of it, has meant a very attractive audience for 'app' developers. Consequently, the largest amount of apps are available for the Apple phone and pad. But, as analysed elsewhere, the difference between the Apple App store and the Android one starts to diminish significantly for users once you consider that there are now tens of thousands of apps available on the Android platform: and whereas around 70% of Apple App Store apps are paid applications, the inverse is true of the competition with around 70% of Android Apps being free. Coupled to this is the fact that a certain percentage of all developer's apps tend towards being useless garbage, and the gap between app markets should diminish significantly for most users.

The Apple app store is set up so that, more often than not, to find out that an app is garbage you have to pay for it first: there is not much in the way of trials unless the developer specifically releases a free "lite" version to try. I have certainly been stung more than once in my relatively short time in the app store world, whilst adopting a strategy of trying not to pay for too many apps. I have witnessed a friend sink countless dollars into the app store trying to find just the right music app and ending up without a satisfactory product. There needs to be some new way of addressing this problem as there is just too much of a skewed setup at the moment for discarding one's money without appropriate reason (quality of app) or ability to exercise common consumer precaution against being mislead.

Any advantage that one might concede in the availability of apps is more than offset by the detractions of using an iphone (or ipad).

Apple does it's best to maintain its customers in the small dark garden that they have created by waging a constant war against hackers and jailbreakers, who might dare to wish that they can use the phone that they purchased the way that they wish to use it, rather than the way that Apple wishes them to use it. Almost every significant increment of Apple iphone OS results in changes to not only the firmware but also the bootrom and baseband of the phone, to block previous releases of jailbreaks from the hacker community. The absurdity of this situation is highlighted by the recent release of Apple's OS4. In it, the lion's share of "innovations" such as multitasking and folders for icons, were released with fanfare, hype, and the acceptance of apple lemmings (apple 'fanboys', etc.) as if Apple was the first to ever think of the features. Never mind the fact that these features have been part of OS'es (such as, for example, Nokia's Symbian) since well before the first incarnation of the iphone; the iphone jailbreaking community had developed multitasking and folders (categories) for the jailbroken iphone for a great deal of time before OS4 was released. Apple mendaciously gave "reason" for not providing multitasking on the iphone, such as that the processor was not powerful enough to cope with the function: but this is simply not true, as proven quite a while ago on jailbroken devices, and more recently by Apple's own OS4 upgrade running, for example, on the 3GS iphone.

Incidentally, jailbreakers have recently been boosted by the US Government announcement that it is clearly legal for an iphone owner to jailbreak their device, and unlock it from any particular carrier lock. This undoubtedly comes as a blow to Apple which at one point asserted that jailbreaking their devices was an illegal act.

As for the lack of availability of folders on previous iphone OSes all the way through until the release of OS4, this is, in a word, laughable. For a company who prides and hypes itself on the number of applications available to the device, who then turns around and (1) does not provide folders/categories for the app icons and then (2) limits the amount of pages that hold app icons (the "springboard") to eleven screens, ihese actions are more than absurd and ironic. This is nothing short of an indicator of the utmost of contempt towards the customer on the part of Apple.

As stated in a previous article published here on the paternalism of Apple, this following is a further list of some of what an iphone user has to endure:

• An inability to change batteries. The iphone is sealed shut and everyday access to swap batteries, which is the norm on most other phones, is absent on the iphone. This probably saves apple a few cents per unit. But it costs the user significantly, and especially since the iphone is notoriously poor in battery life. So are some other phones on the market,--but one can deal with the problem in most of them by changing the battery when one runs out. Not so for the iphone, thanks to the "wisdom" of Apple.
  
  
• The poor reception of telecoms signals which has characterised previous iphones seems also to be an issue with the iphone 4, as mentioned above. Smartphones, no matter how versatile they are, should function well firstly and foremost as phones.
  
  It should be noted that the founder of facebook recently made some tweets/posts that went through the world's media, agreeing with exactly these points. Mark Zuckerberg was reported as stating that since he had recently purchased an iphone, he had to purchase not only four chargers to have around different zones, but also that he had to connect a landline so that he could actually make telephone calls. Soon thereafter he had on a Facebook post that "Mark installed the Facebook for Android application on his phone".
  
  
• Like Henry Ford and the Black Model T, the Apple way of dealing with user customisation of interface seems to be to simply allow everyone the choice of the one interface. Whilst it was a groundbreakingly user friendly and ergonomic interface when it was first released, many other phone OSes have now surpassed the iphone OS. Customisability of the iphone is non-existent compared to, for example, its' chief competitor Android. Users have had to wait for OS4 just for wallpaper customisations in the springboard/app screens. Forget about widgets.
  
  
  
• Iphone users inevitably have to contend with the horrendous itunes interface. Given that the Apple OS is so heavily protected from the non-jailbroken user, the iphone memory space is a fortress, guarding against any innovations for which the company has not given its paternalistic stamp of approval. There is difficulty or inability in moving files to and from the memory of the device, or controlling files on the device. As a patent example, one has to go no further than the program that controls photos. You cannot create folders for photos in here. You can only delete photos on the "camera roll" which is that most current part of the photos on the iphone, just taken or saved. Operations on multiple photos are either difficult or impossible to accomplish in one swoop, and clunky, time consuming and frustrating one by one keypad operations are often necessary. And forget about any manipulation of other photo directories that you have imported from PC to iphone via itunes. You have to get limited functionality for simple tasks like this from a third party app, and to  date there is still no app available that can effectively allow multiple photo file import into its directories (you have to have another app to create directories for photos on the iphone, and then you must COPY (i.e., duplicate, consume more disc space) them over by selecting one-by-one, just to get them into the 3rd party app.  Then head back to the iphone's native photo app and delete all of your original photos from the camera roll if you wanted a "move" operation in the first place.
  
  An inability or severe limitations to saving attachments is another 'fun' part of the iphone experience, and part of this restrictive fortress around the hallowed memory grounds of the iphone. Forget about using a utility for exploring your memory.
  
  
  Further, there is an inability to sync one phone with multiple computers on itunes. If you want to you try to have one iphone and two computers with different data on each and some common files in the middle on the phone, you are out of luck. You will face prompts such as "all current data on the iphone will be deleted", when attaching to either ip's itunes. This is just horrible. This is why I have stated earlier that there is an unhealthy dependency on the desktop interface itunes... as an owner of the phone it is out of your control.
  
  
• Also out of your control is the way that applications talk to your telco. service provider. Thanks to the legacy of some strange arrangements that some have accused Apple of having with AT&T in America, where the device has been exclusive to that particular carrier, there is a program limit to downloads over 3G so they cannot be over 10 megabytes. Whilst this might be handy for an antique network in a foreign place that Apple is protecting from overload, it is hardly relevant to the foreign user that has a few gigabytes under their belt on a data plan; nonetheless, you will be forced to your own wi-fi link if you dare to exceed the 10 Mb limit for, say, downloading a large application. The same has been true in the past if you wanted to download, say, a podcast or large multimedia item of any sort. Technical HSDPA limitations coincide with this to constrain the speed of your data link as well, often to well under the claimed iphone performance spec of 7.2 MBps.
  
  
• The app store is supposed to be the mecca of the iphone user. But it also is clumsy, and a recent incident with a Thai developer hacking their way onto the lion's share of the top 50 spots for ebooks indicated that it is security compromised. Yet you have to give them your credit card number for an itunes account, even if you are only intent on downloading free apps. Clumsy "integration" of downloading and browsing apps is evident in that, for example, operation of app store back page function after downloading an application loses your place in the category that you were browsing.
  
  
• As mentioned above, there was no multitasking prior to OS4 except for the use of ipod. There was no hardware reason to do this, especially for 3GS users. However, it was another no-no for the big brothers at Apple.
  
  
  
• Until the latest release of iphone 4, iphone hardware has been rapidly spiralling down the path of the obsolete, offering only only a 3 megapixel camera with questionable gamma control; no flash on the camera and poor to zero ability of camera to capture moving objects, with no ISO or other such "esoteric" controls; A relatively low res screen hurts the eyes for prolonged use at 320 x 480. Compare, the N97, N900, Motorola droid/milestone, nexus one, and many Samsung and HTC devices that are two or more times that resolution. Put a pretty and catchy tag on your '4' update with "retina display" and the apple lemmings will jump the cliff for you, nonetheless.
  
  
• One would think it unthinkable in these days of adobe flash all over the web, but there is no browser support for flash: a situation that continues in OS4 for all iphone and ipads.Of course, fight the war against Apple and jailbreak your device and you will have flash. (Or get Android Froyo 2.2 which has flash 10.2 support standard.)
  
  
• Whilst the music software has always been a strong point of the iphone, there are still shortcomings, such as an indirect access of equaliser, remote from ipod function (instead buried in phone settings). The equaliser use puts increased strain on already poor battery life.
  
  

So I ask again, what is all the fuss about with the iphone, anyway? And whilst it is obviously a smartphone by function, it is still not a real smartphone by definition, due to the "closed garden" policy of apple towards developers, which is yet another policy of Apple to keep this device from being all that it could be, and another part of the ongoing nightmare for unwitting users who might want some right to control the device they have purchased. If you can handle a massive corporation looking down its nose at its own customers with such paternalism and contempt, be my guest: but one taste is more than enough: I am not going to be part of the "over-the-cliff queue" anymore...

 Update: 1 August-- The marketers at US Telcos Verizon marketing the Android phone droid have seemed to agree with what I have said, in their most recent kick at the trunk of the tree--with these poignant statements:

"This is a world of “nope, “nuh-uh’”,” and “sorry, Charlie”.

A world of smiling denial. Petty tyrannies that have made their way into our cell phones. Into the very way we choose to speak to another human being. There are dozens of doesn’ts. Doesn’t allow customization. Doesn’t run multiple apps. Doesn’t allow you to swap out batteries. doesn’t allow open development. These arrogant little devices are barely worth more than the pocket lint they rest upon. Because now there’s a phone so smart, so strong. So subservient to its user, it refuses to include “doesn’t” in its dictionary app."

In a world of doesn’t. Droid Does.

 Touche, Apple.