Why Apple Sucks…

Just yesterday, plaintiff Jai Sen filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit cites well-known consumer issues related to the iPhone 3G including AT&T network reliability issues and hairline cracks in the plastic case, both of which have been blog fodder since the iPhone 3G was launched. The lawsuit also notes the power draw of the iPhone 3G is more than AT&T’s 3G network can handle. Additionally, the plaintiff is hoping that the filing will reach class-action status.

This one will be interesting to watch. There have been so many complaints, starting from the initial release of the iPhone 3G, and those complaints are alive and well, despite multiple firmware updates.

That said, this one will be a hard one to prove. The burden is on Jai Sen to prove that Apple and/or AT&T deliberately misled customers. Hopefully the media coverage of the complaints in this lawsuit will at the very least force Apple to address the issues through new customer service policies.

Its also worth noting that the lawsuit also says that the plaintiff “has suffered injury in fact due to Apple’s defective housing used for the iphones resulting in the formation of hairline cracks in the Plantiff’s iPhone.”

What the plaintiff could have been doing with the iPhone to cause injury is a bit curious, and we prefer not to speculate; however, this hurts the validity of the whole complaint, so unless some legal magic happens, this lawsuit might not get very far.

In 1984, Apple released the following compelling advertisement - implying how open and free their platform was going to be:

Since then we have seen many versions of the mac platform and mac ideals, that for all intense purposes, have lived up to the moniker of freeing people from their platforms. OS X was the biggest step Apple Computer ever took toward that goal. OSX not only embraced the idea of open source - it was built using many open source standards, and offered direct support of almost any open source software that one could imagine. The concept of this was embraced by developers everywhere. The concept that the mac plaform could now accept many types of standard apps and open source apps opened up worlds of possibilities for developers and users alike…. that is until - the iphone. Apple is reverting back into greedy, big brother-like corporate monstrosity with its iphone platform. We think the type of limitations that Apple is placing on its platform is not only discouraging - but Microsoft would even think better of it. Apple has gone too far, and now we have the results to prove it:

Apple has recently started rejecting perfectly valid software from its Itunes app store simply because it is in conflict with other software that they support. Now we don’t mean a technical conflict - more along the lines of a fiscal conflict. Apple doesn’t want anyone competing with them and thats the story.

A prominent case of this practice was noted by a developer who created an application called Podcaster. Podcaster offers simplicity in subscribing, managing, streaming and downloading podcasts directly to your iPhone and iPod Touch. Podcaster was rejected for very strange reasons in our opinion, Apple told the developer, “Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”

Developers all over the web began to post their maddening rejection letters until most recently Apple began slapping a big fat NDA on the cover of all rejections.

This, in our humble opinions(IMHO), is completely unacceptable. Imagine if they did this on their own macintosh computers? Imagine if they told Microsoft, sorry we are rejecting “Word”, because we have “AppleWorks”?

Come on Steve! Take the lead pipe out of your ass - and loosen up. If Google can develop a completely open software platform - then so can APPLE! Forget this whole iphone Nazi thing and make something that everyone can embrace. Otherwise - we predict, that the iphone will have its day, but will have to make way for the next great thing that comes. The iphone can’t truly be great - without the assistance of its user community. In other words… “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you Steve”.

I don’t think I need to explain much more, this video does a pretty good job at showing our frustrations with the iphone sales process… or there lack of.

Okay, to be fair, this one’s not totally to blame on Apple — AT&T can take part ownership of this suckage: The iPhone can’t be tethered to act as a high-speed modem for my laptop, and that would be more than half my reason to buy an iPhone in the first place. If I were to be one of those people who has a laptop simply to check email and browse the web, that’s one thing; I could use the iPhone just for that, and leave the laptop at home.

But that’s not me.

For the high cost of ownership (consider the cost of the voice and data plans, plus the phone itself), it’s amazing to me that Apple has the nerve to market the iPhone as a complete business solution without the tethering capability. Even my cheapo cell phone from Verizon lets me do it! For companies that supposedly are all about “the future,” Apple and AT&T both missed the boat on this one.

Could I hack the phone? Sure. But I shouldn’t need to. And heaven forbid I try to modify the phone … that would break my user agreement, so, if when one day something goes wrong with the phone, the folks at AT&T can refuse to help me out? (Actually, I can get into AT&T’s customer service record here, but that’s another topic for another post, perhaps.)

The current iteration of the iPhone is like a laptop that can’t be hooked up to an external hard drive: totally hobbled by its lack of a major feature.

I don’t get it!

Hello? Steve Jobs? Folks at AT&T? Are you listening?