I’m a strange kind of guy. I’d often do a double take at a cute girl on her laptop in a library. She’d smile, I smile. I’d walk over and my first words would be “ssd or hdd?”. I’m sure you can see why she’d be disturbed but I’d pick Apple over apple bottom jeans any day. Sadly, I don’t use an iPhone. Nothing’s wrong with them. It’s just that at the first sign of trouble I like to get down into the bowels of the phone and fix it. Apple sadly doesn’t let me do that and so it’s a rooted android for me. However, I’ve always loved the design of the iPhones. If you are going to spend over a hundred grand on a phone it makes sense to get one that helps you set P
. Apple’s been a bit lazy in the innovation department and with the introduction of the 5S and the 5C, it’s become a bit hard to ignore the elephant in the room. Apple simply doesn’t care about its customers. Here’s why I think so:It’s more exploitative: Face it, the iPhone is a status symbol. Using an iPhone, you seem to have better taste, deeper pockets and more class than the average BB toting AFC. Keying into this fact, Apple released a plastic iPhone (the 5C) for close to the price of the iPhone 5 and put the new 5S at a higher price point while ceasing production of the iPhone 5. This means the “elite” phone shoppers will have to fork out more cash for 5S or risk being lumped with the uncool shiny plastic toting wannabe iPhone buyers. Ceasing production of the iPhone 5 slashes its resale value, so your iPhone 5 wont fetch as much as it should in the secondhand market. It’s currently 79k and will probably drop lower by the September 20th release date.
It scratches: Apple has a multi-million dollar research facility. Most of this is housed in a futuristic spaceship-like building called the Apple Campus. On the grounds you’ll find hundreds of hackers, designers, Ux geeks and other tech industry wizards. I’ve never seen such a vivid example of too many cooks ruining the broth. It’s a basic fact. Aluminium scratches. One would think so many smart people would know this. You know what scratches more than aluminium? Anodized aluminium. In a phone so loved for its looks, one would think this would be a major concern. The iPhone 5S comes in colours like Space Grey, Gold and White. I’d go for the white though. It won’t look too bad when only bits of the paint are left.
The fingerprint reader: Nigeria as a country, has acquired a reputation as a nation of silver tongued scoundrels. G boys, Yahoo boys, whatever you call them, have done their best to put Nigeria on the map for fraud. I’m not going to go into the morality of it but these same boys are the Apple’s largest customer base in the country. In between the American government’s snooping and Apple’s improved bio-metric security, it’s easy to see that Apple is putting this important demographic at risk. The more yahoo boys caught by law enforcement, the lesser the number of Apple products sold. I’m just saying.
It’s bling: Two chains, Lil wayne, Gucci Mane. While Lil wayne may have been an actual rapper, the other two are just terrible. There is one thing they all have in common, a lack of class. One of the colours the 5S is available in will be gold. It’s hard to be smugly superior when you are holding the phone equivalent of stripper tattoo. Bling just isn’t classy.
There’s a better one due soon. We all hate S years. Apple re-releases an old phone in a different colour and some minor addition other companies have been offering for years (Samsung has offered NFC technology since the S3, while blackberry offered it in the Bold 5. It’s only just being included in the 5S.) iPhone users tighten their grip on their wallets and stick fingers their ears when Jony Ive’s dulcet tones are heard. The reason is this, the real iPhone is the next one. The iPhone 6 will be better and cooler than the 5S and probably close to the same price too. Like a wedding night with Rihanna, it’ll probably be worth the wait.
Apple’s reign in the smartphone market is fast fading. The first quarter of 2013 showed 80% of smart phone sales going to android phones. With Google’s acquisition of Motorola and the introduction of the flagship Moto X and Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia, Apple faces a lot of competition. They have been ahead by consistently producing the best looking phones but the new cadre of phones like the LG G2, the Moto X, the Sony Xperia Z1, the Samsung Galaxy S4, and even techo’s Phantom A+ are pretty good looking and toting hardware the iPhones aren’t. Maybe the 5C will allow Apple access to the mid-range market, but since it’ll be probably starting at around 80 – 100k, maybe not. My advice? Get an android and learn to use it. It’ll be the best buy you make this year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment