I used to be an absolute fan of Apple products. The important words in this sentence are 'used to'. But lately Apple products just seems to loose their appeal. They just don't make me that excited as when I got my first Apple device. It was a used iPod. For me that was the coolest thing ever. In 2005 I got my first iMac and was absolutely in love with that thing. It looked amazing and it's performance was absolutely outstanding. It let me work the way I wanted to work on a computer without having to follow the strict guidelines that some programmer thought I should follow. The working surface and the interface was clean and intuitive. The applications ran fast, without any bugs and were just fun to work with. A system crash was a very rare occasion. Very rarely you had to deal with system updates. That iMac made me the creative guy that I'm today. It let me do what I wanted to do: Create content without having to worry about what the thing was doing in the background. I enjoyed every minute of it. That way I got into creating websites, telling photo-stories and finally editing amateur video of semi-professional quality. Whatever I threw at the iMac and OS Tiger they could handle it all. I never ever had any regrets of having paid 2 Grand for my iMac.
So far that almost sounds like a love letter to Apple. Then came that faithful day in 2007 when all started to change. It was the release of OSX Leopard. At first everything seemed to be cool and awesome. That was my first impression as well. But something in the coding of the OS was definitely wrong. It started with minor system hiccups. I really didn't worry too much about that. The system hiccups continued and Apple started to release system update after system update. Well it didn't really improve the performance. Looking at it in retrospect the iMac running OS Leopard was getting more and more like a computer running Windows: in the beginning a computer running windows is fast and has no issues. But depending on the length of time and intensity you use the computer the OS accumulates lots of 'dead program trash' and that makes the computer sluggish and starts driving you out of your mind.
As long as my iMac was running Tiger I never experienced that. But Leopard was definitely leaning into that direction. I had hoped that OS Snowleopard would address that issue...but it doesn't. I use my computer quite extensively and I throw at it lots of things...and of course I expect from the machine to deal with the requests in a timely fashion and not to drive my out of my mind. So I finally decided to wipe the iMac clean and start from scratch. Well the in the beginning it worked quite nicely with a clean installation of OS Leopard. But very soon the thing became quite sluggish again...and that can drive me crazy. Just for the fun of it I wiped OS Leopard and installed my old OS Tiger and the iMac was again in perfect working condition without ever experiencing the issues I had with Leopard. The easiest thing would have been to runTiger, but my editing software and Tiger are not exactly what you would call BFF's. My editing software runs on Tiger but gets kinda sluggish at times and that's terrible when you're edition video. So back to Leopard I went...and I really wasn't a happy camper.
I talked to friends of mine who were running OS Lion, the predecessor of Leopard. Turns out that the issues of Leopard still exist in Lion. That exactly was the point when I started to change the way I see Apple products. Macs are way more expensive than PC's running windows. I always justified that with the fact, that with a Mac I don't have the aggravation that I have with PC's. Looking at the last few OS releases, that's no longer true. The last 2 OSX cause me almost the same aggrevation, that I get from a PC running Windows, while costing me a lot more money.
When I got my iPad I used to love that thing and I have to say it's a great piece of hardware. It really let's me do a lot of things that came especially in handy during the relocation while my iMac was traveling across the Atlantic in a container-ship. With that being said, there are quite some things that really drive me nuts when it comes to the iPad. That the iPad doesn't support Flash is absolutely laughable! The user really don't gives a rats ass if a few boys in Cupertino are sitting in their 'we hate Flash' Ivory-Tower and have entirely lost any connection with the real world. If I would have to buy a new iPad somewhere down the line and it doesn't support Flash...well then I won't be buying it! The other issues are pretty much minor ones. Like that I can't create albums in my own Photo-App or that I can't mount the iPad as storage device when connected to my computer is entirely ridiculous. After all it's my device and I should be able to do with it whatever I choose to.
I certainly not going to get rid of all my Apple products. They have just become part of my daily life. I'm definitely keeping my iMac as well and just do those things on it where the iMac does a really superb job. As long as Apple doesn't get back to coding and testing their software the way they used to, I really don't see myself buying any Apple Software any time soon. When it comes to hardware the decision is even easier. I just can't justify to spend about 1100 bucks every 2 or 3 years on a new MacBook. That's just too much money. If a buy a laptop of comparable quality it costs me 1/2 of it and I know that it will be so messed up in 3 years at the latest, that I have to toss it out. But that would be happening regardless.
If Apple should return to building outstanding and superb hardware and software again, then I will change my position again. Since I don't see any signs of that happening...well it looks like as if that journey is going to come to an end!
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