Confession of an Apple hater

I have to admit, I was an Apple hater before. This was not without valid reasons though. Apple sometimes can be annoying with their attitude (e.g. how Steve Jobs react to the antennagate by comparing it with Blackberry, Nokia, etc[1]), their not-so consistent app review process[2], how FaceTime was such a “revolutionary” groundbreaking technology that made your dreams come true[3] (Skype anyone? It’s been there since 2003, my dreams had come true since then lol). Not to add the Apple fanboy/girl attitude who simply worship Apple product as if Apple products are the most perfect products in the world (to be fair, Linux/Unix fanboy/girl can be just as annoying (if you combine it with X-hater attitude it is much worse (X can be anything: e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Linux, you name it)).

I previously owned Samsung Galaxy S because I thought that Android can finally compete with iOS, and I was very impressed with Swype and you can do so much with Android phones (root it, and you can do anything you want). Boy, I was wrong. Samsung Galaxy S supposedly to be an iPhone killer, yet the performance is really embarrassing. I did everything that I could (root it, install different kernel, install custom lean rom, use different file system (reiserFS, ext2, ext3), odex and deodex the framework, etc) yet the performance is still so slow (yes, Samsung Galaxy S 2 has better performance, but that’s not the point). When I say performance I was referring to

  • slow overall user interface response
  • gps lockdown (this is rubbish, most of the time I could not even lock my gps - compare this to iPhone which can lock within seconds)
  • camera (taking photo in iPhone is almost instant, taking photo on my Galaxy S was not… There is always this delay)

What’s even worse is that Samsung decided not to give an ICS upgrade to Galaxy S (apparently they decide to release a ‘value-pack’ which is Gingerbread with extra ICS feature, not 100% ICS[4]). Well if you think about it, Android fragmentation is a huge mess. Just look at Samsung for example, how many Android models have they come up with? Fascinate, Galaxy S i9000, Galaxy S i9001, Galaxy Ace, Captivate, Vibrant, Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note (I simply have no words to describe for this product), etc. How on earth Samsung can provide support for all these phones? Not to mention HTC, Ericsson, etc. In contrast to Apple, even iPhone 3GS is still upgradable to iOS 5..

Apple approach is not perfect, it is control freak and their attitude can be annoying as hell. But it works. As a customer, I am satisfied, so does my fiance. There is no bloatware (when I got my Galaxy S, I had all these random useless apps comes pre-installed) pre-installed, and I’ll say it again: it works.

I heard a lot of good things about Windows Phone, but I wouldn’t take the risk (my fiance had a nightmare when she bought Samsung Omnia - to be fair it was Windows Mobile 6 which is a total crap compared to Windows Phone 7). Unless every mobile manufacturer can limit the amount of models they release every year, in my opinion there’s no way they can compete with Apple.

TL;DR - I was an Apple hater, now I own iPhone 4S and am happy with it. However I still won’t buy a Mac, I simply hate how their keyboard shortcut works, and iTunes had given me a false sense of security that my music collection was tagged properly.