I have to admit I have always been a bit of a cynic generally. Never one to follow trend and usually the one arguing against something for the sake of arguing. Part devils advocate, part fighting for the underdog. Apple used to annoy me as their product owners seemed to have an air of eliteness which got my goat.This all changed recently with the purchase of a Macbook Pro. I began to understand why the majority of the people I admired technically used OS-X as their development environment of choice and it had nothing to do with the 'coolness' perceived around what they used. It just works and I 'get it' now.
In the mobile world I loathed iPhone users and their evangelical preaching. I had an Android Google G1 and as a developer knew it is technically superior but voicing my theory was pointless as the iPhone's interface made any argument seem hollow.
I bit the bullet and purchased an iPhone 3GS, firstly to keep my hobbyist development cross platform, and secondly I am not convinced that Google's platform can deliver the user experience benchmark that Apple have hoisted so very highly. The techs around me are screaming Nexus One but I'm still not convinced. The updates to the Android platform were very incremental and not very visible and to some extent, updates to Google's own apps have made the experience go backwards.
Google Latitude on Android for instance still has a bug where if you add a contact with multiple email addresses, it tries to add them all as Latitude friends. Not really joined up thinking but not a big problem. The sadness comes with the realisation that you can't remove the extra friend sharing requests. Stuck there for life. Pointless and annoying. I dare say Apple would not tolerate such abandonment of fine detail as the foundation to everything they do is the perfect interface they produce.
Again, the iPhone just works, and it does it with the gloss and swank I have learned to expect using Snow Leopard. The app store is so much more complete and the quality of apps are understandably better given that iPhone developers have had longer to create their wares and the commercial lure has brought the large software houses to the table to dine.
There is one downside, iTunes sucks! It's horrible software which is surprising coming from Apple but hey they have to have a few failures, not everything can be a success.
I have been ribbed quite a lot for my defection to the 'Jesus Phone' and recently asked at work 'Are you joining the design department?' and 'I guess you will be buying and iPad?'
I can take the insults, smug in the knowledge that my choices may be really bloody expensive and maybe not the best out there, but they work really well and give me a feel good factor I've not experienced using anything else.
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