Apples and Pearshaped

Those who know me closely will also probably be aware of my sheer, unadulterated hatred for Apple and the cretins who mope around after every product release convinced that this one is going to change the way they live their miserable lives. They should release their own version of the Cockmaster VL2 so their legions of mindless drones can finally do what they’ve always wanted to do and literally shag the sleek, metal curves of Apple’s most recent piece of half-broken next-month’s-car-boot-sale bullshit. I’m sure they would do that if they weren’t so anti-porn; Steve Jobs is clearly asexual. Can you get your end into a FireWire port? You can bet more than one person has tried.

The suggestion that Apple never, ever release a piece of hardware that actually works properly is only a scientific research study away from being hard fact. We all know it’s true, but Apple have done an almost unholy job of rendering a few million people worldwide completely blind to it. There’s no doubt that it’s absolute marketing genius, the actual indoctrination of a huge number of people to the point that they will fight tooth-and-nail with someone like me on the merits of Apple products regardless of how limp their arguments actually are. I intend to tackle some of these flimsy arguments head on in the forthcoming bile-laden paragraphs. Just call me Osama Bile-Laden.

How many people were queueing around the block for the iPhone 4 in the UK alone? Literally thousands. Hundreds in Glasgow, hundreds in Edinburgh, thousands in London. The first bloke in the UK to get a new iPhone 4 was some loser from Stoke-on-Trent who queued for “only” 16 hours, according to the Herald Scotland website. And if you want depressing, this sentence takes some beating:

‘At the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, more than 600 people queued to get a device that some were calling the “Jesus Phone”’

Jesus is right. Jesus H. Christ, are you serious? Without meaning to destroy these people’s tiny minds, you are queueing up for a mobile phone for crying out loud. It’s not the Ark of the Covenant, even if it is the best mobile phone ever to be released.

Or is it? Mere hours later, what’s this? Apple have put the antenna in the bottom left-hand side of the phone, meaning that if you do something like, oh, I don’t know… hold it up to your ear, your hand blocks the signal, you lose all the bars and your £650 iPhone 4 becomes…… the most expensive piece of plastic you’ve ever bought?

Yes. That’s exactly what it is. So Apple have, once again, proven that they are 100% interested in form over function. Style over substance. And you know the most frustrating thing about that? That’s why these cretins buy them time after time after time. That’s the reason. Not because Macs are better, and they crash less. That is the biggest lie Apple have ever perpetrated. I’ve used Macs against my will throughout my life in work and educational environments and I can safely say that Macs crash easily as often as PCs. There’s simply no debate about it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. You might very well have a Mac that’s never crashed, but you know the last time my PC crashed? That’s right. Never. I’ve had my current PC for about three years now, and it has never suffered a fatal crash. Software crashes sometimes because I overload the processor, but that’s my fault. And you know what? That happens to Macs as well. And their processors aren’t usually half as powerful so what do you fucking expect.

I happen to own an iPhone 3G, which may seem strange considering my attitude. I decided it was time to get a smartphone seeing as my traditional, boring old “actual buttons” phone was looking a bit tired. I looked around at the options. HTC was a strong contender for a long time, but I started to hear things about them not working properly. The iPhone became an option, and as a direct upgrade as well – not tied in to one of these super-expensive contracts. I was offered my existing riotously-cheap deal but with a free iPhone 3G. I wanted to believe. I put my concerns and my instincts to one side.

Deal, I said, send me it over so I can start getting hold of some of these apps I keep hearing about. I’ve had it for about four months now, and you know what? It sucks. It doesn’t just suck a little bit, it sucks often and constantly. More often than not, when I try to unlock it, it hangs for a good 30 seconds before it kicks back into life. When I go down some stairs, all signal is lost. That could be my network so I’ll let that one go; but when I come back into an area that I know has good reception, my iPhone simply refuses to find the signal. It just sits there saying “No Service” despite me being in the centre of Edinburgh. Really no service? Or just no idea?

All too familiar for iPhone users?

Another thing it enjoys doing is taking about five minutes to reboot. Occasionally, seeing as my iPhone is almost permanently switched on, I decide to reboot it to give it a chance to take a breather. I’m a computer guy, I understand that rebooting is occasionally necessary to keep your hardware and software ticking over, and it’s good to reboot and reinstall things here and there in order to keep things running properly. Having said all that, I did a test last night: my PC restarts, boots back to Windows and I can be looking at my Facebook page faster than my iPhone 3G restarts. Seriously. It’s a motherfucking mobile phone. How long does it need to take? I’m not exaggerating here either – I wish I was. And don’t get me started on their computers.

The thing about Macs is that, for £1200, you can get the latest Apple MacBook Air. It’s underpowered, overpriced and extremely light on utilities compared to the equivalent PC. There’s absolutely no debate about it. You can buy the Mac mini from the Apple UK website for £649 – and that’s the starter price for what appears to be their cheapest hardware offering. Let’s have a little look at what you get for your hard-earned £649.

Apple Mac mini (basic)

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.4GHz
320GB HDD
2GB RAM expandable to 8GB
8X DVD/RW Optical Drive
Various ports and things that you’d expect

Now this is just a base unit. It has no monitor, no keyboard or any other peripherals. That’s fine, I don’t need those. Let’s look at equivalent PC base units for the same price, shall we? Apple fanboys, look away now.

HP Pavilion P6319UK – £648.20 on Dabs.com.

Intel QUAD Core i5 650 / 3.2GHz
640GB HDD
6GB RAM expandable to 16GB
Lightscribe DVD/RW Optical Drive

Well well well, would you look at that? By my reckoning, that’s… why, that’s almost EXACTLY TWICE AS POWERFUL IN EVERY WAY! And I’d like to add that I didn’t look these up before I started writing this blog. The first time I looked was at the end of the last paragraph, after I’d written “look away now”. You know how I could be so confident that I’d be right? Because everyone with a brain knows that Apple are ripping you off. You’re wasting your time and money buying products that are already obsolete by the time they are released. The Mac mini, at that spec, was “new” tech about five years ago. That’s not fucking new! It’s old news! So that brings me both on, and back, to the question: why the hell does anyone buy Apple products?!

Let’s look again at the marketing blurb Apple puts in front of its Mac mini.

“Introducing the new Mac mini. Redesigned in a very big way.”
“Way more than meets the eye. The sleek aluminium enclosure hides a powerful, full-size computer.”

Look at all of that. When does it first mention the actual computer, you know, the bit you’re really paying for? The very last word. The first two sentences are purely design-focused. They’re all about telling you how pretty their stuff is, and it baffles me how so many people buy it. It’s unbelievable. I realise that having nice, sleek, pretty products is awesome. If I could get a PC that was as pretty as a Mac, I would. Believe me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the design. But the design IS NOT WHY YOU BUY A COMPUTER. It’s not a fucking vase or a painting. It’s a computer. It computes. That is what it is built to do.

Not with Apple though, you’re buying a brand and a lifestyle; oh the irony of that. My good friend Robert L. Barbour Esq. has put together an excellent Venn diagram to illustrate Apple’s positioning in the market.

So Apple’s “form over function” approach strikes again with the iPhone 4. I really hope one of the idiots who queued through the night to hand over £650 only to receive a piece of new technology that looks pretty but doesn’t make calls if you pick the sodding thing up is reading this blog. And I hope it makes you think about your life, because believe me – you’re wasting it.