Fear and Loathing of the iPhone OS4 update.
I am a dedicated Mac person. I think the combination of a safe and reliable operating system, combined with the liquid smooth interface makes a operating system that I can use and enjoy. Whereas my Windows 7 machine running on equivalent hardware is jumpy, jittery and lacks the pixel precision that the Mac OS X operating system exhibits. But this isn't the blog entry equivalent of a pissing contest.
Two years ago, when I replaced my Blackberry Curve 8310 with an Apple iPhone 3G, I thought I had possibly found Mobile Mac Nirvana. Alas, this is not at all the case. Instead I am now locked into cell phone hell. At this point my iPhone 3G is a paperweight/mp3 player/camera, and it’s not very good at any of those things.
To date, every OS update for my iPhone has resulted in frustration and annoyances that lead me to believe I would be better off hacking the phone and unlocking it, so I could then do whatever I want with it. As an AT&T prisoner… excuse me, I meant customer, I have attempted to be a good little user and abide by all the rules and regulations.
Unfortunately, this last iPhone OS update eliminated all of my applications, except for one application that I don’t use that often. Facebook, gone. eBay, gone. And the most insulting removal, my Zimbra mail client, is now gone and no longer available through the App Store.
That does it for me. I’m not going through the effort to reinstall those apps. I’m not going to stick my music back on there, and there is no way for me to get my Zimbra App back.
To add insult to injury, my iPhone has horrible signal quality and because I live in the boondocks, there is no 3G available. But, wait… Allow me to ratchet the frustration level up a few notches. I can nearly throw a rock and hit a local AT&T wireless store, where I get about 3 bars of edge signal. Unfortunately at my home I have to stand outside, and wave my arms about like a lunatic, in order to get a signal at all. I can see the damn cell tower, but I don’t get a signal if I’m inside my house.
I’m done. I’m over it. I’m going to call them in the morning and switch back to my Blackberry. I would give the iPhone to my wife, to use as an iPod and Camera, but it won’t work without a damn sim card in it.
Oh, but it doesn’t end there. When I bought my iPhone, I bought it with an unlimited data plan. If I switch my plan back to the Blackberry, I won’t be able to get an unlimited data plan any longer. No, you bastards, you have me. I’m stuck with this miserable piece of crap, that I’m not allowed to tether to my MacBook, which wouldn’t do any good anyway since I only have the lousy stinking edge network here in Corbin.
Maybe I should just stick the sim from the iPhone in my Blackberry and use it when I want a phone that works, and put it in the iPhone when I want a gadget. But I’m sure they’ll find a way to screw me on that too. I’m too poor to run out and buy an HTC or Google phone, on a different network, which has 3G here, so indeed AT&T you have me by the short hairs.