I, for one, will not be field testing Apple products at full retail prices, including the iPhone 5, IOS 6 and it’s poor attempt at mapping.
I have been on board with Apple products for a very long time. My first certifications in Apple was for Sales back in 1990.
The BlackBerry Storm was supposed to be a winner in October 2009. I spent over 15 hours trying to get that phone to do something. Anything. It would play back movies and sound, but the software was so poorly written, that it would not handle even Bluetooth headpieces and did not even have a working program module to handle the built in microphone. Verizon sent me a replacement Windows Mobile phone that was OK, but it was a real pain to do anything with.
After the BlackBerry Storm fiasco and then the series of Windows Mobile phones that died every four months, I bought a 3gs in October of 2009.
I loved it. I ran out of space in two days, paid a huge restocking fee and upgraded to the 32GB version.
Nine months later the phone stopped working. I went back to the Apple store and started getting their “refurbs”, though they won’t call them that. They call them rebuilt or some other euphemism.
Eleven refurbed phones later, Apple admitted that they were having problems with the 3gs rebuilds and finally sent a new iPhone 4.
When the 4s came out, I was pretty excited. Voice recognition was promised in Siri and I was ecstatic.
Looking back, the first cell phone I had was an Ericcson with a flip cover that just went over the keypad. Then along came my Palm Pilot Pro in 1998. At some point I knew that the technologies would eventually merge and we might get closer to a “Star Trek” like experience as chips became more powerful, voice recognition got better and software to power these devices got more developed.
The battery life in my iPhone 4s was frighteningly bad and I had just spent $565 for the 64GB phone, the AppleCare plan and tax on the full value of the phone (thanks California!).
The first day I used the phone as I had used the 4. Unplugged it and started my day at 5AM. Within an hour, the battery was down over 10% without any usage. By noon, it needed a charger. By three it needed full resuscitation.
Deeply confused about how a billion dollar company could not have upped the battery specs for a whiz-bang phone like the 4s, I started doing research on the issue after being at a client the next day and having the phone literally die before 5PM.
Many customers who bought the phone were having the same issue. I called Apple and got a run-around. Really. They stated on the phone that there were no reported issues. I begged to differ and offered them a link to their own website with forums (https://discussions.apple.com/message/19638573?ac_cid=tw123456#19638573 – over 1.6 million views) blasting the battery life and other issues. Advice from Apple and from the forums suggested turning almost everything off including cell service. Wow, I spent $565 on smart phone to make it as dumb as a brick? And as a sole proprietor, how can I make money with my business phone turned off?
I needed a phone ready for prime-time, one that would last all day or at least till 7PM!
Siri was OK, but many times it complained that it could not complete my request. Other things were pretty cool like the ability to add reminders and other things. But for the most part, it was only good for being able to reply by voice to a text message. I used that alot and my battery was draining fast daily.
I returned the first one and got another in white, thinking foolishly, that perhaps the batteries might have been defective in lots and the white ones might not have the same problem. Oops. Same problem. Returned the white one as well and stuck to my iPhone 4.
Today everyone is preparing for the new iPhone 5 and IOS 6. IOS 6 touts some amazing new features including Apple’s new Maps program. Most of the features are ONLY available to users of the iPhone 4s and the new iPhone 5. The rest of us are left behind. Again. The Mapping program is now a major issue as Apple has now removed the Google maps from the IOS. (http://gizmodo.com/5944897/17-people-apple-maps-has-already-horribly-misled) and this one is funny (https://twitter.com/fake_iOS6maps). The maps are a disaster and only seem to work in some cities. Remember, Google invested MILLIONS going to each city and giving us street view. Apple was upset that Google never updated their mapping app for the iPhone leaving us with a less -than-ideal method of navigation.
Since I have mostly used the freebie app from Mapquest, and that product is not perfect but it gets me close enough to find the addresses in a development, I am sticking to my iPhone 4 on IOS 5.1.1 until I figure out if Apple has just released another major wait for updates to make it work as it is promised or move to another platform altogether.
The new touted features in IOS 6 were also available on the Palm Treo such as the reply to an incoming call with a text message. That was five years ago.
Apple makes some solid products overall, but buying a high-end smartphone that takes four months to get the software right, which is then made nearly obsolete only 8 months later, is a prime waste of money.
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