Confessions of a Mac Fanboy

So, as many of you will know, I’m a pretty committed Mac-o-phile.  I have  a 2006 iMac, a 2009 Macbook and an iPhone 3G and, as a designer and developer I’ve found having a computer with both ability to run industry standard design software like Adobe Creative Suite (oh, and it does run it much faster than a PC does, btw) and a Linux-like Operating System absolutely invaluable, but of late Apple have been removing themselves from my favour and it’s time to stop with the “I like Macs because they’re perfect” kind of lines that get Apple Users a reputation as self-important arses with no real idea why they like their hardware.

I love my Macs, because they make my job so much easier in many ways, and my phone for much the same reason, but this following is my list of things not to like about Apple, that most Mac Addicts will avoid mentioning, or sometimes even knowing about.

1. DRM

With the iPod came the M4P audio format – the format that will famously only work on your own iPod and copy of iTunes.  Digital Rights Management had been attempted before, and existed already, but Apple were the first to properly put it into place.  By combining the desirable design and usability of the iPod with a draconian DRM system, Apple not only annoyed a whole future of iPod users, but they cemented into place the idea that DRM was a good and practicable idea, making it acceptable for others to try, as with the famous Sony ‘Rootkit’ issue, where Sony effectively hacked peoples systems in the name of copyright protection.  To this day, iTunes Store working on MP4 is the single most annoying thing Apple ever did.

2. It’s Linux, it’s fine!

Apples Operating Systems, OS1 to OS9 were based on their own programming structure, but for OSX (ten) they switched to a UNIX or Linux like environment in order to make their OS easily adapted to the new wave of processors that were on their way.  When Apple switched to using Intel’s Core 2 Duo chips in 2006, they were well prepared, and everything was running on the most commercially viable desktop version of Linux (well Linux-ish).

At this point, they started boasting.  300,000 viruses on the PC, zero on Mac; MacOSX is the most secure; this kind of thing.  My point being twofold here:  1.  When you based your operating system on the work of others that they offered freely, you don’t then boast in such a smart arsey manner about it.  Millions of people were already using Linux.  2.  When your OS is pretty inherently secure, you don’t invite the world to try and break it.  MacOSX is the best demo of what is possible with Linux and other POSIX operating systems when it’s used in a desktop way, and to boast about the security of anything too much is a BAD idea, when this will catalyse people to find holes in it.  Which of course they did.  Apple’s biggest issue with MacOSX?  Stupid stuff like setting default consistent root passwords and the like.  The first MacOSX was full of holes, and yet Steve Jobs was over the moon with it.

Pride comes before a fall, so stop being so up you own about it all.

3. iPhone Elitism

You can buy a Blackberry and use it on any network you like, it might originally be locked, but it’s relatively cheap to unlock.  An unlocked iPhone from Apple costs around the same as mortgage.  When it was launched in America, it was on AT&T and it still is, when launched in the UK it was 02 and it still is.  To make the world’s most adaptable phone with an inherently developing software base that anyone can contribute software packages to (although I’ll get on to that in a moment!), you shouldn’t then ruin it by limiting it to one network, and refusing the freedom to choose who you do business with to customer is the very opposite of the adaptable genius technology that went into the iPhone in the first place.

Remember when Microsoft got into trouble for forcing Internet Explorer on people?  Now imagine that they had made Windows only capable of running IE, and refuse all other browsers, and you have a similar situation to having an iPhone that only works on one network.  At a good 500 a go for the original iPhone, it was ridiculous, and did Apple no good in my eyes.

4. iPhone Housebrick

When it was revealed that the iPhone could be unlocked by using some tools developed by a group of hackers, many people did this to allow them to use some of the new software that people were illicitly releasing and distributing underground or to allow them to use a different network.  Apple responded by releasing software that ‘bricked’ any iPhones that had been unlocked.

After people spent hundreds on their iPhones, Apple made them into decorative paperweights for anyone who’d tried to use them for functions that weren’t available yet.  That’s the worst bit about this.  In the main, Apple bricked phones that were using apps, because Apple hadn’t launched them yet.

In terms of another comparison like before.  This is like buying a bread maker that will stop working forever if you use anything but the approved brand of yeast.  Apple set up it’s iPhones to literally stop working permanently, which given they belonged to the people who had altered them, is a bit rich.  It’s abhorrent if I’m honest.

5. The “you’re not invited” app store

Having launched the App Store for iPhones, Apple put in place a list of rules for what the apps could do, but then also did some obviously questionable rejections of applications, including refusing Google Voice for not-entirely-clear reasons, and even more moronically, rejecting a dictionary for including definitions of some expletives.  One of the cited rejected words was ‘ass’.  Difficult to take Apple seriously after that.

6. I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC, and I’m a failed advertising executive

Now, I know that these adverts worked but the actual premise and idea of them was just annoying.  Encouraging a rivalry between two camps of users is not a good idea when you seek to convert people.  Not only did this ad campaign make Apple users seem like self-important cocks, it also served to make David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who starred in the UK version of the ads, seem like equally dispicable fools.

Worse than that it prompted the terrible response from Microsoft of the “I’m a PC you got a problem with that?” ads.  After these machoist rebukes by the Microsoft marketing lot, the market is divided into a stereotypical set of Guardian readers who wouldn’t say boo to a goose but would definitely enjoy making a youtube video edited on iMovie on their MAC if they did, and a set of blokey wankers who just love that Excel keeps asking if they want to restore a backup of last time it crashed.  It’s a challenge innit?  Fight that computer!

I’m now stuck in the middle.  I buy Mac hardware because it’s good, and it works really quite well.  Sure it’s expensive, but it also lasts a good while, so the cost is similar over time.  I use MacOS because it’s nicely written and runs all the software I use for my job, I also triple boot my machines to also run Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux so as to be able to test web products and software on all platforms.

I have an iPhone, but, for the reasons detailed above, it’s Jailbroken, I own it outright (it’s not a contract phone) and I operate it on two networks using almost entirely software from open sources.  I run skype with wreckess abandon, and have even installed my own command line utilities and stuff.

Yes, I’m a mac fanboy, but my mac runs everything, and it’s a bastardised mash of all the best bits I could find of Apple, Microsoft and everything else.

I am the bastard child of a Mac Fanboy.

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