I'm writing this because I love my iPhone. But I love it the way I love a woman who's no good for me or a food that is really unhealthy for me. See, the hardware of the iPhone is pretty damn amazing. It's capable of all sorts of stuff, but out of the box (and even after hacking) it's still falls far short of what it's capable of doing. Why is this? It's because of Steve Jobs wanting to fit in with the rest of the corporate overlords that like to tell us what to do with the stuff we buy from them.
Have you ever bought a DVD player in your home country but try to play a DVD from another country on it? Lots of times you can't. Why? Because the DVD companies and the DVD player companies are working together to control how we consume what they sell us. This kind of thing happens all the time with cell phones and the iPhone is a perfect example.
Wanna shoot video? NOPE, you can't. Why? Because a few hundred thousand iPhone users uploading videos will clog AT&T's very own series of tubez. Rather than just upgrade their services, Steve Jobs dumbs-down what the iPhone can do via the software that runs on it.
Think of it like buying a chicken from the supermarket and having the farmer that raised it and the supermarket owner telling you how to cook it.
But let me get specific.
Things the iPhone can't do but really should:
1) video recording/shooting/streaming. Yeah, that's right, I should be able to use it like a portable VCR, camcorder and Internet-broadcasting device. The hardware is perfectly capable of this but even after hacking it, I can only do two of these three things.
2) Enough with the fricken iTunes crap. I want to drag and drop, dammit. I can do it with my Jailbroken phone, but it's just not the same. Stop treating us like thieves and pandering to the media companies. Screw those guys, they only know how to make crap these days anyway.
3) Let me use my damn phone on the carrier I want. Stop telling me what businesses I can and can't give my money to. And cell phone carriers? Give me unlimited data already! This is idiotic, I've spent $20-$40 a month for unlimited broadband service to my home for EIGHT YEARS. Why can I not have unlimited data AT EDGE SPEEDS AT LEAST, DAMMIT??
4) Let apps run in the background, dickhead. WTF. My old Sidekick 3 can do this.
5) I don't care if you add cut & paste because I've hacked my phone and can do this two different ways. (Though you should do it so folks don't HAVE to hack their iPhones for this BASIC BLOODY FEATURE.)
6) Custom wallpaper/skins (see #5)
7) A browser that actually caches. Almost every time I pull up Safari, it tries to go online for the latest version of the web page you previously had up. Lame. Don't want it.
Now, mind you, I've written this before the big announcement(s) at WWDC on June 7, 2009, so I don't know what Jobs is going to pull, but I can bet it won't solve all of these problems or avoid creating new ones.
I could go on, but it's damn late and I want to post this a LITTLE before the WWDC announcement.
So, I'd just like to conclude by saying that I think it's pretty much anti-American to let us buy something and then try to control what we can do with it. So, just let go with the control issues. This is supposed to be a free country.
Orignal From: Why Steve Jobs is an Asshole (and Most Corporate Overlords)
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