My Complaint About Apple

Following a Jobs keynote there’s always a ton of complaining about Apple, along with a lot of lusting over the new goodies. For my part my complaint with Apple is one that has been growing since the release of OS X – I’m sick and tired of Apple trying to make me buy stuff through them.

In fact, this started with the introduction of QuickTime Pro and the nagging to upgrade. In OS X we started seeing the addition of things like Buy Printer Supplies (which I’m sure used to be in Print Center but isn’t anymore – score 1 Apple), requesting a .Mac subscription during initial configuration, print photo books from iPhoto and since the advent of the music store, a ton of different links to it scattered through iTunes.

iTunes isn’t so bad, I can turn off the music store and it all goes away, .Mac is really starting to annoy me though. I’m a geek so I like to have my own server that I can tinker with however I like. I’m also a bit of a productivity nut so I like to have things work seamlessly when I’m not in tinkering mode.  Thus, I’d like to have the iApps and synchronization work with my server and work well. It frustrates me no end that this is difficult or impossible to do.

It frustrates me that most of the stuff that Apple wants me to buy is US centric or only available in the US – iTMS for ages, are photobooks available in Australia yet?

I like the fact that Apple make money and I’d like them to make more money – when they have more money they can invent more cool stuff and invent it faster, at least in theory. I don’t like when their attempts to make more money make their products and users suffer. At the moment it’s not too bad but I’m concerned that it’s going to keep getting worse.