Dear Apple
I’ve been a fan since the very early days. (1980, with an Apple II+.) But today you’re really pissing me off. Here’s why.
I have a MacBook Pro. And an iPhone. And an iPad that I will never get back from my wife. And a company with servers and lots of clients. An and assistant. So all of my stuff has been set up to sync automatically so that when I make a change in my iPhone, or on my desktop, or when my assistant makes a change to my schedule from her computer, it’ll all be in alignment. That was all through a piece of software that you developed, and that you hated, called MobileMe. Yeah, it kinda sucked. Steve Jobs even made light of it in one of his famous presentations of new Apple products. It’s written up negatively in that recent bestselling biography of Steve Jobs. But y’know what? It worked for me.
Then two days ago I found that none of my stuff was syncing. I know you know why: because you shut down Mobile Me. Everyone must move to iCloud. OK, fair enough; I get it. I was ready to make that switch. But to make that switch, to embrace the iCloud that now I must embrace, I learned this morning that I’d need to “upgrade” my OS to Mountain Lion. So while the tech guys were here this morning, and after they delivered that bad news, they set up my laptop and God knows what else to download and install the insipidly named Mountain Lion, while I was out most of the day drumming up business. I just got back and went to use my laptop and here’s what I found.
Everything has changed.
I am extremely scheduled. The Normandy invasion was less planned out than my calendar, from now through… infinity. I have meetings, speaking engagements, lectures, workshops, running kids to innumerable essential private lessons and classes, reminders to do this or that — and now my calendar looks utterly different. Maybe it’s just stylistic — that now the design of it looks like something from the Arizona territory circa 1878 — but hey, wasn’t Steve Jobs all about style? Wouldn’t he be pissed? I am.
My mail? Whatever surgery your new big cat OS is performing, it’s taken 30 minutes so far and shows no signs of abating. Here’s what I wanted to do: Send. An. Email. I’m sure it’ll be whizbang terrific when you’re finally done “improving” it — but I don’t care. I just wanted to use it.
I also got a weird little video that popped up on my screen and showed me two fingers massaging icons up and down. I don’t know what it means. I hesitate to find out. I don’t think I need it either.
To be fair, I’m betting I’ll actually like some of these changes, once I understand them. But I didn’t want them. I didn’t ask for them. They were shoved down my throat because here’s what I actually wanted: for my iPhone to sync with my laptop. Everything worked flawlessly until at some point you decided it had to change. And that’s why I’m pissed.
In 1984, you famously ran a commercial of a runner slinging a hammer through the screen visage of Big Brother (read, at the time, IBM). Now I think it’s you, and I’m wishing I had a hammer.
May 2nd, 2012 at 7:12 am
I use Pitney Bowes to print postage. They recently ended the program I’ve been using for 3 years and replaced it with a new one. Now the process of preparing a package, printing a packing slip, printing a mailing label and printing postage takes 3 times as long as it used to, and has a much greater possibility of the postage being printed out of alignment, which would make it no good and then I’d have to spend more time preparing the mis-aligned postage to get a refund. I suppose this change aids someone, but it sure isn’t me.