[NonIndigenous]

Originally Posted by strange_quark

I take issue with your summation of my post as "mindless butthurt anti-Apple fanboyism." Might as well call Richard Dawkins a "mindless butthurt anti-Jesus atheist" because he levels criticism at religion.

He wasn't actually referring to you. You thinking that he was referring to you however triggered a very informed and useful response so I don't mind. I don't usually spare all these technical things much thought, but it's useful knowing a little bit. I've always picked on the general image of apple... which like you said is entirely based on an "established brand reputation amongst a consumerist fan base". I personally summarize it as "designer label hype" which only fools usually buy into. I do not get the point of paying £2,000 for almost the same thing which you can get for £1,000 in an average store, £500 off the street, and about £150 to £300 from China (although the Chinese "copies" are remarkably less reliable, from personal experience). The only major difference between products being the logo.

Apple's present huge image mostly stems mostly from their creation of the I-Pod about 10 to 12 years ago. I think the first model came out in 2000, but I don't remember very well. Since then it's essentially same products with different looks and otherwise little real innovation. Why? Because there's no need for them to exert the effort into R&D whilst they're still making a lot of money from existing models and technology. Tablet computers and touch screens have been around for a lot longer than Apple would probably like people to think.

As for features being withheld on the pretence that there are underlying hardware issues... it's a typical market strategy that reveals itself in various forms almost everywhere. One example, right now in Poland there's an issue that if you pay maybe £20 worth of minutes on pay-as-you-go, you have a fixed term (usually a year at most) within you have to spend it, or you lose it and even have your number shut down. Competition is fixed between the network providers, some of which (such as Orange) stem from Western economies where these problems don't exist to my knowledge anyway. It's a method of squeezing the last piece of dry shit out of consumers. The economy in Poland is nowhere near as developed as in Western countries, hence why this specific problem exists; the competition hasn't been around for long enough to cut this bullshit practice out and provide an honest service to customers.

The same problem exists with Apple because they're too big and are basically making up their own rules. No problem with being big, but I think they are also being irresponsible. They work for their own private interests, that's understandable from any business. I think it's governments' job to regulate this kind of shit from getting out of control for the sake of the public. It's not that bad yet though. Still plenty of competition from Samsung, Microsoft, Google, HTC, even Linux lol.