I gotta ask. I really do. Why do people pay the Apple (AAPL) tax? Why would supposedly intelligent people pay close to a grand for what is otherwise a less than $120 phone? Why would anyone willingly fork over money for a phone which won’t last 18 months? Even if it does somehow magically survive, the next update will slow it down and nobody from Apple will go to prison for that. They must also be paying Hillary Clinton “speaking fees” to whisper into the ear of the Department of Injustice. Probably standing in line behind Wells Fargo.
How is it all this sh*t happens and no CEO goes to prison? That slow down wasn’t a “mistake.” It wasn’t a “coding error.” It was deliberate.
It isn’t just a slow down either. My brother was stupid enough to get an iPhone. (The “i” in iPhone stands for idiot not Internet.) I don’t know how old it is, but I know this, overheard from his cussing and hollering about it. Enough updates have been applied that when the battery gets to 65%, if he dials a number, the phone shuts off. If the battery falls to 45% it shuts off without anyone doing anything.
Nice!
I’ll stick with my military grade Sonims and 3+ days of talk time.
The Apple tax gets even worse with their laptops/notebooks/tablets. Apple doesn’t even make an operating system! They just put their own desktop GUI on top of BSD. If you think you really like the MAC OS, pull down a free version of BSD then install all the different desktops you can find for it until you find one you like. Once again, you are paying thousands in “Apple Tax” for a $250 or less computer.
We went through this with Microsoft and Windows back in the day. First it started in Echo Mail networks, then on Usenet Newsgroups and finally it reach the trade press. Everyone talked about the “Microsoft Tax” and the EU hauled them in for a massive pee-pee whacking. In America they paid the Clintons to keep Justices from actually doing anything, but the EU accomplished something.
Today, Microsoft is a non-player in the software world. Professionals don’t use their products, only drones. Most corporations which are still going to be in business 5 years from now have converted to some flavor of Linux desktop. Windows Vista, Windows 8 and Windows 10 suuuuure made that decision easy. Then management found out they saved a ton of money on licensing fees and didn’t need an entire staff to monitor/manage/track licenses once they dumped the evil Redmond Empire.
I’ve been to a few client sites where they have been trying to deploy Apple computers to the staff. Apple sure as hell is not a choice for business use. What pushed the companies in that direction is the “chip of the day” notebook/laptop configurations they were getting from those famous name manufacturers you all know. Sometimes within the same order they would get multiple units of the same model all having different wifi chips, different hard drives, different BIOS versions, etc. Nothing “just worked” out of the box once it was preloaded with their “corporate” desktop.
So far this question just hasn’t been answered.
Why does anyone pay the Apple Tax? Didn’t they learn their lesson paying the Microsoft Tax?
I’m not the only one asking this question. Millions are asking it. What was once a regional/country wide movement is now global. People are buying flip phones to protest soul draining iDiot phones. The flip phones survive being dropped more than once and have longer battery life.
Flip phones aren’t the only ones making a comeback. Rugged stick phones are making a big comeback too. I picked up the yellow trimmed Sonim 3G phone with shiny new battery for well under $30. The slightly larger 4g phone on the right was right at $30 with free shipping. I didn’t plan on purchasing two phones. Consumer Cellular kind of screwed up. I ordered a T-Mobile 3g SIM from them because I already had the AT&T SIM in my Doro. They sent me another AT&T SIM. I found this out __after__ I activated it. I live rural and wanted to see if there was even the slightest bit of truth to the T-Mobile claims about their “expanded network.” Suffice it to say, it ain’t there yet.
I mostly leave the phone sitting on my desk connected to office wifi. Occasionally I give it to my nephew when he will be driving a tractor in the field by himself __and__ he’s had his iDiot phone taken away for whatever reason. I know, when I was 9 I was out there all by myself without any communications. If I broke down I could scream real loud or walk all the way to the house. He didn’t start driving tractors until he was in High School and making a kid walk a couple of miles is probably another one of those things we always used to do without thinking about it and now sends one to prison.
Obesity is profitable. Selling quick fix fitness equipment is profitable. Telling people they can generally fix that problem by just walking a couple of miles per day . . . not-so-much.
At any rate, some time between now and the end of 2019, AT&T will turn off all its 3G towers to make room for 5G. My much loved and trusted 3G stick phone will cease to work. At that point I will need to make a decision. If the Consumer Cellular accessible T-Mobile network is still not there, I will just move the AT&T SIM over to the other phone and kill the T-Mobile number. On the outside chance T-Mobile finally gets around to actually covering the nation instead of just a few pink dots, I will have to figure out how to keep the number on the AT&T SIM but have it on a T-Mobile SIM.
Personally I don’t hold out hope for the T-Mobile/Sprint merger improving coverage. According to that big yellow map I have complete coverage where I live. I’ve tried Sprint before. I don’t have them now. Read into that what you will.
Another major reason for the increase in rugged stick phone sales is the fact the trades have picked up. Whether you are swinging a hammer or running an air wrench, iDiot phones are absolutely worthless. You can put all of the $30 plastic covers on them you want, iDiot phones die young in such an environment.
Wander around a construction site and chat with a few people who still have an iDiot phone. You will find out there are on their third or fourth one and insurance won’t replace it again. Everybody else has a rugged stick or a rugged flip.
