Apple Disenchantment

I remember my 1^st Apple experience. It was back in 1993 on a Color Classic. The joy of making microphone recordings, life was so simple back then. Now that I think of it, prolly kick started my current relationship with multimedia! Boy that was fun times back in Ms. Rorheim's 5^th grade class.

Now I've always been PC guy since middle school and the IBM PS/2 days. But once I graduated from AiFL back in '03, I needed a reliable tool since I was starting my own company. A PowerBook G4 was the answer.

My mom bought me the biggest one, the seventeen inch widescreen as a graduation present. Worked great until I spilled over eight oz. of coffee into it. Of course Apple said the whole thing was ruined (and not covered), I bought another one for $2,700.

The new one worked great until 18 months later. The screen all of a sudden had a green vertical line running down it that didn't go away. This is a documented problem. Apple deletes any posts from its forums relating to this issue. As time went on, more lines appeared. As of yesterday, there has to be well over 100. But then, lo and behold, now 1/6 of the screen is now flickering blue in an epileptic fit.

On top of that, processing has slowed drastically. It's next to impossible compiling anything. Opening PSD's take forever, JAVA and Flash run so slow. The screen is losing its contrast and brightness. Oh yeah, gradients are absolutely hideous with dithering running rampant.

The new MacBooks have display problems as well. There's currently a class-action suit filed in San Diego. Apple said the LCD displays millions of colors (16.7M), but they only have 6-bit resolution per channel. That means only around 1/4 million colors. When customers called and complained, Apple told them they were "imagining it" and "being too picky" about the colors. Isn't Apple's specialty suppoost to be design?

Am I going to buy another laptop anytime soon, you ask? Hell no! Laptops endure much more abuse than a tower from being moved around. Computers are delicate creatures, and don't like to be knocked around.

Now Apple just lauched the iPhone. I know they already have a second generation done and prolly working on the third. It doesn't support Flash or JAVA, even though the commercials say 'its the whole internet.' My Nokia 7610 is over five years old and plays Flash. A phone that looks pretty for $500. Forget it! Apple laptops, forget it!