The Setup – Literally years in the making

In April of 2012 I bought an iPhone 4s this phone still works to this day (July 9th, 2015), It worked perfect in tandem with my mac mini (2010) and my iPad 2. From when I was in grade eleven I had planned out my ideal apple arsenal; The iPad was the ultimate mobile device, and the mini was the best desktop apple computer for what I could afford at the time, I finally finished off my family with an iPhone 4s. I used this trio for many years to come and it was just until recently I decided to divorce and distance myself from apple.

The Prison Break – The grass is greener

The summer of 2014 is when I decided to change my devices internally. Night after night I look at my same old icons and craved change. You have got to understand my mindset, I love aesthetics and form, I wanted my phone to be an extension of that. But I was locked in the apple cage, they chose how my phone looked, and the only thing I could change was the wallpaper. So I jailbroke.

What is Jailbreaking? It is simply the process of removing hardware restrictions on iOS, sort of making you be able to change everything and anything on your iPhone to a dangerous extent. Jailbreaking doesn’t just stop at the aesthetic property, you can change the way the phone behaves; from starting the music application when you insert headphones or disabling the phone from ever vibrating. The options were limitless or so I thought when I practically rendered my phone useless by bogging it down with so many tweaks. I ended up cleaning up my phone and keeping just what I needed, and kept it pretty snappy. What I didn’t know was that jailbreaking my phone was why I couldn’t go back to apple (if I bought a new iPhone it would be running the newest release of IOS which doesn’t have jailbreak for a while [usually a long six month to a year wait]). Cue our next section (The Divorce).

Screenshot from my iPhone 4s Screenshot from my iPhone 4s

The Divorce – The Passing of an iPhone and new prodigal son

One fateful morning, just before my 8:15 Macroeconomics class my trusty iPhone woke me up at 7:00 am right away I noticed that my battery life was dwindling, which was curious due to it being plugged in all night. As I calmly tried a combination of different cords, chargers, and plugins I came to the realization that my phone wasn’t ever going to charge again. I was sort of right, I plugged it in recently and let it charge under my bed for a week and now it magically works. But in April of 2015, I thought she had bit the bullet. As I looked for new phones I toyed with the idea of buying an android but never really considered it. Being phoneless was less cumbersome and inconvenient then I thought it would be and got along fine until one of my friends had an old banged up Samsung Galaxy nexus that he offered me. I gratefully took the free loaner phone and used it sparingly (it was slow and had battery problems, but I kept it close for emergency situations). I then found out about the Oneplus One (Android phone) and instantly fell in love with it. The One was everything I wanted inexpensive ($350), unique (custom Android ROM), fantastic front and back facing camera (5 & 13 megapixels) huge battery (3100 ma) & beautiful build quality. I finally ordered my new dream phone and have now had it for about a month. One thing’s for sure, I won’t be returning to an iPhone anytime soon.

The Company – compromising instead of innovating

Now since grade eleven I have changed my setup slightly I am currently typing this on a 2009 15’ Macbook pro that I snagged for an easy $200 and is running the latest version of Yosemite. I picked up my pro for the convenience of school and I love it more than I thought I would. Let’s talk about the company that put that computer together, Apple. Steve jobs, despite his many shortcomings throughout his life, the man knew how to innovate and push the envelope when it came to design. Jobs also brought about a new product revolution (iPad) that left silicon valley miles behind in the tablet market. Now this is entirely my opinion and I feel as though Apple has done less innovating and more compromising. Compromising is usually a term used in the settlement of a dispute, but I use the term for Apple in the perspective that it is compromising between taking risks and being stagnant. Apple is giving the users what they want (wearables and bigger screens) People don’t always know what they want, and if they do know, giving it to them can be a bad idea. Henry Ford had something to say about innovation:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ― Henry Ford

Thinner, Lighter, Faster. Lately, Apple has been after the pursuit of these, they have made iPad screens smaller (iPad Mini) or iPhones bigger (iPhone 6+), they have added fingerprint scanners to some but and put retina displays on others.

Now I don’t hate the iWatch or the screen variation in the new iPhones but I am jumping ship, and leaving my apple ecosystem behind. Because for me having a product means I’m supporting a company, and supporting a company is sort of a relationship, thus the “divorce”. Supporting Apple’s phone market is enabling them to continue to be stagnant with their creativeness with mobile devices.

However, it does not end there. I will continue to use my computers because Macintosh is ultimately what brought me to Apple in the first place. And my Macbook/mini combo suits my needs very well, as well as the build quality on these machines is unmatched by any other company (This laptop is from 2009 and will probably live forever).