iHate iPhone     23rd Jan 2009

This thing has been the bane of my life since it arrived at my door (3 weeks later than promised and after a lot of calls to various branches of O2 customer services). A devout fan of Apple, I have defended the merits of the iMac versus the PC many a time to non-believers, I've stood up for Time Capsule and I've declared that my teeny, tiny iPod Shuffle is one of the coolest little gizmos known to man. However, my love affair with all things Apple has come to an untimely end and I would like the boffins in iLand to know, ‘it's not me, it's you. We're over'

The iPhone 3G, with all its claims of synced-in wizardry, lighting fast internet and slick design, is poorly designed, temperamental and reliant on software and servers which make a GameBoy look advanced.

Seduced by glossy advertising and Apple's claims of effortless emails, a network of synchronized devices and organisation bliss, I signed up for MobileMe and duly assumed the days of missing important emails, forgetting appointments and general disorder of my life were over. Not so. My misplaced trust has lead to a barrage of missed emails and phone calls, voicemails which appear, disappear, then reappear again and most worryingly, a disruption to communications which seriously effects by business.

The handset, with its glossy touch screen, is more fragile than my poor old mum's nerves. The slightest bump and the thing seems to crash and lock down, in effect, requiring a reboot. The answer? ‘Buy an iPhone cover which protects the screen'. Hold on a minute, surely the fundamental principles of good design is that it should be aesthetically pleasing, but also work flawlessly? If you need to buy some extra contraption just to make the thing work effectively, it's not really all that well designed, is it? Would you buy a handle for your coffee cup? Or a lid for your kettle? No, didn't think so.

So, with its sporadic, handbag induced blackouts, my semi-conscious iPhone then decides to not allow me to push incoming emails off my server and straight onto my handset, a fact that my Blackberry-loving boyfriend finds hilarious. I try to defend my ‘PodPhone', "ah, but I can set it to fetch the emails every 15 minutes, which is pretty much as often as I need" I tell him. This pathetic attempt to justify the Fetch only system falls flat on its face, as after 10 hours of fetching the battery dies.

I'm not even going to begin to explain how slow the internet is. Lets just say those ‘Really Fast' ads that were subsequently pulled by Advertising Standards, we "Really Exaggerated to the Point of Practically Lying".

So then, we have MobileMe. I read the anti-Apple hype on the forums, I knew the risks, but I thought, ‘it won't happen to me, Apple and I get on well, we understand each other, we'll work through any little dramas and come out of it stronger (and more organised) than ever'. Wrong again. Email accounts don't sync, emails go missing down a big black, apple-shaped hole, manually pulling emails off the server takes an age, then sends a duplicate of each email to my iPhone and MacMail account. Oh dear, its messy. There have been tears.

What O2 and Apple fail to tell you, is they have worked out this nice little contract, whereby O2 give you a handset and make you sign away your soul away for 2 years, but Apple deal with the software and any problems related to emails, syncing etc. So now, The Gruesome Twosome are in the peachy position of providing me with faulty handsets and a software system that is flaky at the best of times, but O2 blame Apple and Apple blame O2.

O2 won't let me switch to the friendlier fruit phone of choice (The Blackberry) and firmly deny any allegations of a sneaky co-alliance with Apple. Apparently it was my choice to use MobileMe and attempt to Sync my emails, calendars and contacts, if the system doesn't work, it's Apple's fault. O2 just want their monthly payment for the next 24 months and for me to shut-up.

Lately, I have been asking the ill-fated call centre workers who take my call at O2 Business Customer Services (who apparently understand the needs of their Business clients, but don't think reliably receiving emails is one of them) if they have an iPhone. I have yet to speak to a single one who does.

So, for now the only Appley things I'm loving are of the Granny Smith and Pink Lady variety.