Et tu, Apple?

Jun 10, 2014 No Comments by

Dear Apple,

Mrs Fogey, bless her, has just bought us a Macbook Air and an iPad mini for our birthday.  How lucky are we?  One day this century TF will get all its stuff transferred from the PC we used to run to the Mac.  Given that the flavours of USB on each device don’t like each other that much and that our wireless upload speeds are, thanks to Talk Talk, glacial, we hope to complete this task, to paraphrase Basil Fawlty ‘before one of us dies.’  No breath is being held.  Instead this Apple deluge has got TF to wondering about a couple of other items of Cupertino cock that are kicking around the office; specifically a first generation iPad and an iPhone 3.  Scoff not, children.  Whereas 2010 and 2007 might seems aeons ago to some nappy-wearers, they do not to any Fogey.  Neither device now supports Apple’s latest mobile operating system (iOS).  Consequently many apps no longer function.  TF could use the iPhone 3 as a phone/text/email/web surfing device but what fun that would be not having the relevant apps and so having to try and get into everything via each service’s website via Safari. We cannot, for example, use the app icons to connect to: the iTunes store, Spotify, Skype, Instagram, Shazam, BBC iPlayer, Sky Go – you know, those obscure apps that no one uses any more.  Even Angry Birds won’t play.  The iPad isn’t much better, because even though it is much more recent, it too doesn’t support iOS 7 or any of its variants.  And it crashes constantly, in spite of having plenty of available RAM. The  iPad and iPhone 3 are stuck with versions of iOS 5 and 4 respectively. You may say, ‘well, upgrade, you geriatric skinflint’ but you’d be missing the point.  Imagine your TV suddenly stopped working because all the broadcasters had colluded with your TV set manufacturer to stop that set from being able to display any of their programming once your set was, say, five years old.  You may well stamp your foot.  And then take your still lovely TV to the tip and shell out for a new one.  Because what else can you do?  This isn’t so much built in obsolescence we’re talking about here, rather a deliberate and unnecessary removal of functionality from an otherwise perfectly serviceable device.  That we paid good money for.  And is now worthless, in every sense.  By the end of next week we suspect our shiny new MacBook Air and our oh-so-cute iPad Mini to be similarly obsolete.  It’s the joy of tech.

So, Apple, enjoy the fruits of Mrs Fogey’s generosity and while you’re doing that, go fuck yourselves.

All the best,

Fogey T.

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