Freedom Should Beat Brands: Apple, Google and the Ballad of Conformity
I’ll be honest, I love shiny things. I love new things, and I have no problem spending money on them.
However, I returned my iPhone after having it for a weekend. It was an awkward experience both personally and at the AT&T store here in Asheville where I did the deed.
“Is it broken?” asked the salesperson with a look of disbelief on his bluetooth deviced face.
“Nope, just not what I needed.” I replied.
There’s a similar dialogue with friends and colleagues when I describe my decision and the events leading up to returning the iPhone.
“Was it broken?” they ask with a look of disbelief on their faces.
“Nope, just not what I needed.” I reply.
It’s a fabulous device and I’m sure it causes near orgasmic experiences for people who enjoy tech or intuitive devices. For my needs, however, a Blackberry wins hands down. I know there are Blackberry vs iPhone comparisons on the blogs, and I’ve read many of them in the process of returning the device. Nevertheless, the Blackberry works better for my life situation.
I have nothing against people who buy shiny things. As I said earlier, I do as well. But the moral of the story is that everyday I’m realizing more and more that I have fallen outside the mainstream of the shiny new thing club that engrosses the tech world of Robert Scoble et al.
For instance, you can’t go to a conference without a Mac and hope to have any street cred. I have a Mac, but I’m not a huge fan. I much prefer Ubuntu on my PC laptop and the ability it gives me to do pretty much whatever I want with very littel trouble. Sure there is a learning curve to using any distro of Linux, but Ubuntu works well enough outside the box that it’s catching on with non-tech users. My wife uses it on her laptop. I just found out my 19 year old brother in law uses it on his laptop at college as do a few of his friends.
Everyone is writing or saying that Mac is the future of computing, but I really disagree as we head into a future where web apps and web operating systems become increasingly important. In that scenario, open platforms like Ubuntu (which are free, easy and flexible) have a leg up on Mac or Windows.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the shiny new web apps. I have well over a thousand posts on Twitter and I’ve been using Facebook for a while to keep up with school friends and more recently professional “friends.” But even in the web app world, I find myself moving away from the trends and towards other solutions. I use Evolution for email (instead of GMail), I use Liferea for feed reading (instead of Google Reader), not because of their brand but because they work better for my needs. I’ve used GMail and Google Reader extensively, but they just don’t measure up. I get the same looks as I did from the iPhone salesperson when I tell people that.
All this to say that it’s interesting we’ve come full circle with the hegemony of software, hardware and web apps. We’ve thrown off the shackles of device or platform monopolies like Palm and Microsoft in favor of new overlords like Google and Apple. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
I hope the future that my child grows up into puts less emphasis on particular brands and more emphasis on particular performance, flexibility and freedom. Or at least the freedom to explore and choose which type of device or brand of device works best for their own needs rather than relying on the gentle herd to pick for them. A fool can hope.
posted: 07 July 26
under: 2007 Resolutions, Apple, Google, Linux, Twitter, ubuntu