Unfortunately, I believe the answer is yes. I run a MacBook Pro as my main machine and I own an iPhone and believe that they will be the last apple products that I buy for a while. After the Amiga dies, I was a apple user until shortly after the PPC and got burnt on that transition as I bought a machine right before the transition and then they killed OS support for the old 040 chips rather quickly, swore them off and then slowly got wooed back by their flawless handling of the transition to Intel. Now with the constant compromises I have to make for the iPhone, I am finding it to restrictive of a platform and am actively looking for a replacement.
For example, I was at our family lake house in NC last week on vacation, I am actively in talks over a few CIO positions and one of the companies asked me to forward my resume in word format. If I could upload files to my phone then I could have attached it to an email and sent it out. I have a striped down Google doc resume that I use for just this case but it doe not compare to my word or PDF resume which contain charts and diagrams to visualize my accomplishments. Due to an arbitrary platform restriction, I have to do funky stuff like email the file to myself and then forward that email to any requester.
Moving on from that, the tethering thing is another pain in the butt that to me has no rhyme or reason. I have to use my Wife's Blackberry (on AT&T) to tether my computer at the lake house. Same network but one phone has tethering intentional disabled.
Anyway, long story short I am starting to feel the restrictions of the platform and now it looks like Apple is abandoning a lot of good solution providers because they might compete a little on their platform. With no competition innovation stifles even in a company like Apple.
Time will tell, and Steve has pulled off some miracles but as for me, I think Apple has lost me again which is a shame because they are one of the few companies left that put such a focus on quality.
I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering and not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons Mac OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.
And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem, or you could have gone into Google Apps, forwarded yourself the actual PDF, and then forwarded that forward on. Those are roundabout, but we're talking about edge cases, and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge fashion.
--I don't see how your experiences have any wider ramifications- tethering and not being able to access a file system have nothing to do with the reasons Mac OS got killed by Windows in the late 80's/early 90's. It was pricing.
I disagree, they where lagging in every department performance, aging OS, mismanagement and making horrible decision to rectify the situation. Copeland was a disaster the CHRP platform was a disaster the Pippen was a disaster the Performa was a disaster, the clones where a disaster. If Price where the only issue it would have been easily rectified.
--And, besides, as a power user you can just jailbreak and install NetModem
I am sorry but that is probably the worst justification I have heard. If I need to go through a bunch of half hacks to open up a platform then I would rather switch and that was the point of my original post.
--and in a well designed UI, edge cases are handled in an edge fashion
no well designed UI and systems provide usability and do not force a user to hack out workarounds to account for lack of usability. As well emailing an attachment is not an edge case.
For me, Dropbox solves the problem of sending files. I keep most everything that matters (work related) on Dropbox. I can access files using the Dropbox app and email file links to whomever I like. If only there was enough storage for all of my media...
For example, I was at our family lake house in NC last week on vacation, I am actively in talks over a few CIO positions and one of the companies asked me to forward my resume in word format. If I could upload files to my phone then I could have attached it to an email and sent it out. I have a striped down Google doc resume that I use for just this case but it doe not compare to my word or PDF resume which contain charts and diagrams to visualize my accomplishments. Due to an arbitrary platform restriction, I have to do funky stuff like email the file to myself and then forward that email to any requester.
Moving on from that, the tethering thing is another pain in the butt that to me has no rhyme or reason. I have to use my Wife's Blackberry (on AT&T) to tether my computer at the lake house. Same network but one phone has tethering intentional disabled.
Anyway, long story short I am starting to feel the restrictions of the platform and now it looks like Apple is abandoning a lot of good solution providers because they might compete a little on their platform. With no competition innovation stifles even in a company like Apple.
Time will tell, and Steve has pulled off some miracles but as for me, I think Apple has lost me again which is a shame because they are one of the few companies left that put such a focus on quality.