How Do You Know When You've Joined A Cult?

2. You’ve lost it

Yes, I realise that’s going to sound harsh. But there’s no point in sugaring the pill.

I’ll be specific: for most of our relationship, there were two things I could rely on from Apple. The first was that your products would work far better than PCs. Windows PCs would get viruses, they would be difficult to fix, they would break down and leave you tearing your hair out. The second thing is that although you weren’t necessarily the most innovative company out there, you would just do it right. You weren’t the first company to make a smartphone (Nokia Communicator, anyone?) but you were the first to do it well. The same goes for mp3 players, for tablet computers, for family photo software, for media management (for the first half of iTunes’s life). You were never about innovation, but you were damn good at execution and flair.

Not any more. This is going to sound awful, but I can’t think of any big product you’ve re-imagined well since the iPad, and that was almost three years ago. iCloud? Not as good as dropbox, and actually more confusing. FaceTime? Slick, but still pales in comparison with Skype. iMessages? Mostly annoying, particularly when it sends messages twice. Siri? See the previous point. Safari? Not as good as Chrome or Firefox. Safari’s Reader function? Not as good as Instapaper. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Plus, my Mac simply doesn’t work that well any more. The contacts on my iPhone don’t seem to sync very well with my laptop. Aperture is extraordinarily slow and buggy, Pages and Numbers are a bit of a nonsense. It just feels like you don’t make the best software anymore. And it doesn’t fit together as seamlessly as in the past.

DEAR APPLE: I'm Leaving You by Ed Conway @ Business Insider

h/t The Audit @ Columbia Journalism Review