To Buy or not to Buy the iPhone

Where do you stand with Apple Products?

Apple have always been a company that I have great difficulty with! Each new report about them in the press either showing them to be full of corporate greed (the latest being reports of slave labour working practices in their Chinese subcontractors), or, they have sold another 10M iPhones because they are just sooo good.

This makes it almost impossible to pigeon hole them as they seem to be both extremely good and extremely bad!

So .. Trying to weigh the pro's and con's for the ultimate iPhone purchase:

Good Points

• Desirable.
• Lovely devices.
• Shiny.
• Still the best user experience.
• Shiny.
• Apple quality checks third party apps so everything should work well.
• Nice TV adverts

Bad Points

• Fragile - drop once or using it in the rain may finish it off.
• Poor customer support record especially if you have used it in the rain.
• Closed shop - everything has to be bought from Apple.
• A large portion of all subscriptions go to Apple even your phone network subscription.
• Reports of "slave labour" work practices in Chinese factories where they are made.
• No flash so many websites don't display properly.
• No flash so many games won't work (never mind you can always buy games from Apple).

I am back on the fence now - I want to hate Apple but still want to have a shiny new Apple iPhone, or iPad, or Laptop…..