Yesterday was my first experience with Apple’s Iphone sharing capabilities.  The objective sounded quite simple.  Download a group of photos to a computer.  That simplicity stops at the word “simple.”

Working with a person over the phone and having another iphone in my hand I attempted to share out the pictures.  On my Android phone when I click share I have probably 20 different options to share.  On the Iphone, not so many.  Major ones like dropbox are completely missing.

I tried to share via email and it would only let us do 1 picture at a time.  That’s a useless tool for this objective.  The next thing we tried was to use the photostream.  This worked okay in the sense that we shared out some photos.  However, we had to download a 45 meg install file to install icloud on a windows computer.  The install process took 15 minutes AND required a Windows reboot.

Okay, that isn’t the worst but what is the worst is when it is installed and the pictures are viewable they can’t be moved, downloaded or modified.  At this point I am at the 40 minute mark of working on this issue.  I decide to log into icloud.com and check to see if the pictures are there.  Let me share a secret with you. Apple’s “cloud” initiatives are just about useless.  There is no photostream icon that I could see.  Apple may make simple to use operating systems but their walled approach really irritates me.

This brings me right back to the beginning of this objective but 45 minutes later and more frustrated.  I’m trying to think about other ways to getting the pictures off.  Plugging the phone into the computer was not option as the phone is not synced with the specific computer at hand.  All of a sudden I remembered that I setup google+ on the person’s phone and turned on instant uploads.

I navigate to google plus, clicked the photos that need sharing, put in my name and viola! the pictures are accessible to me!

The google plus piece maybe took a total of 5 minutes.  Why can’t apple be so simple?  I have had hardships with others trying to transfer phones and their contacts or notes won’t sync up.  It’s just a frustration to me that people think Apple’s Iphones are so easy to use and the best out there.

I should have looked at how many hits in google news there were for iphone and verizon.  I bet just about every news and blog out there has posted Iphone stories.  I new some of the blogs I check such as BGR and Engadget felt they should swamp their sites with coverage.  Annoying if you ask me.  For example one article was about why I am switching to Verizon and the next one is why they are not switching.  They really were not that bad of articles and they both gave pros and cons.  I also bet they got tons of hits and ad views because of it.   I don’t know why it bothers me but the iPhone is not the end all phone.  It is not a perfect phone and in fact, the android OS is very advanced compared to Apple.

I saw the clip from the Daily Show where they were so happy to finally be able to make calls with their phone.  Thought it was a great funny segment.  What irritated me was the people they interviewed who all complained of drop calls.  Why don’t they just use a phone that doesn’t drop calls?  I was on AT&T these past 3 years as well and have horrible reception in some areas (all areas of Austin).  I stayed with them for financial reasons (rollover, most clients on at&t, etc.)  Those on iphone plans are not on their to save money.

This is not jealousy on my part.  I have no problems with apple products but I don’t like how controlling they are.  They decide which apps are allowed and which are not.  It also doesn’t help that they decided to partner with AT&T who I’ve always resented.  My next phone will not be on AT&T nor will it be a blackberry again.  It will be an android which is open-sourced and constantly being updated.  Yes, my next computer will most likely be a Mac Air.  In fact, I want to do more research into their server software as well.  Having a tiny server intrigues me.