Whaaaaah!

Fred posts this morning that his brand image of Apple is "fear and loathing" and that this is "...not a great brand image"

Fred writes, "I am afraid to upgrade to a new version of iTunes because it might make my music and video unusable or it might brick my iPhone."

As for bricking Fred's iPhone - Fred, you've unlocked your iPhone and are using it with TMobile. Any problems stemming from that are YOUR problem, not Apple's. I've blogged about this in the past and forecasted that folks like Fred would whine about this.

"I have a brand new iPhone sitting right next to me on my desk that I can't figure out how to unlock and jailbreak now that it comes pre-loaded with 1.1.2 firmware. So it just sits there on my desk making me hate Apple more every day"

Again, this is Apple's problem?! Cripes man, get a grip! My beloved Treo doesn't work in Europe. Is that Palm's problem? Sprint's? What am I going to to, hate Palm?! I'm the idiot that bought the phone KNOWING that this was an issue. You bought an iPhone knowing that in order to use it the way YOU want to use it, you need to jailbreak it. And because you can't either 1) figure out how to do that, or 2) have the balls to run the jailbreak code for fear it will brick the iPhone, that's Apple's problem??

But wait, the best is yet to come...

"Apple is an old school company. Instead of forcing Verizon to open up like Google does, they make a sick consumer unfriendly deal with AT&T here in the states and then proceed to replicate it around the world. Thank god there are governments in other parts of the world that are willing to stand up for the rights of the consumer."

Uh, Fred, what "rights"??

Dude! I bought this killer 30mpg Mercedes R class and can you believe that they FORCE me to put diesel fuel in it?!! I mean, WTF! What about my rights!! I want to run unleaded premium gas in my car! And did you look inside?! There's no 8 track player?!? How will I play all my Seals and Croft 8 Tracks?!? Please, someone call the government and make them fix they're product!!

Ok, perhaps that was a little bit much, but its essentially the same as Fred's whine. Why people feel the need to turn to the government to fix things is beyond me.

Hmm, Market Forces 101 : If a product in the marketplace doesn't serve the market, then another product will come along to fill the void and serve the market better. If not, then perhaps this is something Fred needs to jump into, given he has the financial capability and he's an astute consumer in the marketplace.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Apple's decision to marry the iPhone with AT&T. I think its a horrible decision that is holding back the growth of the iPhone in the US and while I (and Fred) don't agree with Apple's strategy, we can both just go pound sand and blog about it, whine about it and even throw ourselves on the floor and have a full out tantrum about it. What did I do about it? I gave my iPhone back and went back to my Treo.

Fred, I, as a consumer, have a right - and that right is my choice.

Not "choice" as in government should force them to provide me with a choice, but the power to choose.

I choose not to use an iPhone 'cause I didn't like a lot of things about it. And just because I don't like things about it doesn't give me the right to make Apple change. They can do what they want. Its their company, not mine. And no government in the world should have the right to force Apple to do anything about its products. Market forces will do that.

Fred's a smart guy. But why he believes he (and the rest of us) needs a government tit to suckle off of is beyond me. Perhaps he wasn't breast fed enough as a child? I have no freakin' idea.