I just want to know where "just works" went. Why should a consumer have to worry about contracts between corporations when all they want to do is use their phone to catch a bus, just like they have been doing for years?
To be fair: it's never worked like that. If you spent the 90's on anything but windows (or the 70's on anything but IBM), you saw the same nonsense. The best you get are brief moments of purity, where the growth of a new platform or environment is so fast that it makes more sense for all the parties to collaborate instead of compete. So in the first 4 years of the "post-iPhone smartphone" world it was nice, just like it was in the early days of the internet.
It's a maturing market now, and not so nice. We have to wait for the next disruption now.
I get that the real world doesn't work like that, but I feel like that is the reality that I was sold by their marketing. It is incredibly disappointing that they cannot see it realized.
I think Apple came to the conclusion that the iPhone is entrenched and will sell tens of millions regardless of not having new design, features like NFC or great maps. The "just works" mantra is easy to get lost when the iPhone is now a cash cow(like how Windows stagnated after Windows 95 till before Windows XP). I guess the focus is now on iTV or whatever else that's being cooked up while milking the cash cows for what they're worth.
Reminds me of Avis' slogan: We try harder because we're number two.
