after a few days, the core starts stinking

An old friend of mine asked me about buying an iPad.  My first response to him was this:

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iDon'tknow.  iDon'tEvenCare.  iHateApple.  iThinkJobsStinks

;-)

jokes apart, I don't mind recommending apple to my technically challenged (but financially non-challenged) friends, but I would never use one.  Ever.

I have several reasons.

The vaunted "intuitiveness" was lost on me during my first experience with an Apple in 1996, where I had to finally be told by someone that ejecting a floppy (yeah, those days!) required moving the floppy icon to the trashcan.  How that is intuitive I have never understood.

My real reason is that I hate control freaks like Jobs, who will not let you do what you want with your machine, in general.  That might be OK for a lot of people, but not for me.

I have, when in a facetious mood, said the following: "more money than brains?  use Apple.  more brains than money?  use Linux.  neither money nor brains?  use (pirated) Windows".  clearly applicable mainly in India (and China I guess).

There's a backhanded compliment to Apple in there, if you look hard enough ;-)

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He responded with something about innovation and consumer products and marketing and so on.  Here's my reply:

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My whole point is that a computer (and even an iPad is one, perhaps even an iPhone, arguably) never was, and never will be, a consumer product like a DVD player or a stereo system.  Those things have only one (or a few well-known-in-advance) functions, and no one expects a toaster to even become a microwave via software upgrade.

Looks don't matter to me, so now it's just an expensive piece of hardware you cannot customise or do what you want with.  For the "sheeple" who just take what they've been given, that's fine.  You know me better than that, but I also thought I knew *you* better than that :-)

The bottom line is that if you love the word freedom in *any* sense, you need to think about supporting this joker.  Probably the best comment (though not the funniest) is at http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=963229&cid=24996553 -- which I quote in its entirety because it's short:

I was exclusively a Mac user from 1990 through 1997. >From 1997 through 2000 I was a three platform user. Windows for games, Mac for art and linux for servers. Steve Jobs' return to Apple crushed the core of the spirit that made me a loyal user. My computer is not a status symbol. It's not a lifestyle choice. It's not a part of my image. It's a tool. When Apple shifted back to the current "Image above all else" mode, I went to Win/Lin PCs. I don't have the time of the money to stroke Steve Jobs' ego.

Some more links are below.  Two things I will ask: (1) don't let the tone of the first one fool you into ignoring the others; it was just too funny to let go, and (2) do follow the first level links within those links (one level only) also, even the ones that didn't turn into hyperlinks -- just copy-paste them into your browser.  Some of the comments are really insightful, despite the language used.

http://sitaramc.blogspot.com/2010/03/erm-some-of-my-friends-shouldnt-read.html
http://sitaramc.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-should-however-see-this.html
http://sitaramc.blogspot.com/2008/09/apple-idiocy.html (the Adithya in the comments is a young, NON-techie, nephew of mine who has -- independently it seems, seen the light)

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But the main point I forgot to address was this.  He said, "The business user is not really interested in the gory details of coding".

The correct response is "sure, but shouldn't he care that if his son, or his friend, or his IT dept, can code it up for him, he still cannot use it unless Jobs allows him to?"