Yes, it’s true. There is a man who swapped his iPhone for a Blackberry. In some respects, I greatly admire Ben Ackerman. Not because of his choice of smartphone, but because he was brave enough to own up to his change of heart in public. Not many self-confessed members of the “giant Mac fanboy” club would be prepared to do that.
But Ben has. He prefers the Blackberry, as he explains in a slightly contradictory post on his blog.
I say “contradictory” because Ben is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s the first to admit that the iPhone:
(a) is “prettier”
(b) has better apps
(c) and better web browsing
… but he *still* prefers the Blackberry. Why, Ben, why?
Because, it seems, the Blackberry is (in Ben’s opinion), simply a better mobile device. It does things you’d expect a mobile device to do, like, you know, MMS and copy-paste. The basics. That’s what it does, and it does superbly: the basics.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the iPhone doesn’t appeal to Ben and many thousands of other people. It’s because Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive and the rest of the Apple gang just don’t consider “basics” to be part of their remit. They leave basics to everyone else. Their products go above and beyond.
So, two questions for you:
(1) Do you agree with any parts of Ben’s argument?
(2) If you ever ditched your iPhone for a Blackberry (or, God forbid, your Mac for a Windows PC), would you have the guts to say so in public?
