Since I was looking forward to cleaning the jailbreak out of my iPhone 3G, I eagerly installed iOS 4.0. Like most commercial software, it is a big mistake to use a .0 version of an Apple product: early adopters are really Steve’s beta testers. What I wasn’t counting on is just how completely iOS 4.0.x would fuck up a 3G phone.

The 3G was launched in 2008. Even in the cell phone industry, two years is not that long. The previous revolutionary phone before the iPhone was the Motorola RAZR, launched in 2004 (the iPhone 4 is not revolutionary). Planned obsolesence is an environmentally irresponsible business model that the consumer electronics industry must move away from.

We know that Apple did test iOS 4 on 3Gs, because they disabled multitasking and backgrounds to improve performance (which makes you wonder how much worse it could be?). I understand that Apple is used to charging for computer operating system upgrades, which is one big reason why I have never bought an Apple computer. Perhaps Apple figured that a free OS upgrade is worth what you pay for it?

Versions of OS/X do not have official support lifecycles – Apple just decides to stop supporting old versions. This is part of the reason why Apple products will never be embraced by enterprises: only consumers and small businesses will tolerate having to upgrade on Steve’s whim. Apple is primarily a hardware and media company, so the analogy isn’t perfect, but consider some popular operating system support lifecycles:

• Ubuntu Dapper Drake which was released in 2005 will be supported to 2011
• Microsoft supports products for at least 5 years after their release

Apparently iOS 4.1 will fix the problem, but my next phone will almost certainly be running Google Android (just as soon as Google Voice is released in Canada ).