Rotten To The Core!! Apple Lies To Their Customers

If you've been paying attention to any of my iphone posts in the last year or so, you would have a pretty good idea of how I feel about it.

I LOVE(D) IT!!!

I've made it very clear that it is the most influential smart phone (or any cell phone) since the Motorola Star-Tac flip phone. I've never owned a device that has gotten better and better everyday, and has never lost its 'new' feel. That's why it pains me to say that I and may other users have been lied too by Apple.

The problem began with the latest update to the iPhone, which usually brings more features and functionality for the device. But the 3.1 firmware update was created to hide what Apple calls "a bug" in all 2G and 3G iPhones. Once the update is taken, any iPhone that is not a 3GS will lose its Exchange Support ability..... And there is no rolling back!!!

The funny thing about this is that Apple doesn't see this as an issue, but as a "fix" to the older iPhones. The way Exchange Servers work is that it will not sync to a device that does not have hardware encryption enabled. Well the previous iPhone firmware updates would tell the Exchange Servers that it WAS a hardware encrypted device and would sync. The problem is that it wasn't true..... Up until the iPhone 3GS, none of the previous iPhones had hardware encryption.

But that didn't stop Apple.....

During the launch of the 3G iPhone, Steve Jobs (black turtle neck and all) trumpeted the iPhone as having Exchange Support. Even going so far as saying businesses should dump Blackberry because their servers were not secure and very unreliable. Exchange Support was a huge selling point for the new iPhone 3G. So Apple rushed the 3G iPhone to market even though the device didn't have the hardware encryption needed, and gave it firmware that reports false information to Exchange Servers. So once the iPhone 3GS was released they finally had a true hardware encryption device that would legitimately have Exchange Support, to which Apple responded by pulling the Exchange Support plug on all original and 3G iPhones.

No matter how you look at this, it can only be viewed as fraud. There is no way you can tell me that Apple didn't know that iPhones were falsely reporting it was a hardware encrypted device to Exchange Servers. When I bought my iPhone 3G it was mostly due to it having this support, and now Apple is telling me that it was a "mistake" that took them 15 months to discover? Perhaps they should change the slogan of "It just works" to "It'll work, as long as we're not liable". Now my trust in Apple has been destroyed, as I now have an iPhone which I can never take another update if I wish to continue to receive work email on. If this is how Apple has decided to do business, then how can I trust them enough to purchase any product of theirs again?

Has Microsoft ever done anything like this?