I guess I should have seen it coming. Marx said that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and that's probably also true of relationships. The things that were so attractive at first, the things that were exciting and different - refreshing, almost - begin to grate. After the honeymoon period, you begun to notice things. Little niggles at first, minor inconveniences really, but they begin to grow and you notice them more and more. Eventually that ends up being all you can see - it starts to consume you. You look back at your former life, the time before, and start to feel nostalgic. Perhaps things weren't so bad after all...
Don't get me wrong; things were bad before and there were good reasons why I wanted a change. The change itself was good for me and not everything now is bad - there are some things I'm definitely going to miss. Now that the break-up is happening, I'm very sad about it but I know it's for the best. I knew this was all a bit of an experiment and it just didn't quite work out. I gave it my best but, after a while, you have to know when to cut your losses and accept that you were wrong.
If you read this nonsense regularly (and if you do, what's the matter with you?), you'll know that it's been a couple of months since I gave up my iPhone and moved over to Windows Mobile. Not a long time ago, in the great scheme of things, but enough time to know that, as much as I've grown to love it in a lot of ways, the relationship just isn't working out.
You might ask, not unreasonably, why I'm giving it up if I love it? It's not just because of the limited range of apps. There may be a bazillion apps in the iTunes store but I only use a dozen or so and most (although not all) of those are available for WM. Sadly, though, they're not as up to date or flexible as those on iOS6: they don't talk to each other as much, they don't have the range of functionality as those on iOS6. Using WM apps is a bit like using apps from 2009; you can see the potential there but you can't help thinking that you've stepped back in time.
WM itself is, I still maintain, a brilliant experience; I love the live tiles, I love the people hub (such a fantastic idea), I love the Nokia map apps and I love a dozen other little touches about it. But using it is just that little bit too inconvenient. I can't use Memrize, or Flipboard, or Wunderlist, or Instapaper, or Blogger, or the HK Taxi app or listen to podcast playlists... basically, a whole bunch of apps that have become if not essential, then very significant in the way I organize myself on a daily basis.
The phone itself was good; we had no end of problems with S's Nokia 720 (and by "no end" I mean we're still having the problems, even though she's no longer using the phone) but my 920 was a nice bit of kit - I loved reading books on it using the Kindle app and the size was just right for me. The iPhone 4 still feels too small and the iPhone 5 that work have given me feels too light and almost flimsy.
As I think I wrote before, I'm just so bored with iOS6 (and iOS7 looks terrible from what I've seen) but there really doesn't seem to be any alternative. There's great promise in WM and I honestly believe that - with fair luck and a following wind - it could be really strong competition in a couple of years. But not yet, sadly.
So I'm back - resentfully, but for convenience's sake - in Apple's walled garden. But I still look longingly through the gaps in the fence, dreaming of escape...
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