I have been using Apple Mac computers since they first came out in 1984. I have lived in a Macintosh universe since then. All my applications and contacts and emails have been integrated into one environment. All was well until about 2 years ago when Apple tried to integrate contacts, photos, and music on iCloud. While I still love the Mac computer and don’t see switching anytime in the foreseeable future, I am thinking about dropping the iPhone and switching to Samsung. What was always the selling point for me in the Apple universe was the simplicity of the user interface with the intuitive nature of its functions. That is no more, and I am so frustrated with the way things are going that I’m a seriously thinking about dumping many things Apple. From a long time, hardcore user, that foretells a dangerous future for Apple. Many things are promised in the about to be released iOS9. I am hoping things improve, but if not, my next phone will be a Samsung and I will figure out a way to move my contacts over to the Android environment. Frankly, the only thing that was keeping me was the ability to sync my contacts on all devices… but there have been problems with that as you will see below.

What are the Problems?

Apple has gone from simple elegance to complex incomprehensibility in the last couple of years. For example…

1. I cannot show my iTunes playlists from my computer on my phone. Why not? That is a basic feature. I have had playlists for years, and now I have to recreate them from scratch?
2. With iOS 7 or 8, Apple wanted you to store all your music on iCloud so that you could sync your library on all devices. That’s just great, except for one thing, when you are on the road and want to play a song on your iPhone, there a no songs stored on your phone and you have to wait to download every single song you want to hear and use data to do so!
3. Using Photos and iCloud has become such a mess, taking up so much space on my iCloud account that I’d have to pay $200 a year for the privilege. Not only that, but when Apple replaced both iPhoto and Aperture (its pro-photo program) with Photos, I wound up with thousands of duplicate photos and had to buy a third party program to straighten out my photo library. I am so disgusted with Apple that I’m switching from iPhoto, Aperture, and Photos to Adobe Lightroom and am now looking for alternate online storage from another provider… perhaps Amazon Cloud?
4. With the introduction of SSD boot drives on new computers, Apple suffers from limited space, making it necessary to move parts of my Identity to an external drive for storage (music and photos, e.g.), but apparently apple doesn’t recognize my new locations, and so it recreates my picture folder, download folder, and music folder on my boot drive and loses track of my preferences, adding files there instead of to the other drive.
5. Even worse, Apple keeps recreating iPhoto libraries on my iCloud account after I have deleted them multiple times!
6. The ability to sync my laptop, iPhone, iPad, and desktop is great, in theory, but one of the dastardly effects of the syncing on iCloud was that my contacts in Address Book, now called Contacts, would be duplicated and multiplied. Editing and deleting an address on one device only caused it to be added back in on the next sync. I think they may have fixed that, but again, I had to use a third party service to fix my address book.

I am so frustrated with Apple’s making easy things complex, that I am actually considering getting a Samsung for my next phone and switching most of my important stuff to Android. If it weren’t for the fact that I don’t trust Google with my email, I would have already.    I have been a Mac user since 1985, and have never been as disappointed and turned off by Apple as I am now. The computers are great, but the iOS thing has just become a minefield of problems and organizational chaos. 
I realize that there are some settings for music, syncing, the cloud and the devices that may have avoided or fixed these problems, but my point is that I am no dummy. I read ancient Greek, have completed post graduate level studies, and have worked with and on Apple computers for over 30 years and am somewhat of a tech support geek for my friends and family, and if I have trouble understanding how things are supposed to work, then what of the average consumer who just wants things to make sense and function properly? And finally, I saw a photo my mom took on her Samsung, and it is so much better than my iPhone 6’s camera, that I just about turned green with envy. And that, my friends, has never happened to me before with any device that made me want to give up on Apple. My love affair with Apple may not just turn into an affair with Samsung, but cause a real divorce.