I’ve been in a bit if a dilemma when it comes to Apple and what to do next. Ive got lots of Apple kit – Apple TV, iPhone’s, MacBook Pro, iMac 24… It all plays nicely together with iCloud, and i haven’t had many issues with that in quite a while it just works. Now one of my iPhones has a dodgy on off button and i am going to have to replace it. My contract is up with my mobile provider and they are charging me a fortune with my current plan. If i tie in with my current provider for 9 months then i can reduce my monthly costs right now, but the iPhone 5 is released in Sweden probably in December, and if i want one of those, i probably don’t want it with my existing provider because they don’t support 4G.

Of course there’s no reason i couldn’t just say screw it – and buy a Samsung Galaxy S3 – i can use a 3rd party app to sync with the cloud…..

There have been mixed reactions to the iPhone 5 – they all seem to be a bit luke warm, but despite that i think a lot of people have been holding out to buy one – all their launch day units were sold within an hour. If you look at the hardware, it is similar to the iPhone 4, but a bit taller (extra screen space) its faster, and has new networking, and not much of a design change – its thinner of course. Ive no doubt its a good quality bit of kit, yet people are disappointed… why? I mean what could they expect? The iPhone 4 is awesome and its hard to improve on it really from a design perspective, if you want to look at pure technical specification then OK, the iPhone 5 doesn’t blow us out of the water. I cant help but wonder if the critics focus is a bit wrong though – sure its nice to have faster processors etc, but you shouldnt loose focus on the fact its really about the user experience – how much faster does a phone really need to go?

The real user experience is mostly software driven, and iOS 6 is released next week – i will be looking forward to it. I think i probably will go for an iphone 5 because i have a lot of apps, i like iPhones and i never bothered to buy an iphone 4S. I know there are things that the apple devices dont have – such as widgets, but i dont really care – i can understand and appreciate why they havent allowed them.

Am I an Apple Fanboy? Probably not. Its true i like Apple products but not blindly. my personal IT setup has a lot of apple in it because apple make pretty things, but i am not and never will be apple only. I have non apple kit, which i use professionally, and i will admit apple stuff is great for simplicity right up until the point that you need to do something apple hadn’t intended. Then frankly it can be a pain in the ass. Every technology out there has pro’s and cons, so at the end of the day, just pick what you like!

Update: I was wrong with the swedish release date – its 28th September which makes things a bit easier! Thanks to M for pointing that out!