A few years ago Apple ran a campaign picturing some famous and renowned “free thinkers” under the concept “Think Different!”. The idea being that people who used Apple products were creative and able to put their stamp on the technology being used.

My wife asked to put one of my sounds on her iPhone for use as a ringtone. Simple, right?

Turns out that getting your own content onto an iPhone is much harder than it should be. Even once you’ve achieved that, assigning your file to be a ringtone exceeded my patience. I understand that Apple makes systems that are “simple” to use, removing a lot of the sometimes unnecessary clutter, but time and time again, I find that they leave out key features, or actively prevent you from being able to perform the simplest of actions. The default Mail program in OSX has no ability to download “headers only”, which seems to me, to be a fundamental option.

It’s not so much “Think Different”, as “Think the same as us”, which seems to be reflected in the new platforms such as the iPhone and iPad. These devices are “consumer” interfaces, portals into functionality, which you, the user have little or no control.