My aesthete friends are always complaining about how cobbled together Android is. Because there is no overall owner, the UI is full of unintuitive quirks. That's a fair criticism - some parts of Android are incredibly shonky. But, to hear those in the gilded cage speak, iOS was delivered as the platonic ideal of what smartphone should be. It is perfect, and gets more... er... perfecter with every release.

That's horseshit.

I know that coming from one phone to another, you're bound to find things which don't work quite the way you expect. This is different though, there are such bone-headed flaws present throughout iOS that I can only conclude that Stockholm Syndrome has set in amongst its users!

Firstly, it's a relief not to have to use the accurs'd iTunes to set up your phone. But, there is a fly in the ointmet. To set up the phone, you must have a SIM in the phone.

Why? Seriously - why? Literally every other phone I've ever owned "just works" when you take it out of the box. Want to use Android or BlackBerry using WiFi? Fine. So, I stuck in a SIM and it got through set up. Guess what? The SIM was invalid - it didn't attach to any network. Well done, Apple - another pointless loop for customers to jump through to pacify your insane control-freakery.

The rest of the set-up process was predictably poor - despite setting my language as English, and knowing which country I'm in, the iPhone presented me with a country list starting with Afghanistan. That's a heck of a long scroll to get to the UK.

Still, initial impressions rarely count, do they? Let's look at what the rest of the experience delivers.

Well, the date on the icon is right - but the time is wrong. What's the point in that?

As it happens, there's a software update for the iPhone. I took a look at the details. Bizarrely, this link isn't clickable.

Great work - make it look like a link, but don't let anyone click on it. Good work there!

I went into music, there's nothing in there - other than this rather confusing pop-up. I assume "OK" should read "Music"?

But look - there's a handy little link to iTunes. Naturally, it doesn't work. You can click and click and click - there's no way to get to iTunes from this page.

Was this thing designed by a chimp?

Clicking around the App Store - which apparently has revolutionised the retail industry - I kept encountering this error. Top tip, Apple: don't offer me link to things I can't get.

The capitalisation on this seems really off to me. Still, attention to detail is for losers, right?

Now, on to my chief annoyance. The keyboard. I know Apple loves skeuomorphic interfaces, but this is ridiculous. Hit that shift key as often as you like - but nothing changes. Why? It's really annoying to have to look in the lower left hand corner every time you want to see if you've hit the shift key.

Oh, bonus fuckwittery, I spent a couple of minutes looking for the "opening quote" symbol. My problem or theirs?

Honestly, this post is boring even me. It's obvious that the famed Apple design is a bit shabby. I just don't get why everyone raves about it.

Every device has quirks - and the iPhone is no exception. Yes, we should strive for perfection in design - but people are so desperate that they are being seduced into the worship of false idols.

The first - and last - Apple product I owned was a blueberry iMac.

I think it may have had an early version of OS X on it. It was fun enough, but I eventually replaced the OS with YellowDog.

Now I find myself in possession of a 16GB iPhone 3G. Nice! Or so I thought.

For various dull reasons, the iPhone is an unlocked Portuguese model. It was simplicity itself to set it to UK English and add my APN details etc. That's where the fun & simplicity stopped.

I thought I'd try the fabled AppStore. Download a few free apps and the like - and thus the nightmare of "The-One-True-Apple-Way" descended on me.

First of all, all the apps were priced in €. I would have thought me manually setting the phone to UK & having a UK SIM in there & being on a UK network would have convinced Apple to price things in £. Not so.

When I tried to download a free app I was told to enter my iTunes account information. This was problematic for two reasons 1) It was a free app. On every other device I've ever owned I can click on a free app and install it without giving away so much as an email address. 2) I don't have an iTunes account. As far as I can determine, there's no way to obtain one from the phone.

This is meant to be a super-duper converged smartphone but apparently it can't even handle a simple sign up process.

It turns out that the only way to get an iTunes account is to install the iTunes software. Again, this is problematic. 1) Not everyone has - or wants - a computer. Apple has drastically cut its user base for no reason as far as I can see. 2) Not everyone who has a computer has sole use of it. You might not be able to install iTunes on your work computer. If you & your family share a computer, how does iTunes handle multiple accounts? 3) How do you get the software? There's no CD in the box, the iPhone doesn't show up as a USB hard disk, so the software can't stored on there like the Huawei/Vodafone 810.

So, off to the website to download iTunes. It's nearly 70MB! How the 40% of people without broadband are meant to grab this I have no idea.

The installation process was another of Apple's famed usability triumphs...

I can't choose my native language - "English (British)". I can't even trust it not to break Outlook.

It spent ~20 minutes installing the software, agreeing to two separate EULAs, only to be greeted by this screen.

So much for my language preferences.

Oh well, let's ignore that. Let's sign up for an account.

Oh.

All the settings on my computer are set to UK, iTunes is set to English. My physical location is in the UK but I go through a proxy in Germany.

Would it be beyond the wit of Apple's usability guru's to add a "Choose Your Country" option? Apparently so.

It also turns out that Apple insist that their products look like OS X apps even when they run on Windows XP. Great, yet another interface language to learn. I'm sure that Apple's products are the most amazing in the world - but this looks out of place on my system. Why should I have to mould myself to Apple? Shouldn't they work for my needs? No, silly grasshopper, The-One-True-Apple-Way has one path that all must adhere to or face certain death.

At this point, I got bored. If was a paying customer, I'd be on the verge of returning the device.

I'm obviously missing the gene that makes me fall in love with Apple products. Or is the rabid Apple fanboism just an elaborate hoax? Come on guys, let me in on the joke...

May be I'll try again tomorrow.