To me, the name Apple has been synonymous with quality software and a quality OS. This went for every product they produced. Macintosh computers, iPod music players, the works. Even when the iPhone first came out last year, the phone seemed very stable and solid. Steve Jobs could have allowed 3rd party developers to put software on the iPhone right out of the gate, but he wanted to make sure the phone stayed stable. A wise move.

Fast forward to June 11th. Apple released the AppStore and allowed 3rd party developers to put software on the iPhone. The 2.0 iPhone software is released and the power of the iPhone skyrockets. At least that is what we all hoped would happen.

What actually happened was far from that. MobileMe had huge problems dealing with all the traffic it was trying to handle. Software on the iPhone crashed left and right. Certainly not Apple’s fault. However, when the phone reboots while running a new AppStore application just installed, one has to wonder. Even Apple’s own software on the phone started acting very poorly including causing the phone to reboot.

Then came the time I was updating an application on my iPhone and decided to look in on another app. Next thing I knew I was looking at the, now infamous, White Apple Logo Of Death. Rebooting the phone did not fix the problem. It just keep showing that annoying logo. I finally had to restore the phone to factory default losing all the data that was on the phone due to not having a valid backup. I would have had a valid backup if the stupid backups didn’t take hours and hours to perform. I’m doing a backup right now that has been running for over an hour and I’m only 1/6 of the way through it. I do have a few programs on the phone now. 50 in fact. Should that really cause the phone to take 4 hours to backup?

I have to say that I am very disappointed with the state of the iPhone and the iPhone’s OS. I have to blame the crashing reboots on Apple and the OS because OS X and the OS that runs the iPhone are both based on Unix. An OS that doesn’t allow programs to access OS memory. So if the OS gets so messed up that it has to reboot, I can only blame the problem on the OS and not the software it runs.

Heck, Microsoft Windows Vista is more stable than the iPhone is these days. And that is quite the insult to Apple in my opinion.

Apple, you really need to get your act together and fix these problems. I would really hate to see Apple’s reputation become worse than Microsoft’s.

My favorite password keeper / data encryption utility is going native to the iPhone and iPod Touch. If you use 1Password on your Mac, you are going to want to get this App Store app as soon as it comes out. There is a great write up and set of screen shots over at Agile Web Solutions website. The best part about this is that Agile Web Solutions appears to be giving away the iPhone/iPod Touch app for a limited time. So if you want to get a great deal on the iPhone/iPod Touch 1Password App, I suggest keeping a close eye on Agile Web Solutions 1Password blog for when they announce the release of the app. You can follow them on Twitter at “http://twitter.com/1Password”.

From the look of the screen shots they show, this is going to be one very useful and great iPhone/iPod Touch app!

By the way, if you are not already a 1Password user, I highly recommend it for protecting private data like Credit Card numbers and Social Security numbers so that you can have immediate access to that info no matter where you are. It also keeps track of website passwords too so that you can use more secure passwords without having to write them down or use less secure passwords. This also works via the iPhone/iPod Touch app that is soon to come out.