What's the best pie filling - Apple or Blackberry?

Vodafone has really good customer service. I'll get that out of the way first.

Polite, experienced people who are able to deal with whatever query you throw at them on the call without the need to pass you around. They also keep good call notes so you don't have to re-explain your problems if you call back and they seem to have access to enough information to be able to quickly make customer service decisions. 8 out of 10.

However, I've recently cancelled my Vodafone contract with 12 months left to run at significant cost.

The problem wasn't the customer service or value for money (which was also good) but the product I was 'sold'. A year ago, I walked in to my Vodafone store with the intention of buying a Nokia as always. I stupidly listened to the sales assistant who asked me all the right questions before advising me that the new Blackberry Storm was the best choice of handset for me. I must admit, it looked pretty cool and seemed to have all the features I needed.

I won't bore you with the list of issues but from not syncing with my mac to suffering from an erratic and uncontrollable interface, it was an unhappy relationship from day one. The fact it took 10 minutes (that's not a typo) to 'boot up' whenever I took the battery out should have been enough of a signal that it was badly designed, but I soldiered on and eventually learned to live with the quirks. I even excitedly updated its software earlier this year when RIM (who make Blackberry handsets) launched a new version with a couple of hundred bug fixes. Even that didn't improve things and with each month, my tolerance of the Storm reduced to the point where I decided to cancel the contract.

I went out and bought an iPhone. Apart from one niggling issue, so far, it is fantastic.

Not 'really good' but 'fantastic' - every single feature is orders of magnitude better than the Storm.

It is no secret that Blackberry rushed the Storm to market in order to compete with the iPhone but they actually launched a product that was 2 years behind Apple's in terms of innovation, design, engineering and, most importantly, testing.

Apple are renowned for being obsessive over the design, simplification and testing of their products. They sweat every single detail and zero in on perfection.

In the few weeks since I've had the iPhone, I think I've become more conscious of detail too. I've written 4 different blogs (including this one) and they've all sat in Evernote (www.evernote.com) going stale because I've not been happy with them. Sure, I've been busy - but not so busy that I can't find time to write a blog.

I've just become "Apple fussy".

This blog for example has had 6 different endings before I decided on this one.

My conclusion:

It's good to become obsessive about detail and make sure things are just so. But it's not so good if it causes a state of paralysis that means you don't do anything.

The best pie filling is Apple and Blackberry.

PS. Thanks Cal for helping me find the ending :)