Yep, I nearly did the same thing.

I liked the look of the Blackberry phones and the fact that they are considerably cheaper than the iphone. I almost bought one but was warned off by a couple of friends who use them for work. I don't remember the exact model numbers, but one was a Curve and one was a Storm.

I bought a bog standard 8Gb 3G iphone instead and, having now spent a bit of time playing with a couple of BBs, I'm glad I did. The keyboards are dreadful, although I imagine the one with the onscreen keyboard is much better, and that little navigation nib on the 8520 is shocking.

I'd have banned you purely on the basis of that A*****l banner. But then I do follow the greatest football club on earth*.

*Spurs

What did you nearly get banned for anyway? You didnt say something negative about an Apple product did you?

(oh god i've done it again. Before anyone shouts troll please remember its just a joke)

It wasn't "nearly". I think it was a heated discussion that did involve Apple somewhere, but which veered off a bit into less savoury territory.

That's about it.

To be honest, seeing FOUR threads on the first page in TMP that have iPhone or Apple in the title at 8am is bound to blow a fuse of any dedicated Apple hater. Especially when mods keep turning a blind eye to it. So yeah, I got two weeks...

I don't think there's going to be much done just to accomodate haters of anything much on these forums. The general stance of those in charge seems to be to assume that everyone accepts and tolerates everything, even if it's not their personal choice. I think this is a good thing.

How can you HATE a brand? I don't care enough about any brand to form such an extreme negative reaction! Live and let live.

Hell yeah! Except for Reading station. I hate that. That can die. I don't even need to change there anymore, so it can just be replaced with a whole load of straight-through lines.

My sympathies. I feel like that about the new trains on the Victoria line lol - always breaking down

Weird eh, what is really funny that is the only brand I hate. It has more to do with Apple users than a brand but I don't think you would understand...

So what constitutes an Apple User, then? Of the 5 iPhone-wielding guys in my team in this office, 4 only have Windows PCs at home. Lots of Mac users I know (myself included) use and own various other OSs (be it Windows, *nix, etc) - does the fact that we choose to use Mac OS for some things add us to your stereotype, or not? I'm intrigued now!

No I've only worked in IT for 17 years so what would I know about PCs, Macs, mobiles and blackberries?

I hope you're not this arrogant in real life as I'm sure someone would give you a slap.

I would think the brand hating thing is becoming more and more difficult to sustain.

The old rivalry between Mac and PC owners - which I think is just good sport and a bit of fun that often gets out of hand, when touchy people (on both sides) start escalating it to personal insults - doesn't translate well to iphone users, as it is likely that there are more PC owners with an iphone than Mac owners. Kinda smudges the dividing lines a bit.

Xactly!

As I said, I am not going to have that debate over the internet as some people have problems understanding and also they can't interpret the overall tone of the posts well. Jokes get lost for example and they will call you arrogant!

Anyway, somebody said that tolerance level is high here so I am confident that you can live knowing that I hate Apple.