The worst thing about buying an iPhone, was that I already knew what I was getting myself into. After years of bravely trying to save the MP3 player from its unavoidable demise, I was well aware of just how forceful Apple’s push for dominance could often seem to be. iTunes doesn’t want to help you organise your music collection – it wants you to convert the entire thing into it’s own special format. Apple’s insistence on using it’s own formats and technologies aren’t anything new though, and these days they aren’t even the main problem.

In a climate in which it isn’t safe for companies to simply expect people to keep buying their wares on a yearly basis, the question most technology businesses are wrestling with at the moment is how to lock people into some form of long-term subscription. Services like LoveFilm and Spotify live or die on their ability to provide an invaluable service – something that you simply wouldn’t want to have to say goodbye to. Despite the love the brand might receive from dimwitted fans, Apple’s tactics are entirely different: It’s not about providing value for those who are loyal, it’s about substantially raising the cost for those who wish to leave.

The real stroke of genius, is that this cost is invisible: You won’t spot Apple’s subscription fee in your monthly bank statement, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Hugely expanding on their devious past of weighing you down with Apple-specific cables and file formats, the creation of Apps was a stroke of genius.

When deciding to switch from an iPhone 3GS to a Samsung Galaxy S2, it quickly became clear that I wasn’t simply swapping out one device for another – I was saying goodbye to a library of purchases I’d spent years building up.This wasn’t money being paid directly to Apple, but the outcome is exactly the same: I’ve spent the past two years putting cash into a piggy bank that’s physically impossible to now smash open.

Whilst most companies try to pretend they’re investing in their customers: Apple has simply demanded that we spend our time with their devices slowly investing in them - creating a substantial sense of long-term attachment that we’ve paid to build with money out of our own pocket. This perception of genuine loss was almost enough to make me change my mind about switching, but that was simply another reminder that I was standing on a seriously slippery surface: Next time you find yourself assessing the situation, you’ll only have more to lose. You need to get out, now.

You might not have signed an official agreement to use Apple products exclusively for the rest of your life, but it’s clearly an implication scrawled between the lines from the moment you buy your first device. Over the past few years, we’ve seen this apparently creativity-driven company use their influence to take direct control of mobile tariff prices, maintaining an artificially high cost whilst competitors with better products undercut substantially. Their reaction to this has generally been simple: Heavy-handed legal measures have crushed the attempts of some genuinely gifted competition - purely on the basis of having apparently copied the Apple-invented concept of ‘minimalist design’

This isn’t the behaviour of an innovative company: It’s the flailings of a grumpy dragon that’s lost interest in everything that doesn’t involve sitting on treasure. Don’t let the terrifically sad story of the fantastic Steve Jobs stand in the way of an increasingly evident truth: The iPhone 4S isn’t an innovative piece of ground-breaking technology, it’s just another trap.