Once again, I’ve been taught the “don’t be an early adopter” lesson, this time courtesy of CrApple.

Around the middle of last week, my lovely iBrick “Smudgy” decided to become remarkably unresponsive… only seeming to acknowledge the sliding action to unlock the phone and display a completely pointless inactive “desktop.” I could accept calls (as long as I didn’t try to put anybody on hold or use any of the phone’s features) and well, that’s about it.

(Image submitted to Worse Than Failure by a reader named Daniel [not me].)

My lovely $400 iBrick (what else would you call a tragically broken iPhone [besides “yet another example of CrApple’s lack of commitment to quality”]?) is sitting on my desk, demanding to be connected to iTunes. When I connect my iBrick to iTunes I’m presented with two options: 1) Upgrade to the latest firmware, or 2) Restore, which requires an internet connection and demands the installation of the latest firmware. The latest firmware: 121+ MBs of crap that downloads over and over and that iTunes completely fails to install, yielding an obscure and pointless error message.

Hey, you there in the Cupertino mothership, isolated from reality… here’s a new marketing slogan for you:

CrApple: sweet design ideas that almost make it slightly past true mediocrity.