Sunday, February 17, 2008

I Hate Apple and iTunes!

Actually, I don't really hate them. I'm just mad at them right now. A couple of days ago I bought myself an iPod Nano 3rd generation in pink (my favorite color). It was a birthday present to myself. I wanted to be able to download music videos and watch them on my iPod. I had visions of watching, anytime I wanted, all my favorite videos. Videos that I would spend hours in front of the television during my formative teenage years back in the 80's waiting for MTV to play, like Madness, The Cure, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Pretenders, etc.

I walked over to my local Target in the pouring rain just to buy it. I thought I hit the jackpot when the sales associate told me that I was entitled to a free $25 iTunes gift card with the purchase of the iPod. Woo hoo! When I brought my new iPod home and plugged it into my laptop, I got an error message that said the iPod was corrupt. So I schlepped back to Target, by which time the rain turned torrential, because I wanted immediate gratification and didn't want to wait until the next day to replace it. So I took my new iPod home only to have the same problem. Since I didn't want to go out in the rain a third time, I decided to surf the net first to see if others had this problem. In short, it turns out that the new iPod requires the Mac operating system of OS 10.4.9 or higher and iTunes 7.6, neither of which I had. So that's my first beef with Apple. They make it so that their older software and operating systems don't support the new products they release, thus requiring consumers to either download, or spend $130 on the newest upgrade. I tried to download the upgrade, but since I have dial-up (I know, I should really get with the times), it would have taken 12 hours to download it. As it happened, it took me 3 hours to download the iTunes 7.6 upgrade, only to learn I couldn't install it because I didn't have OS 10.4.9 or higher. I finally got the bright idea to try the computers in the management office of my apartment, which are available to residents. I thought surely they would have high-speed internet access. I was right. It took 4 minutes on the office computer to download the upgrade that would have taken 12 hours on my laptop.

Once installed, I was ready to download music videos. I hit iTunes' New Wave Nation, the perfect homage to the era that spawned the music video. Alas, the selections were meager. So I downloaded ABC's The Look of Love and then hit the current video section to grab Amy Winehouse's Rehab. But with my dial-up connection, each video took 3 hours to download. And once downloaded, I wasn't able to play them in iTunes, even though it should support the videos because I purchased them from iTunes. And even worse, when I tried to load the videos into my iPod, I got a message that says the iPod won't support the music videos at all. I think it only supports movies and television shows purchased on iTunes, not music videos. How misleading! And another beef I have with iTunes is their new "iTunes Plus," which means that, even though I had iTunes, there were some songs and new albums that I couldn't download unless I upgraded to the newest version of iTunes. So it was like having iTunes but not being able to buy anything on it.

So now I'm completely pissed off at Apple. They are the undisputed leaders in MP3 players and legal music downloading, so perhaps they feel they can get away with this blatant marketing ploy of continually upgrading software and products while rendering previous versions practically obsolete. I do like my new iPod, but I still can't play videos on it, nor can I watch them in iTunes. And is it just me, or did Apple re-design the ear buds that come with the iPod so that they don't fit in the ear as well as the original iPod's earbuds, thus forcing you to buy the more expensive but better-fitting in-ear headphones? Perhaps the matter requires more investigation online, but as it's four o'clock in the morning (I'm downloading the new Nada Surf album, Lucky, and it's taking over 5 hours), I'm too tired to surf the net for more answers. Maybe tomorrow.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Stop Calling Me, Hillary Clinton (You too, Barack Obama)



Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, which means eight states are having their presidential primary elections all on the same day. And every day for the past week, I've been getting telephone calls from both the Republican and Democratic parties asking for my support for various candidates. But these are not the solicitation telephone calls of the past. Back in the day, volunteers from the various candidates' committees used to personally call local residents who were registered voters of that particular candidate's party, hoping to count on their support. But with the advent of the modern telemarketer and that pesky invention of theirs, the autodialer, now candidates can bombard entire states with their own pre-recorded messages. I get at least three telephone calls a day. Just today Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney's wife have all called me to ask for my support. Yesterday Barack Obama called me. I've yet to hear from Ron Paul, but as no one seems to know who he is, maybe he hasn't bothered with telephoning anyone.

I can't wait until this election is over. Being bombarded with television advertisements as early as last fall was bad enough. Now they're monopolizing my telephone. When I was in college and was about to register for my first election, a friend advised me not to put down my telephone number on my voter registration application. He said it wasn't a requirement, that they only used it for the aforementioned committee volunteers to cold-call voters. Now with autodialers, that point is moot. But at least I can fight back with counter-telemarketer technology: Caller ID. Any time I get a call from "Private Caller," I can be sure it's another pre-recorded election message. Then I let it go to voice mail. And they do leave voice mail.

I'm not the only one who is sick of the campaigning, and how it started off way too early and got too intense too fast. A recent episode of The Simpsons totally took the piss out of this year's election campaign with its "Ralph Wiggum for President" episode. And like Hillary and Barack and Mitt, Ralph has his own presidential election campaign website: http://www.wiggumforprez08.com. So pick a winner. Vote Wiggum in '08!