Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Apple, I hate you more now than ever

I am a PC user.  Of course, I own a variety of consoles, which tend to cluster at the shiny end of the spectrum (PSP, 360 etc), but at heart I am a PC user.  The sort who always has at least half a dozen intel-based computers somewhere in his flat, of varying vintage and usage.  As such, I have an instinctive response to Apple products, which seem to me to be obtuse, obsessed with style over function, and all the other usual pc-vs-mac cliches.

But every now and then I will say "well, hats off to Jobsie, he's given me a reason to buy Apple this time".  Suitably suckered-in by my innate desire to be reasonable and open-minded, I'll spend money on an Apple product.  And then I'll remember why I hate Apple, and all their works.

Why did I buy a new iPod?  Why?  OK, be quiet at the back: I know that I bought a new one because I was stupid enough to get the last one stolen.  But you would think that I would have learned in the first year or so of ownership that they really are under-engineered, over-designed pieces of irritation.  The arguments are, again, well-rehearsed, but this is my blog, so I get to say them nonetheless.  Here is why I hate my iPod:

• The iTunes digital rights management is both stupidly pointless and horrible.  I can't simply burn 100 MP3s from a playlist to a cd and stick them in my sound system to use the superior speakers.  I would have to burn several CDs, name each track, rip each back onto the PC, then burn them back onto a CD in MP3 format.  So I can do it - no pirates were hurt in the making of this DRM system - but it's a total pest, so I don't.
• And iTunes also has a horribly restricted music library, unless you are either a) 12 and into horrible pop or b) 50 and into the same music you liked when you were 20.  I could not hate Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton any more if they were up on charges beside Gary Glitter.  Getting a Sigur Ros track or something by White Rose Movement means waiting 6 weeks after release if one is lucky.
• It couldn't attract any more scratches if it decided one evening, of its own volition, to try and drown my cat.  Which I can see it doing in its malign glory.  Mine lives in the felt pouch that it arrived with.  A month old, and my black video iPod no longer looks like it should share screen time with Hal in a Kubrick film.  Now it looks like Ken Loach has it playing the role of a Glaswegian schizophrenic who gouges himself with knives to let the voices out.
• It doesn't work.  Right now - at this very moment - it is displaying most of the cover art for the Jesus and Mary Chain's 21 Singles collection.  Well, it is actually displaying all of said art, but the botton quarter is shifted about 100 pixels to the right of the rest, and is wrapped around the screen.  Pressing buttons will not help.  Leaving it overnight didn't help.  The reset combination is as stuffed as the rest of the buttons.  All I can do is let the batteries (don't get me started on those!) die.
• Software updates are terrible to download and apply.  Mac users tell you that Apple are the epitome of interface designers.  But Mac users are stupid enough to buy Macs, so their opinion counts slightly less than that of my dumbass Persian Chinchilla eating machine: the stupider of my two cats.  The procedure for software updates makes even those of Real seem anything but creepy and not at all desperate, as well as wonderfully laid out by comparison.

And so on.  I will, unless they come up with a real step-change by then, not buy Apple again.  I don't remember why I did, this time.  Safety?  Because this one was black and shiny?  Because I believed that they must have got the interface right by now?  Who knows?  But I'm stuck with it now.  I think I'll go back to staring at the battery meter and willing it to die.