Thank you for your feedback on iTunes..

I get this inevitable feeling that Apple is heading for a fall.  Call it a presentiment.  A gut feeling.  A company that rises so fast and is based on consumer products, tied to the whims of the general populance, and that dances to it's own tune (sorry, couldn't resist) making products that people don't need (an Apple watch.. seriously!?) and yet so valuable in the sphere of international investors smells of a house of cards.

Ok.. generalised rant over.

Now to specifics.  You might have noticed from my previous post that my whole itunes library disappeared from my iPhone after I updated the iOS.  I normally am a bit more circumspect about this sort of thing.. but the blasted red dot on my settings was nagging me for months and, well... I succombed. No sooner had I done that and my whole music collection disappeared.  This is more than mildly annoying.  I've put time and effort in collecting, cataloguing and playlisting my music.  And although it's still on my Mac, it's not like I walk around with that glued to my ear, is it?!  My iPhone is my music in my car, playing through my speakers, in the plane with me playing through my earphones.  I don't live for my music.. but I miss it.  And for something to not work like this is more than mildly frustrating.  What is incredibly frustrating is the canned message I got (picture above) when I sent my message of displeasure to Apple.  The forums are alight with problems similar to mine.. but no message from Apple saying "we're working on a fix. Oh, and by the way sorry for the f#$% up."  I thought we customers were kings. But in the Genious world of Apple we are mindless lemmings ready to buy the next product.  So why bother with customer service. 

Stay tuned for more updates on my music saga as it unfolds!

Apple core..

I am livid. LIVID!  AND NO, I’M NOT using Microsoft.  I’m an Apple user.  Supposedly a subset of contented people, one of the guys in black turtlenecks that drives a Saab or a Volvo stationwagon, who leaves on a Thursday for a long-weekend and comes back on a Tuesday morning..  A guy who lives in a spacious modern apartment with a lapdog and a professional wife who makes more money than me. And I’m happy because I use Apple and others have no idea.  I have great gadgets which just work and I get on with my life.  But that all ended today.  You see I recently updated my iPhone 4Gs (admittedly a rather old model.. as they’re about to release the 6s in September 2015).  And I only updated it because of apple’s insistence.  They stick a great big red marker on your phone and if you don’t want to look like an idiot you end up clicking it. Sort of like the big sticker on the red button which reads DO NOT PRESS and which everyone ends up pressing anyway…

And so now I have an unintelligible music program and NO music.  There I was trying to connect the Bluetooth to the car system and show my son how the music sounds..  I’m fiddling trying to find my 60gb worth of music and just miss being hit by the bus that has just hurtled past.  Great one Apple.  All those health apps eating up space on my phone and it wouldn’t have made much difference to my health.  I chuck the phone on the dashboard so there’s no more temptation to fiddle and leave the radio tuned into the horrible sound of 50’s music. Ah, the joys of LM radio.

You see I think Apple has made a fundamental miscalculation.  Whereas the whole concept of i with a lower case i is that the internet is pervasive, like ether or air or whatever.  We are supposed to breath it in.  But the reality is that spotty coverage, high costs (in Africa, Australia and Italy, the three places I travel to with some regularity) and intermittent quality mean that we’re better off with our off-line stuff than trying to download a radio signal.  I’m tired of trying to access the supposed 30 minutes free wireless you get in café’s.. By the time you set it up, IF YOU MANAGE, the capuccino’s cold!   And another thing.. this idea that phones should have microscopic sim cards that no-one else supports, technology that doesn’t place nice with other systems except itself (isturbation?) have turned my apple from a nice shiny white thing to one that seems rotten to the core.  Music I like to manage. I like to download myself or cut it from my cd collection, not using iTunes.  Photos that I want to copy to my hard-drive and manage in Lightroom.  E-mails that I want on my desktop and not on some cumulonimbus cloud somewhere. Software that I pay for and own, not rent (ok, that’s more an Adobe thing).  And updates for all my devices, not only the ones that Apple thinks I should used.. I mean, I still use my 3Gs, and so does my mother.  A little update of that system wouldn’t hurt sales of the iPhone 6, I’m pretty sure.  I mean Fujifilm with their eternal updates for even discontinued cameras have shown what sort of customer loyalty you can generate doing that. To be fair Apple does that, just not for all models.  Oh and Apple, let me download the updates I want, and not forcefeed me the ones you think I need. And why the hell do I have to download 10gb worth of files for a Mac, iPhone x 2, iPads x2. Couldn’t it just be one file?  I mean bandwith COSTS!   It’s either that or wait till midnight for happy-hour.. and even then the downloads crash because they’re so damn BIG.  Remember bloatware.. It seemed that only Microsoft had that disease.. Well, it looks like Apple is pretty bloated itself.

Yes, I’m definitely fed up with apple. Enough to abandon ship?  Maybe not my Mac, still a nice computer that doesn’t crash like my old Microsoft powered one.  Maybe not my iPads- my kids use them more than me. Certainly my phone, though.  My next will not be an iPhone 7.  I mean who wants a phone where the company can’t even get their grammar correct (small i followed by an uppercase.. that should have been a warning sign!).  No I’ll go for one of these chinese jobbies, with dual sims, and android system and just about all the same apps I need.  And I’m pretty sure they won’t delete my music on my device!

Apple, you’ve been warned.