What the FUCK is it with Apple music stuff?

OK, yeah; I've been a computer user/administrator/programmer for well over 30 years now. I've been around long enough to really understand, deep down, the whole Apple thing. Their neat competition with IBM, the 1984 Macintosh super bowl commercial, the whole "art people like Macs and business people like PC's" thing that happened for a long time. I understand the Macs are easy to use vs. PC's have the software you want thing. I'm not on either side, particularly; I own an IMac, but I use my various PC's daily. I've lived through the mp3 craze, I own about 4 mp3 players and an Ipod, the whole shebang.

So why the FUCK does Apple make things so fucking ridiculously HARD sometimes? Sure; I eventually figure out that nobody has done things quite as nicely as Apple has with regards to buying and downloading music. In fact, there's a lot I really LIKE about their method of doing things. In the beginning, it's: (a) download itunes onto my PC; (b) import all my CD's into mp3 format into itunes; (c) enjoy the music; (d) visit the apple store and find the songs I really would like to buy for just 99 cents apiece (this is a hell of a lot nicer than having to spend $10 on a CD with one song you like and 9 that you don't want).

BUT since this nice beginning, things have gone way way downhill way way fast way way frustratingly. And here's the deal:

(1) Ipod breaks my PC: after realizing what a nice product Itunes was, I took the next step and bought an Ipod. Hooked it up to my PC, downloaded the songs I wanted; for awhile, it worked great. I'm noticing, however, that sometimes if I attach my Ipod to my PC via USB to sync it or revise my downloaded songs, if I forget to detach it before I shut down my PC, my PC won't boot. Fine; I just manually power down the PC, disconnect the Ipod from USB, then my computer will boot. Then one day, unimaginably, I have once again left my Ipod docked when I shut down this PC. It doesn't boot. So I do the usual: shut down manually, remove Ipod from USB connection, press start button on PC again. Guess what? PC doesn't boot at ALL. Now, this is a PC that has booted for me guaranteed working perfectly for 2.5+ years and now it doesn't boot at all. Long story short, the motherboard is hosed, it's next to impossible to fix the thing, so I'm down a computer. Luckily for me I'm rather paranoid about backups and I ended up not losing any data. Now some folks might say that 2.5+ years is a great lifetime for a Dell computer, but I'm telling you that this was just about the biggest headache in my 30+ years of working with computers and the whole situation sucked big time. It is my researched opinion that the lovely wonderful Apple Ipod was the main culprit in beginning the demise of this Dell E521 desktop computer. It completely hosed it, caused me to lose a fair bit of money trying to fix it, I received NO support at all from Dell, and it was one of the most frustrating situations I've ever been through. To top it all off, I was UNABLE to use my Ipod after this. It wouldn't play anything, it wouldn't be recognized when hooking it up to another computer, the little reset switch did nothing. It was completely hosed. Thanks, Apple, for a horrid little piece of hardware. You can be assured I'll never again buy an IPod, Iphone, Ipad, or anything else that will potentially break other hardware and end up not working.

(2) Itunes changes: I was pretty comfortable using the itunes shopping cart at one time, then they took it away in some convoluted new version. ASSHOLES

(3) No can play: On my replacement computer, I now try to create a CD for my car of some of the tunes I've bought from the Itunes store. I had just bought 3 new songs that night. Guess what? I could make a CD out of those 3 new songs I just bought, but I was UNABLE TO MAKE A CD FROM PREVIOUS SONGS I HAD PURCHASED FROM ITunes! This is fucking ridiculous. I try things like changing my password someplace, nothing worked. Now for the forseeable future, not only can I not play songs purchased from itunes on my broken Ipod, but I also can't play them on any of the many CD players I own. Wow you guys are wonderful. I can still play songs on an old cassette player on cassettes that I purchased 40+ years ago, or records on a record player, but songs I've bought from Itunes in just the past few years I can't play anywhere. This is fucking great. Way to go, Apple. You guys are truly gods. Gosh guess I'll go and buy a bunch more songs in your convoluted can't-be-played-anywhere-format from your store.

(4) Blank screen: Now tonight I want to do one simple thing: try to match a song I heard in a movie with one on itunes so I could possibly buy it. I open itunes, go to the store, and the screen IS BLANK! I do a search, a few icons eventually appear on my screen then the itunes store screen goes BLANK yet again! So I figure OK I'll reboot the PC; might be the PC's fault. NOPE. No dice. First application I open is itunes store and the screen is BLANK. Icons flash for a moment, but then the screen goes blank again. Wow what a cool bunch of really neat and smart engineers you are to be able to make this cool and really useful product. An application that shows a blank screen. I'm just astounded. This is Itunes 9.0.3.15. Yeah I'm sure some really smart young person or engineer will contact me and say: "Oh yeah; 9.0.3.15 doesn't work anymore. Download the latest version and you'll be OK". Well, I want to tell you something. Over the course of several years, I've ALREADY downloaded the "latest version" at least a dozen or so times already. Ya know what? At least one thing that used to work in the previous version was broken or obfuscated in the future version just about each time.

Buh-Bye Apple!: I'm fucking sick and tired of all this. I'm fucking sick and tired of having to "figure things out" for several hours just to play a song on my computer in this convoluted format. I'm sick to death that I can't play any of these songs that I bought on any other portable music player. I'm sick to death about nearly everything Apple these days. Yeah I understand Jobs may have some health problems, I met the guy once at a talk at Princeton and I wish him the best. But ya know what? This is probably the final nail in the coffin that makes me swear off any Apple products now and ever more.

Good luck everyone! Let's hope that another alternative besides Microsoft and Apple appear in the near future.

--SDP