Category — Technology

A lot of talk lately about the new Palm Pre PDA/Handheld. Stuff Magazine claims it might be THE phone to kill the iPhone. Not that one cares or should care about such things… except that Apple dominates right now in so many areas and still manages to suck ass in a lot of the areas they dominate in. Case in point: our dead iPods that DO NOT come with replaceable batteries. (I have a 60 gig iPod that will not even turn on anymore that is only 2 years old…. sad little thing.) Once an ipod hits the 2 or 3 year mark they just stop working and won’t recharge. Buy a new battery you say? Yeah, great idea. Except that Apple doesn’t offer that. So you either throw it away or call Apple to see what you CAN do. They tell you that for $168 they will “fix it” or send you a “refurbished and reformatted” ipod. They DO NOT guarantee that they will send you YOUR ipod back. So that’s that. Your ipod is history.

ipod pricing has come down so much that you can now buy the same ipod that you paid $500 for two or three years ago for $200. That’s not a bad thing. But it does make their $168 fee to fix your dead battery or give you a refurbished replacement a negligible solution. Now you might as well buy a new one. And get used to it. Because you’ll be doing that every 2 or 3 years. Great idea guys. Now that’s innovation.

A buddy says to me the other day, “dude can I use your charger for my ipod again?” I’m like “what? you just used it last night…” He’s like “yeah I know but it only holds a charge for an hour or less now… do they have a new battery I can get for this?” “Nah man. You send it in for $168 for them to send you some used one…” “But I only paid $150 for this new,” he says. “yeah, welcome to the world of the ipod.”

And that’s just the grand finale rape scene that leaves you weeping when you exit the theatre. Forget about all the kicking biting scratching punching and beating you take before that trying to use the damn thing.

A friend says to me a few weeks ago while looking for a song, “God I hate scrolling like this! It drives me crazy. Isn’t there any other way to find a song or an artist?” “Nope. Nice huh?” Looks cool, but they cost three times as much as they should and will drive you absolutely crazy if you try to use it. Hey wait a minute! That sounds like something else… what is it??? oh that’s it. Apple computers themselves. But let’s not even go there yet.

So I call Apple one day. “Hey there. I probably loaded about ten new albums into iTunes this weekend and I want to be able to see those new albums on my ipod after I synch. How do I do that? “I’m sorry sir. You can’t.” “What?!!! You’re telling me that there is no way to sort according to most recently added so I can see the newest music that I have on my ipod???!” “No sir. Good idea though. We haven’t come up with it yet.” “O.k. well then take it. It’s yours. Consider it a freebie.” Crazy fucks. Have they never used an ipod themselves? Do they keep a list of the newest music they loaded in on their iPhone or something? Or perhaps scrawled on a piece of paper in their pocket?

[truth be told we did create a solution, a lame one, but this will do till they let you sort your music on the ipod in a variety of ways AND even let you create customized sorting configs as they SHOULD. Here’s the fix: You will have to create ENDLESS playlists in iTunes on your computer called “New Music 1, 2, 3,” etc and then drag your newest music over there.  That's the best they got. But even that sucks because the ipod DOESN’T LET YOU SEE WHAT THE NAME OF THE FREAKING ALBUMS OR ARTISTS ARE IN PLAYLISTS!!! All you see is the name of a song!!! So you just have to scroll and scroll and scroll through these freaking playlists clicking on each song every few seconds to see who it’s by or what album its from... it is truly an abomination in functional engineering, despite its technological advances. [Read more →]