The 6 Pack Economist

Apple is well on it’s way to continue it’s iMonopoly.  I have told you the stories of dealing with apple die-hards but I find it funny that most of the people I know who have an apple/mac are the biggest opponents of Microsoft and their monopoly.  But once you go with apple you are stuck with them.   Granted their new OS and much of the OSes on their products is linux based so it can be changed or “patched” to turn-off their monopoly code it still seems like you get locked in.  The lock in that is done with apple seems alot worse then the lock in you get with microsoft.

I personally like the iPhone and think it is better then my Windows Media based phone.  But in order to get and use an iPhone I have to signup for a long term contract with AT&T.  Then once I have the iPhone I am only allowed to get apple approved software.  Then again the primary reason why Apple’s seem to be so stable, is the tight control on the software and extensions available.  While Microsoft allows just about any yahoo (like me) to write software for them.

I really had no point to this post.

To see the crap I had to do deal with apples in my life go to here.  If you just want to hear about the ipod crap then read on.

So after a few years of everyone having an Ipod, I finally get one for Christmas.  Mainly my wife wanted something big and so she needed to get me something big.  I would have been happy with a few pairs of pants and an Xbox game or two. 

So I have my brand spanking new 160gb Ipod.  I have two computer with music scattered on both.  Well itunes will only accept songs from one computer if you hook it up to another computer any songs on the ipod that are not on the new computer are deleted.  In addition if you try to use the ipod as a mobile harddrive.  Who has a 160gb of songs anyway.  It craps out.  It must reinstall the os and rewrite the songs to the ipod.  WTF!!!!

I figured it out eventually. I just use the ipod to move all the songs to one computer.  Let it reset and behappy. 

Well the first computer died,  the one with all the songs.  Now I have to move everything over to the back up computer before itunes tries to delete everything.

In addition the ipod has just turned into a 400 paper weight because it is frozen with the screen on.  None of the buttons work and there is no easy way to do a hard reboot of it.  So an old megadeth song is stuck at 13 seconds left to play.  And yes I tried to lock and unlock it, plug it into the wall, plug it into the computer.  Still nothing.

What a great weekend.