It's another long one today, just full of spiteful anti-Apple sentiment. You've been warned.
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Dear friends, I'd rather be drinking.
In a few weeks, my significant other and I will celebrate 4 years of couplehood. To commemorate this event, I purchased for her this past Monday a 15GB iPod. Well, "purchased" is perhaps overstating the case. She's a pharmacist and I'm just a schmoe paying for a new car, so I had to settle for "heavily subsidizing". But my heart was in the right place. I was going to wait until a little closer to the big day, because her sexy new computer should be here soon, complete with the firewire capabilites required to take full advantage of the little gizmo, but I can't keep a secret when it comes to a present, and she's been pining for one since I got mine. She doesn't have a CD library nearly large enough to fill one, but she wanted it so much.
Anyways, we picked one up Monday, opening the supersexy box only to find that the 15GB version doesn't come with the really useful remote, the kind-of useful (or at least convenient) dock, or the heinously poor-quality yet still effective carrying case.
The price for all of these goodies seperately? Seventy shiny Canadian loonies each. Seriously - I defy even the most devout Mac nazi among you to take a look at that canvas and cardboard carrying case and possibly rationalize that price tag. And if you want to buy the remote, you have to buy it with another pair of headphones.
I envision a customer service call concerning that point going a little something like this:
CUSTOMER: "Well, you see, you already include a pair of those headphones with every iPod. And don't you think that people might want to buy a higher quality pair of third-party headphones to go with their iPods anyways?"
APPLE REP: "I can't hear you over all your MONEY, motherfucker!!!! HA HA HA!!!"
exuent omnes
This means that to purchase a 15GB iPod and all the accessories (that the box doesn't warn you you're not getting, I'd like to stress) will actually cost you more than a 20GB iPod that has all the goodies included.
Uh... huh.
Fortunately, the great people at Best Buy let her exchange the iPod for the bigger one, and she's very happy.
Another fun fact out of the whole ordeal - you can't actually use iTunes to copy audio from the iPod back to the computer. Why would you want to do this? Well, let's say that you had two people with many common CDs between their respective CD libraries. It would take considerably less time to blast the encoded files from one iPod over a firewire cable and onto a computer, where they could be sent onto the second iPod, than it would to re-encode all those CDs a second time.
I figured out a way around it, but I shouldn't have had to. Yet another design flaw, and yet another lame-assed attempt at copyright protection that only serves to inconvenience legitimate users. Boneheads.
And as if that wasn't enough iPod fun, I was starting to have some serious problems with my 40GB model. If memory serves (in my best Chairman Kaga voice), I've had this bad boy for almost four months. The battery life is supposed to be 18 months (which is another rant entirely) before your iPod becomes a doorstop. So the fact that I was getting less than one hour of battery life from a full charge after such a short period of time had me absolutely livid. But while I was getting the gf's iPod set up, I realized that I didn't have the latest firmware on mine, so I did the update.
Updating the fucking firmware restored my battery to its full lifespan. What the hell is that all about? I hit play in my office at ten this morning, paused it for lunch and dinner, and it's still going strong. This is bizarre. I mean, I'm glad the problem is fixed... but a problem shouldn't have cropped up in the first place, and I'm concerned about the fix. Argh.
And yet -- iPods are such wonderful little albatrosses. Despite the many excellent reasons to hate them, once you get one, it becomes like oxygen. Don't become like me, my friends. I was once like you. Run! Run! Run!
In other news, I think the divine Sorcha wants to see my twig and berries. I have to say... I'm inclined to let her. And I'm inclined to think that I'd let Canada's hottest commodity since Mitsou (and you know I could only be talking about the one and only Photogrrl) act as the photographer.
The girl will be way too busy playing with the iPod to pay any attention to whatever sauciness I get myself into for quite a while!
This isn't a promise, mind you, and I'm a huge tease. I'm just sayin'.
I'm watching Law and Order right now, and I rented an electric piano to the guy playing the murderer this week. It's my belated brush with greatness for the day. (Yes, that's right. I rented a piano to Lex fucking Luthor!!!)
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Dear friends, I'd rather be drinking.
In a few weeks, my significant other and I will celebrate 4 years of couplehood. To commemorate this event, I purchased for her this past Monday a 15GB iPod. Well, "purchased" is perhaps overstating the case. She's a pharmacist and I'm just a schmoe paying for a new car, so I had to settle for "heavily subsidizing". But my heart was in the right place. I was going to wait until a little closer to the big day, because her sexy new computer should be here soon, complete with the firewire capabilites required to take full advantage of the little gizmo, but I can't keep a secret when it comes to a present, and she's been pining for one since I got mine. She doesn't have a CD library nearly large enough to fill one, but she wanted it so much.
Anyways, we picked one up Monday, opening the supersexy box only to find that the 15GB version doesn't come with the really useful remote, the kind-of useful (or at least convenient) dock, or the heinously poor-quality yet still effective carrying case.
The price for all of these goodies seperately? Seventy shiny Canadian loonies each. Seriously - I defy even the most devout Mac nazi among you to take a look at that canvas and cardboard carrying case and possibly rationalize that price tag. And if you want to buy the remote, you have to buy it with another pair of headphones.
I envision a customer service call concerning that point going a little something like this:
CUSTOMER: "Well, you see, you already include a pair of those headphones with every iPod. And don't you think that people might want to buy a higher quality pair of third-party headphones to go with their iPods anyways?"
APPLE REP: "I can't hear you over all your MONEY, motherfucker!!!! HA HA HA!!!"
exuent omnes
This means that to purchase a 15GB iPod and all the accessories (that the box doesn't warn you you're not getting, I'd like to stress) will actually cost you more than a 20GB iPod that has all the goodies included.
Uh... huh.
Fortunately, the great people at Best Buy let her exchange the iPod for the bigger one, and she's very happy.
Another fun fact out of the whole ordeal - you can't actually use iTunes to copy audio from the iPod back to the computer. Why would you want to do this? Well, let's say that you had two people with many common CDs between their respective CD libraries. It would take considerably less time to blast the encoded files from one iPod over a firewire cable and onto a computer, where they could be sent onto the second iPod, than it would to re-encode all those CDs a second time.
I figured out a way around it, but I shouldn't have had to. Yet another design flaw, and yet another lame-assed attempt at copyright protection that only serves to inconvenience legitimate users. Boneheads.
And as if that wasn't enough iPod fun, I was starting to have some serious problems with my 40GB model. If memory serves (in my best Chairman Kaga voice), I've had this bad boy for almost four months. The battery life is supposed to be 18 months (which is another rant entirely) before your iPod becomes a doorstop. So the fact that I was getting less than one hour of battery life from a full charge after such a short period of time had me absolutely livid. But while I was getting the gf's iPod set up, I realized that I didn't have the latest firmware on mine, so I did the update.
Updating the fucking firmware restored my battery to its full lifespan. What the hell is that all about? I hit play in my office at ten this morning, paused it for lunch and dinner, and it's still going strong. This is bizarre. I mean, I'm glad the problem is fixed... but a problem shouldn't have cropped up in the first place, and I'm concerned about the fix. Argh.
And yet -- iPods are such wonderful little albatrosses. Despite the many excellent reasons to hate them, once you get one, it becomes like oxygen. Don't become like me, my friends. I was once like you. Run! Run! Run!
In other news, I think the divine Sorcha wants to see my twig and berries. I have to say... I'm inclined to let her. And I'm inclined to think that I'd let Canada's hottest commodity since Mitsou (and you know I could only be talking about the one and only Photogrrl) act as the photographer.
The girl will be way too busy playing with the iPod to pay any attention to whatever sauciness I get myself into for quite a while!
This isn't a promise, mind you, and I'm a huge tease. I'm just sayin'.
I'm watching Law and Order right now, and I rented an electric piano to the guy playing the murderer this week. It's my belated brush with greatness for the day. (Yes, that's right. I rented a piano to Lex fucking Luthor!!!)
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On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I wake up at 5:30, drive to work, go to the gym (it's at work). On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can wake up a whole 15 minutes later, so I can catch the 6:30 train to work, and not go to the gym. This pretty much guarantees I have to be in bed by 10 if I don't want to be cranky in morning.
I hate living in the 'burbs.