DEAR APPLE, ITUNES IS SHITE

Now here’s an interesting article;

 

"Apple is now bigger than Microsoft and Google - Combined!" [Daily Mail, Feb 2012]

It prompted me to pour you another Cup of Vitriol - and write a letter.

Dear Steve, 

You’re shite.  Actually no; your iPhone’s shite.  Actually, that’ a bit harsh and unfair as well.  Sorry, pal, I’m a bit grumpy right now - you'll see why in a minute.  It’s actually your “iTunes” software that’s shite.  And that is a fair comment.

Actually, I do love my iPhone - but I want to load my own music onto it.  You won’t let me.  Well, you won’t let me load my music very easily (or even standard easily, for that matter!).  In fact you make it easier to go shopping for tracks I don’t need, rather than let me load my own music in, say, a couple of minutes.  You know, I have dozens of albums as MP3s or CDs.  So, call me Scottish and Old Fashioned, but I am NOT going to buy an album again through your shite software, when I already have it.  And, I was led to believe by your spin that your iTunes software was intuitive.  In fact, it’s as about as intuitive as astrophysics.  It may surprise you to learn that I'm not the only one who thinks this;

"Consumers Don't Dig Apple iTunes" [Helen Walters, Business Week, Jan 2010]

So, the reason I’m grumpy is that I’ve spent the last FOUR HOURS on your iTunes software trying to do what would have taken me FOUR MINUTES to do on my daughter’s Samsung Galaxy (Android) phone.  [** sigh **]  In fact the actual file transfer from Windows to Android would have taken longer than the act of moving it across.  With your iTunes, it’s the other way around!!  Figuring out how to copy music across with the right title and track order = 3 Hours 58 minutes.  Transfer time = 2 minutes.

Well there’s four hours of frustration I want to forget.  But I have to remember it, of course, for the next time I want to go through the same convoluted bollocks of loading one of MY albums from my Windows PC (yes, there are other computers out there, other than Macs) onto my iPhone.  

Look, I get that you want to make money from selling songs and albums from iTunes.  But haven’t you made enough?  Get over yourself and try to remember your customers, please.  You’re bigger than Microsoft and Google COMBINED.  And that’s a lot bigger than my little Godzone New Zealand (that’s a country, by the way; All Blacks, Peter Jackson?).  So couldn’t you use some of that money to hire a software developer with people skills?  I know they’re a rare - and thus, expensive - breed, but  it might be the only way to develop an INTUITIVE version of iTunes.  So before I go, here are some tips;

• Haven’t you heard of the “Help” feature in software?  It’s supposed to help frustrated, pissed off software users like me.  Menus are quite useful, as well.
• Haven’t you heard of “Drag n Drop”?  It a simple, easy way of moving large amounts of data from one place to another.  Like music.  To iPhones.
• Haven’t you heard that the masses don’t like paying for things twice?  Like, music?
• Haven’t you heard that iTunes is NOT the only place to buy music.  That’s true, that is – honest!
• Haven’t you heard that the proles already had music before iTunes?  The great unwashed are going to download free music and copy from their own CDs, no matter what the corporate music hacks say, what the TPPA tries to do, and what YOU try to prevent.  Accept it, move on.

Well, I hope that’s useful, Steve.  Even if you read this now, you probably won’t give a toss.  I guess the fact that you’re dead doesn’t help.  Couldn’t you have left “Sort out iTunes” in your enormous will?  I guess not.

Thanks for nothing, you egotistical spunk-up,

Regards withheld, A Cup of Vitriol.