My First Apple Complaint
It has been quite a while since I jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I mean, I certainly don’t have two feet on it because I still love my PC’s, but still. I bought my original 40 gig iPod with the monochrome screen. Then I bought the 60 gig iPod photo. Then I bought my first Nano, which was 4 gigs. That led to an 8 gig Nano as I fell in love with the Nike+ running rig. Mixed into the iPod craze, I bought a MacBook Pro and a copy of Apple LogicPro so that I could do music production at home. Finally, yesterday after my hold button broke on my 8 gig Nano, it was time to buy a new one.
I am a bigtime power user of my Nano. It isn’t Apple’s fault that the hold button broke on my 8 gig one. I use that thing every day for hours and hours on end. In all, over the last year, I have listened to every minute of two national radio shows whose running times combined regularly hit 7 hours per day. Combine that with all the Smodcasts (Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier,) audio books, songs and other pieces of audio that I listen to, I certainly get my money’s worth out of the device.
So, now I needed to replace my Nano with a new one so it could keep track of my renewed interest in jogging with the Nike + system. I spent $200 for a 16 gig of the latest variety of Nano and I started using it. For me, this means plugging it into my PC. It means plugging it in in my bedroom to my Altec Lansing peripherals. It means plugging it in in the car with my iPlay and headphone jack into the car stereo. That is how I listen to it and keep it charged throughout the day.
Well, the latest version of the Nano works just find syncing with the PC, but none of my other charging options work. The Altec Lansing speaker system which has worked on every iPod I have ever owned tells me that charging is unsupported on this iPod. Then this morning it told me the same thing in the car. Great.
A little bit of research reveals that Apple decided to cut some corners. Apparently when apple moved away from the Firewire charging process to the USB one, they begged all the peripheral makers to do it too. This is a change from 12v to 5v in the adapter. So, finally, in this latest generation, Apple has decided to save a few cents per iPod and do away with the converter that would allow me (and countless others) to use the peripherals that I have surrounded myself with over the course of not 1, not 2, but 5 different iPods. All those dollars that I spent are now completely worthless because they no longer serve a purpose in the way I have it set up in my life.
And maybe it isn’t a big deal to me to have to go out and buy a new charging cable for my car and a new speaker system for my bedroom, but that should be for me to decide, not Apple. Backwards compatibility is important when you are trying to make people adopt you into their culture, or even adopt new culture. Since I spent all the time and money doing it, Apple shouldn’t punish me after they have me all committed. Certainly they shouldn’t do it over what some people describe as a few cents.
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5 Responses to “My First Apple Complaint”
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i had heard something was up with the new fleet of iPods regarding charging – thanks for being the guinea pig, as my wife’s 2GB nano is about to die.
do you know if this problem exists with the iPod touch?
We’ve had to deal with similar issues with the iPhone not charging with any old connectors. We have a Griffin iTrip and an iHome alarm clock, neither of which work with the iPhone. Don’t really feel like buying all new stuff so we just deal with it. Phones come close to dying in the car between Ohio and DC.
I think it’s really similar to Apple forcing Firewire charging off the iPods, then moving it off the Macbook in the latest iteration. Rather than giving the option to people and letting them keep their peripherals, they’ve managed to nickle and dime everyone for the side stuff.
For example they no longer ship the (mostly useless) Apple remote with new macbooks – now they cost 20 bucks. They switched to a proprietary (albeit “license-free”) version of DIsplayport in their new laptops requiring a $30 adapter for VGA and DVI, or $100 for dual-link DVI. The new LCD display is mini-DP only, meaning you have to buy a new macbook to use it.
I understand moving hardware forward happens but it seems that Apple tends to make the decisions far ahead of the curve in terms of wide acceptance.
That being said, I’m hooked on Macs and use them more or less exclusively. Macbook for my main cpu, wife has a macbook as well. We’ve got an old G4 mac mini as a media center connected to our plasma, which works out great. If Apple updates the mini at macworld, I’ll be getting one for work so I don’t have to carry my laptop anymore. It’s amazing stuff how once you get an ipod you tend to get sucked in.
Yeah, I think I will probably buy another Mac, but I am such a geek that I will always have multiple platforms in my house for the foreseeable future. I was skeptical about the mac, even as I was buying the Macbook Pro for music production, but here I am in my living room typing on it right now. When I go to the Dell laptop at work, I constantly find myself trying to use finger dragging techniques on the mousepad that are only supported on my Macbook Pro. That in and of itself is a testament to mac’s innovation.
The multi-touch gestures blew my mind. I’m totally jealous of the new MBPs that allow up to four finger gestures. Using the multi-touch on the iPhone is so intuitive I can’t believe more computer companies don’t try to incorporate similar technologies. Then again, that’s what patents are for.
Another thing I really like is the simplicity in networking that Macs have via bonjour. I’m doing a MobileMe trial and being able to log into my mini from anywhere is awesome – it’ll be real handy when I have a work computer and home computer that I’m writing from, etc.
IRB?
c’mon, you didn’t type “four finger gestures” without some kind of inuendo… right? am i right guys? guys?