I've made a decision regarding iPods, with this year's Apple Expo (Fr) coming up and Paris inescapably plastered with advertisements for the newest Nano version on the best-selling theme.
This "pencil-thin" beauty and those iPod Minis strike me as ways of burning holes in your wallet or rainbow-coloured handbag, unless you are into fashion accessories. It's not their impressive technology I contest, but the pointlessness perhaps of paying such a sum (around 200 dollars) for just two GB of storage space when you could regard what I'd call a "proper" iPod as a wiser investment and true value for money.
Yet they sell, I've seen women everywhere in minis, and some men too. So for those who insist, recently one test given the Nano by Ars Technica featured insane things like running it over and dropping it from heights. What the Ars Techies didn't say, once it gave up the ghost, was how long they expected it to last in more reasonable hands.
Testing musical times
Some Apple Europe senior personnel know I'll for now spare log readers of any details of the latest "frank discussion" I've begun with them. It regards not the good quality of iPod hardware, but the dire things that can happen to iPods, caused sometimes by the very software the company releases for iTunes.
A few will know this isn't my first run-in with the company, while specialist sites such as MacFixit go deep into what manufacturers like to call "issues" -- a euphemism for nasty problems experienced by some customers -- and I've this week sent them a summary of mine and what others have told me about their own.
We'll see how this exchange goes.
In the meantime, just be warned that iPods are terrific but you should not join the throng of people buying one and expect to keep it in good working order unless you're ready to read more than Apple explains in the small booklet that comes with it.
I stay loyal to Apple in spite of an oft-noted tendency on Cupertino's part -- that's the company HQ in California for those who don't know -- to stop "thinking different" and use you and me as guinea-pigs. My 60 GB iPod works, more or less, but has refused to synch with my eMac for months following the release of one version of iTunes for Mac (I don't know how it's been for Windows users).
Here's a reminder for newcomers to such matters of 'Tedium and laudamus ... the basics of computer basics'. The annoying iPod fix I recommended in July didn't prove reliable in the longer term, so yet another piece of my Apple hardware is going off for repair, and the golden rule, good people -- back up your music and other crucial data -- holds good.
Never imagine you're safe. That's wrong.
Apple has released a support piece, 'How to back up your music in iTunes 5. Good on them. Don't argue, do it -- not just with your sound files -- and sleep soundly.
The Apple people know I'd prefer to be writing about music for you, not about ways to get into it and things that go wrong. I also no longer plan to listen and let you in on it by means, among others, of a 60 GB iPod when a third of that prodigious amount suits me fine. The 60 gigs will stay somewhere safer.
Thursday evening update: That iPod was taken away for repair today, leaving me with its smaller new partner, aty commendable speed, within less than 48 hours of the request.
However, it's in the public interest to share the disgust voiced this afternoon by a journalist who attended the "high mass" that starts each Apple Expo and such events around the world.
There in an invited professional capacity, this colleague was sickened by aspects of Apple affairs I've touched on above: the "planted" questions, a lack of openness to thornier ones, a feeling some of the reporters present had been "bought" ahead of time.
Above all, it seems the hype was bad news indeed. For obvious reasons, my source remains unnamed.
My own mail has met with no response, which scarcely surprises me, but it's early days yet. Having said I won't go into the issues yet, that holds good. For now. The firm has had their "third time lucky" in my eyes.
If I don't get a satisfactory reply to the questions I've put to Apple Europe and the answers I want concern music-lovers, musicians and iPod users, they've had fair warning these matters should be in the public domain.
1:58:36 AM 
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