Steve Jobs iPod Touch Updates

The iPhone 3G brings with it many great updates, including the App Store.

 

Yet as before Apple has chosen to tax the poor iPod Touch users.

This is a loss of trust for many people and thats much more of an important issue than $10 it costs to purchase the update.

The thing is Apple tried the market, you all gave in to the first update so now they are going to screw you every time there is an update. 

This, for me, makes the iPod Touch now a no-go and has made me decide that I will not now rush to purchase any new iPod that comes along.

That sounds major but the iPod as we knew it is effectively dead, the high end product is the iPhone, the iPod nano will effectively replace the iPod. If you have an iPod Touch you have a hobbled iPhone.

It will therefore become cheaper in future to manufacture and sell you an iPhone with no-sim, you get your iPod functionality and Apple get the possibility of you using that SIM card slot at some point in the future. That is surely the direction in which things are going?

That means you will have to pay for future iPhone upgrades? After all, there is a market there, why would they not? They are a company, not a charity.

With millions of users worldwide it suddenly becomes worth charging even $1.

And what of OS X updates or iLife updates that often add functionality? Should we pay for those too? Maybe we will have to, after all there is now an App Store from whence to purchase them!

That is why I moaned so much when the first update came out, we should never have accepted it then, all we did was set the path in stone for the future.

And if Apple can charge for updates, then so can Microsoft and all the other companies that follow in their respective wakes. This is a much bigger change than we may initially see!

P.S. Paying for an upgrade that allows access to the App Store, should that not have been free to allow all to access the App Store apps? Kind of shot yourself in the foot there perhaps? REVENGE! Slightly, partially, yummy! LOL

Well its finally happened.

The last nail was hammered into the coffin and the cadaver rests forever undisturbed inside.

Ok, its a little dramatic, I grant you that but when you are wronged repeatedly you have to say enough is finally enough.

A shop sells you crap, you stop buying. Your train company delays you, you fly or take the bus, Your partner cheats, you leave them.

Apple, take this as notice, the love affair is over, pack your bags and leave.

I grew up with Microsoft, each new release was more and more exciting, new features, new ideas, pushing the bounds of technology, moving forward and finding new ways of being more productive and interesting and exciting.

Then they discovered there was money in support. And it began. Usability was replaced with un-usability beacuse it required support, support of Microsoft trained (at cost) system engineers. The more difficult they made it, the more money they made. We were sitting ducks and they took those easy shots.

And for me, enough was enough. I moved to mac.

Now I love the mac platform, it is truly wonderful and my time with it has been a joy.

Things work. Sorry but thats it, boring, short but brilliantly true, things W.O.R.K. where they don’t with Windows, no re-installs, no searching technet for explanations for todays obscure failure. Imagine my joy!

Years of joy, years of fun and usability and get the pictue?

Now I have been shafted once, bought a new ipod cos I didnt want an iPhone, didnt NEED an iPhone.

And now I have to pay, pay because I have NO OTHER CHOICE than to pay if I want to move forward, pay because I am being held to ransom. So yes, I gave in and paid.

Now Apple are to release another new update, just a matter of weeks after the last, not months more like weeks. And they want me to pay again. Not the iPhone users, not those supreme beings, no they get if free but us the lowly iPod user must AGAIN pay.

Well, no, sorry, not again, no longer will I just take this.

So it stops.

The apple TV is definately in the bin,

The new mac, postponed.

The change to something else, probably linux accelerated.

I have had enough.

I want to be free of one person, one entity choosing my destiny and then screwing me for my loyalty to them.

You know I feel better for venting this, i’m such an apple whore i’ll probably forgive them tomorrow, god its like sleeping with the company LOL

I said the word Whore!, naughty me! hence the [NSFW] tag. Let me know if that is me being too strict

And while we are on the subject, who the heck read this blog?

Go on email me people! Let me know there is someone, out there in the ether, otherwise I am having Yvette from Most Haunted excercise your spirit LOL, anyone else into Most Haunted? Love it!

Until next time, thanks, and guys email me!

There is a growing voice asking Apple to give everyone with an iPod Touch the recent app upgrade for free.

In a previous post I stated how angry I was that while still within the first month of ownership I was being charge a fee that people that potentially had purchased a few days after me were not having to pay.

I would ask everyone to sign the petition, as I write this it stands at over 17,000 signatures, thats almost $9 Million worth of iPod sales!

Sign the petition to ask Apple to give us free iPod Touch Apps.

When a $20 charge cost Apple Inc $768!

I bought my iPod Touch before right before Christmas.

As you saw, I was all excited by my purchase and yes I still do love it.

But today I was totally shafted again by Apple and I have to speak out and say I am not happy.

Steve Jobs has said today that iPhone users will get the latest update for free while iPod Touch users will need to pay $20, which translates to £12.99 ($25) in the UK.

Now I have had my product less than a month should I not get this upgrade free of charge? If I had purchased it 6 months ago fair enough but less than 30 days?

I am not about to start paying to fix software faults made by apple or add features that they forgot first time around or willingly held back.

At present there are a number of things I cannot do that a standard iPod can and should do, no lyrics/shownotes, no scrolling tracknames so I cannot see the names or podcast show names. These things are basic to the iPod and should be fixed, I should not have to pay for those fixes, you should have got them right first time around. I do not wish to pay for your incompetence. If I did I would currently be using a Zune.

If you want to hold back movie rentals, a major feature upgrade, then fine, fine for people that have owned them for more than 30 days, fine I can accept that but if I had bought it yesterday is it fair I have to pay more today to get those features, no I do not feel so.

So Apple I now with-hold my planned purchases which would have totalled £363 or $768 until you change your mind. This is how I make myself heard.

I was naughty, I purchased a new iPod the 16Gb iPod Touch and I think we are going to be married, yes I love it that much.

Not that it’s perfect mind! I still want wireless sync (it can’t be that difficult the Apple TV does it for gawds sakes!) and why cant I download podcasts via the iTunes WiFi store when I am on the move? A few more apps would be nice too. And at some point I want it to hit 100Gbish so I can store all my tracks on there. This is a flash device and the change from magnetic media to solid state will happen albeit not in an instant and I am aware of that, not that I can’t push though.

Those small points aside the product is completed, yes unlike certain operating systems (Vista & OS X Leopard) this product actually feels finished and it works beautifully. Coverflow actually flows, Why doesnt it do that on the Mac or PC with their huge memory and processors yet it does on this dinky thing? Why am I complaining, it works people and its delicious!  LOL

I am going to give myself a wrist injury cos flipping this thing in and out of widescreen is as much fun as CD drawers when they first came out, remember, open/close/open/close/open/close. LOL You just want to do it, BECAUSE YOU CAN!!!!

The browser is as good as the rest, you can zoom in at the click of the smooth and sleek and tough screen (feels like glass, so dont push too hard) and everything can be slid around with a slide of the finger on the screen.

Of course like every touch interface in the world, you will need to keep wiping it, cos your fingers are grubby (natural oils) and you probably didnt wash after you came out of the toilet, I know what you people are like (euch! LOL) but thankfully you get a cleaning cloth, iPod branded so you’ll be cleaning those 1.99 garage forecourt sunglasses with it to try and look cool this summer!

One thing that I can see being simple but very useful, there’s a calculator in the thing, and it doesn’t need a degree to make it work unlike the one in my mobile (how many *’s to divide?), so thats handy.

A great calendar that syncs with my Mac anyway and also a contacts list that syncs also for when your mobile battery runs out and you need to use a landline (connecting you to the continent sir, go ahead caller)

Got access to free WiFi, not a lot of that around in the UK unless you like hanging around McDonalds car parks (the police have my number down, hee hee) but you can view YouTube widescreen on this thing and as half of my words have been “screen” I guess I should say that that is now workable for TV shows and Movies and the colour saturation is out of this world compared to the older iPods.

This thing is slimmer than a supermodel and a hell of a lot less temperamental, but seriously the new wave of iPods is so slim and sleek they amaze me. Even the new iPod Nano is a wonder to behold. The only thing holding back it getting slimmer is the earphone socket, so I guess bluetooth is the way it will go and there is a lot of discussion on the net as to wether the Touch can do bluetooth, I think it probably can but they might never enable it to push you to the iPhone, only time will tell.

And on the subject of the iPhone, I am not an O2 customer and after my previous attempts with them I don’t want to be. £1,000 for an unlocked version is a bit steep and I wouldn’t walk around with £1,000 in a wad waving it around the streets so I chose not to go for the iPhone…well at least for now. 3G is around the corner and if I could merge the iPhone and the Three Skype phone (which I also bought recently) together I would never need to replace my shoes as my feet would never touch the ground.

One downside, yes there is but one, I didn’t have a great experience with the iTunes Wifi Store, thought I would give it a try with one track to begin with and see how it all went together with transferring that track back to my Mac’s iTunes. Well I was able to browse easily and find a track I wanted, downloaded in next to no time and I was listening to a new track right there on the iPod with nothing else involved, excellent. Then I synced my iPod and the track disappeared. Not on the iPod, not on the Mac, not anywhere. I spoke to Apple support who to be fair replied within just a couple of hours and gave me a free download of that track again and some advice on what to do next time but I keep thinking, should I need advice, shouldn’t it just do it? Bit disappointed in that, though it might be a known thing and i’m sure they will get it fixed, it really was the one solitary negative of the whole iPod Touch experience, everything else was very much a plus.

So on the whole I would definately recommend the iPod Touch. Go get one!