I HATE APPLE

They have a script they won't deviate from, and they're happy to give/force you into trying anything to get you off the line, even if you've tried it before, so that when you call back (when, not if) you speak to someone else.

These are just as bad:

PC World
Pipex Internet
BT Business Dial Up
.
.
.

90% of my contact with Indian people is now them lying about their name as they parrot an unhelpful script at me, and it's usually when I'm annoyed to start with cos some equipment or process has gone wrong!

xpost - (shhh)

Operation System Christ.

I bless you.

(Psst by the way Silas - mind explaining to me how Aussies are "racial underdogs"? I must confess, I am confused.)

Also, Itunes is a pile of shite. Such a pain in the arse. Why isn't there a way to update your library without having to go and add all the folders again manually?? Why can't you add a folder to a playlist instead of having to drag all the songs in individually? I end up making playlists in Winamp, saving them as m3u files and importing them to Itunes.

The thing I hate is looking up every possible fix for my ipod online so that I don't call tech support until I've done everything, and then spending hours being put through the steps of things I've already done that didn't help. And then being told, "hmm, dunno what your problem is, go buy a faster usb card" even though it worked with the slow usb port until a couple weeks ago! so now i have to go spend more money to prove that something actually is wrong with the superexpensive ipod itself.

This is the second one that's bombed on me in a year; when I sent the first one in for repair, they sent me a new one. That's lovely as long as I have a warranty but the second two years is up I'm going to have to go looking for a new mp3 player. So has anyone found one that lasts longer than six months?

my second is two years old and still works beautifully. so, er: "yes, the iPod" would answer your question :)

It works for me! on my MAC@!! :D

Apple website was broken when I was trying to get my fucked Ipod (which arrived that way in the mail) replaced and it wouldn't set up an account to register the Ipod to, and the phone operators needed my account details before they would do anything.

In the end I wrote a bitchy email, and to their credit they did get it sorted pretty quickly.

Re Itunes,

I figured Mac users would have it better. It's so stupid, you can add folders to your Library, but not to Playlists. So if you have a folder with, e.g. your fave hardcore punk songs, that you want to put on your Ipod, you'd have to add the folder to the Library and then go through the Library searching for each song individually by artist! WTF!! Unless I go through and retag each song and change the album to "Fave punk songs" or something.

[sniggers like a six-year-old at juvenile out-of-context fnarr-ness; composes self]

see, being very old-fashioned and paranoid [1], i've never run with my iPod. indeed, i bought a Shuffle expressly for the gym. i kind-of figured that jogging about with a small and delicate hard disk wasn't a good idea.

but then everyone else in the world seems to exercise with their iPod, so ... i'm sure i'm just overly paranoid.

i also bought some of this after i broke the first one. i heartily recommend it.

[1] although stupid enough to let my drunk friends fuck about with my powerbook at 6am on monday. gaaah. i came so close to losing you, by beloved.

Unless I go through and retag each song and change the album to "Fave punk songs" or something.
This is the insane shit PC users do that makes me mental.

http://home.egge.net/~savory/wolfschf.jpg

best chest-thump ever

I'd heard good reviews from my friends and was tired of the constant crashing of Windows XP, so I finally broke down and bought an iMac. It arrived today, and my whole family gathered around to watch me open it. My mother and father--who hate Apple, although they don't really know why, and had fought me tooth and nail to buy another Dell-- actually oohed and ahhed and as I extracted the sleek, self-contained desktop from the box.

Setup took less than a minute, and I was so excited to start it up it felt like fucking Christmas. Of course, something went wrong. No matter how many times I rebooted it, all the screen displayed (in truth, all it would ever display) was an error message in four languages on a dull grey screen.

I spent several hours on the line with a condescending Applecare representative who mumbled constantly and in one instance told me which key to hold down by pronouncing the sound of the letter rather than its name (note: "ssssssss" does not really carry well over the phone), and then berated me for misinterpreting his instructions. After zeroing the hard drive and reinstalling twice, he finally concluded that my brand spanking new computer was totally fucked. I'm moving to Brooklyn in less than 7 days, and come Monday I'll have to ship it back to Apple and pray the new one arrives before the moving van.

It is a such cocktease, sitting there on my desk, taunting me with its terrible, inoperable beauty. I hate you, Apple.

They had better be able to rush the new iMac.

I am looking forward to buying a Mac Mini so I can get rid of mp3 stuff on this one.

can't seem to reset PRAM (no idea why it won't do it).

would like to smash it with a hammer, and might even have to suffer the expense and final humiliation of getting someone to look at it JUST SO I CAN REINSTALL OSX & THEN SELL IT.

Mac 'problems' are SO MUCH more intractable than Windows it's not even funny.

Going to bed at maximum pissed off.