(The short-and-sweet version can be found here.)
Yes, you heard it from me first. iPods suck. Bigtime. However, there is something of a story to go with this proclamation, so you may wish to grab a soda, break out the chips and salsa, and pull up a comfortable chair.
A few days back, Better Half happened to win one of the shiny new iPod Nano, second generation, 4GB models in a raffle… All cute and black with its shiny silver back. Of course, effectively all modern MP3 players are made out of that same, soft, shiny plastic (even my Creative Zen Vision:M), but do not even get me started on how easily that material gets scratched, or how badly it shows off fingerprints. Sure, it looks great – in the box. The second you take it out, however, it is all over… Yet another thing that Mac "pioneered", and, in the end, is still just a shiny facade for perfectly normal crap. At any rate, she came into possession of this little toy, and, naturally enough, wanted to put some music on it. Well, she was visiting me, and since I have the largest music collection of the two of us, by far, we figured we would go ahead and install iTunes on my computer (poor thing), download some music onto the iPod, and then strip iTunes back off my computer (which is almost more painful than installing it… yay Mac!), and go about our merry business. What, an hour’s worth of effort, right?
Not so much.
We took everything out of the box, looked over the instructions, and then followed them as written. We popped the iTunes CD in my computer, installed it, plugged up the iPod when it said to, let it do whatever it needed to do, and then left the iPod plugged in to charge up and be ready for use. All nice and shiny and relatively simple (besides iTunes taking forever to install, and possibly being one of the slowest-to-respond programs I have ever had the misfortune of using). We left the iPod plugged in over night (well past the three recommended hours of initial charging time), and came back the next day to start poking at it. Well, we started to unplug it until we noticed the "Do Not Disconnect" icon flashing on its screen. In black and white. Now, I could have sworn these newfangled 2G Nanos had color screens, but I guess I was mistaken. After a little poking and prodding on the Apple site, we determined that the Nano had to be "ejected" by iTunes before it was safe to be unplugged from the computer. I guess the fact that Windows has supported plug-(and-unplug-)and-play USB functionality since the release of XP just happened to escape the notice of Apple. Sure, you can still eject USB things if you so desire, but my thumb drive, card reader, external hard drive, Creative Zen Vision:M, webcam, digital camera, and everything else I use can simply be plugged in, tweaked however I like, and then unplugged, without any problems or difficulties, or having to boot up some ungainly piece of software just to "eject" it. I guess Apple has not figured out how to do that yet. So we boot up iTunes again (which continues to take as long as some of the more complicated games I use), tell it to eject the player (which takes significantly more time than it should as well), and finally are permitted to unplug something from the computer. I feel like I am five years old asking my mother if I can go outside to play. Ok, at this point, the player does not actually have any music, or any other kind of file on it, but we just wanted to go ahead and boot it up to see what it looked like. So, we turn it over, flip it around, and after carefully examining each of its six, shiny sides, concluded that it does not posses the fabled oh-en-oh-eff-eff switch. After consulting the instruction manual again, it turns out that pressing any of the five buttons on the front will turn the player on, while holding down the "play" button will turn it off. Sorry, but even my Creative has an on/off switch (combined with the "hold" switch, conveniently enough), and holding down "play" to turn something off is about as smart as pressing "start" to do the same thing (a common "complaint" Apple users have about Windows). So we push a button… and nothing happens. And we push another button… and nothing happens. We check all five buttons. We hold them down. We tap them. We fiddle with the scroll wheel. We check to make sure the hold switch was not on (it was not) and do it all over again. And it sits there and stares at us, like some miniature, shiny, 2001-esque monolith. Only without the monkeys bouncing around it, clubbing each other over the head. I was more than willing to club the holy hell out of it later in the evening, but we had not quite worked up to that point… yet.
Cue the quizzical point of the evening.
So we shuffle around in the included documentation (limited at best) as well as the online help files, and decide that the only way to remedy the situation is to plug it back into the computer, and execute a reboot. So, we plugged it back in (another waiting game), and held down the center button, and the "Menu" button… waited… and then the little Apple logo cropped up, filled the bar beneath, and the player sat there for a few moments, and shut off. Seemed fine. So we ejected it again (You can just start playing Dave Brubeck’s "Take Five" every time you hear "plugged", "ejected", or "iTunes".), and pushed the center button in an attempt to power it up. Lo and behold, a cute little almost-empty battery icon popped up, with a triangle-shaped caution icon placed over it, and then it shut off again. Interestingly enough, the icon was still in black and white. Well, we were reasonably certain that the battery could not still be completely empty after spending a night charging (it was plugged into my USB hub, however, said hub has its own dedicated powersupply, and has never had any manner of problem with any other piece of USB equipment requiring USB-power or -charging), so we, again, returned to the Apple help pages.
Cue the annoyed point of the evening.
Well, after some more poking and prodding of the help files contained on the Apple site, we conclude that either the software on the player is out of date, or the iTunes software is out of date. Bear in mind that the player is fresh out of the box, and the iTunes installed on my computer came from the CD included with the iPod. That is right, ladies and gentlemen… Apple either shipped an iPod that was, quite literally, incompatible with the iTunes version they shipped with the said iPod, or the iPod itself was not playable straight out of the box. What kind of idiocy is that? So we download the update for iTunes (of course, when we installed the out-of-date iTunes, it could not be bothered to let us know that there was a better version out there…), install it, then plug in the iPod and get iTunes to go fetch the appropriate update for the player. It grabs the update, installs it on the iPod, the player reboots, and… holy crap, it does have a color screen!! Now the "Do Not Disconnect" screen is all cute and colorful and everything, and everyone seems happy. That is, until the player completes its reboot, and starts interfacing with iTunes again – "This iPod appears to be corrupted. We recommend restoring the player to factory configurations, or resetting it," or some error message that is approximately similar to that – please forgive me for not having a perfectly photographic mind. So we reset it. Same error. We unplug it from the computer and reset it. Now, instead of the almost-empty-battery icon, we get a folder icon, with the same triangle-shaped caution sign over it, and "http://www.apple.com/support/ipod" written above it. Then it shut off. We check that webpage, again, and find absolutely nothing useful. We execute another reboot, this time unplugged from the computer, and it yields the same little warning sign before shutting off again. We contemplate restoring it back to its original factory settings, but that would result in a black-and-white-screen, a funny little battery icon, the need to reinstall the iPod upgrade, and getting us right back to where we stand. Yeah, that does not sound like a particularly good expenditure of time to me, either. Of course, we are probably up to an hour-and-a-half to two hours of effort at this moment… granted, I was doing other things while iTunes was loading, the downloads were happening, etc. etc., but I was still holding a small, shiny, paperweight in my hand at the end of that time. To say I was impressed would be an outright lie.
Cue the frustrated point of the evening.
Thankfully (or not, depending on how you view the situation), there is an Apple store relatively close to where I live. We were planning on going out that evening regardless, so we hopped in the car, and headed that way. Half an hour later, we were at the store, explaining the situation to one of the red-shirted (Anyone remember the line concerning red-shirts in Star Wars/Trek?) sales people. Well, after explaining the whole drama-ridden story to him, his response? "That shouldn’t have happened." The black-and-white screen confused him even more, and he expressed that confusion in yet another proclamation of "That shouldn’t have happened." Now, I am not an Apple-certified technician, and I am far from being a hardcore computer (of any make) guru, and my experience with the remarkably expansive field of MP3 players out there is rather limited, what with me only averaging a new one every two years. However, the one thing I wanted to say, more than anything else at that precise moment, was, "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK." However, still naively clinging to the belief that this veritable rocket scientist would be able to help my wife, I held my tongue, and allowed him to continue. He waddles over to one of the many, equally-shiny Macs propped up around the room, and logs in, saying he will set us up for an appointment for support, with the next one being available at 8pm. It was then 6pm. Yeah. I am going to sit around for two hours in an Apple store (or in the shopping area around it), when I can easily see at least three separate individuals in the store, all wearing the cute little red shirts, and all doing precisely nothing. Poking at a computer. Talking to each other. Whatever. But helping customers, or providing a little tech support? Of course not. So the salesperson continues, plugging it up to one of the Macs, and saying that he is going to check and see if he can get the iPod to talk to one of their computers. He at least had the forethought to ask if we had any music on it before he reformatted it, but neglected to mention one small detail that I will explain in a moment, and that completely slipped my mind before he did it. With the reformat complete, he downloaded and installed the iPod update, and everything seemed hunky dory. He copied over some of the music they had on that computer, went to check it on some of the headphones they had out, and everything seemed to be fine… Of course, it makes a certain degree of sense that an Apple product would get along just fine with another Apple product, but since they advertise that iPods are fully compatible with PCs, I confess I expected a little more out of this little thing. Upon his return, he said that everything looked fine, and seemed to be working, though the connection cable that came with the iPod did seem a little tight, though that could not have caused the issues we had. Wonderful. Yet another strike against something that, I again remind you, came fresh and new, straight out of the box. However, the clincher came when he mentioned one small detail – the iPod was now formatted for use with Apples, and only Apples, and would have to be reformatted again for use on a PC… putting us back to the original software version that yielded the broken battery icon, and then the update that yielded the busted folder icon. Great. So I inquired as to whether or not they maintained a PC somewhere for troubleshooting with iPods… his response? Something between smelling something distasteful, and righteous indignation. So, sure, iPods are supposed to be compatible with PCs… but do not expect Apple to give you the slightest bit of assistance or support in making them actually work with PCs. I mean, I can understand not wanting to have a PC out in the front, competing with their Golden Children, but just maintaining a clunker of a PC in the back with iTunes on it, so you could check out iPods on an honest-to-God PC? Would that really be so bad? If they say it is compatible, they had better damn well have a way of proving/demonstrating that. To be perfectly honest, the salesperson’s tactics changed at that point of the conversation, and he immediately shifted to more of a, "Well, if you want to be sure it will work, Apples are guaranteed to be compatible with it, and not cause any problems…" Sorry, but if I wanted yet another POS Apple product in my house, I would have already purchased it, and I sure as hell am not going to fork over however many hundreds of dollars as would be necessary to purchase an Apple (much less replace my extensive software library) just for some overhyped MP3 player that I could just as easy turn around, sell, and use the money to purchase a larger, more PC-friendly player. No dice there, schmuck.
Cue the angry point of the evening.
So we go and finish our shopping (still rather successfully, even with it being after Black Friday), and head back home. We plug in the iPod, and, amazingly enough, iTunes recognizes that the player is formatted for Apple use at the moment, and needs to be reformatted, yet again, for PC use. We let it do its little thing, and… hold your breath… it worked! Holy crap. It ejected from the computer, we pushed a button, and lo and behold, a shiny, color, interface screen came up. So here we are, fully four hours of effort later (not counting the shopping part of our venture out), and we finally have a fully functional iPod Nano. Now, due to the fact that I am a salaried worker, and considering how many hours I work a week, much less the entire year, my time really is not worth all that much money. However, I still tend to value it rather highly, and expending four hours of it just to get the bloody iPod functional did not enamor me of Apple in the slightest bit. Of course, what I did not know was that my agony was far from over. Much like many of the MP3 players out there, my Creative Zen Vision:M uses ID3 tags exclusively for its filing methods. However, it redeems itself by not requiring the use of bloated, excessively slow software to transfer files onto it… I just grab a directory, drag it to the player’s "Music" directory, and everyone is happy. And, considering the fact that some of my MP3s are over six years old, back when I was not particularly careful about filenames, much less ID3 tags, this makes me happy, since all of my MP3s are carefully ordered and sorted in their own directory trees. Granted, once the files hit my Zen, the tree disappears, and it only pays attention to the ID3 tags, but since I almost always play on full-system shuffle (yay for having three times as much storage space as I have MP3s), and when I want a selective song, I almost always know its title, I do not find it to be too much of a trouble. I wish Creative would release support for file structure, but it is a relatively small thing, and the ability to just drag-and-drop redeems it. Apple… ignores all of this. iPods and iTunes only reference the ID3 tag of an MP3 file, not the file name, or file location, so when I loaded My Music into iTunes, I was faced with a messy, unstructured, and generally mind boggling list of all of my music, sortable by however I like, but due to variations of spelling, incomplete tags, and other issues… quite useless. Sure, it could be argued that it is entirely my fault, since I was not careful in maintaining ID3 tag information when creating MP3 files… But iTunes, as well as every other MP3-interface program should have the option to utilize either ID3 tags or file structure, depending on the tastes of the user… It is just easier that way. Of course, as with my current MP3 player, this could be avoidable by simply dragging-and-dropping the appropriate files to the player in Windows Explorer, and calling it even. That is, if Apple would allow you to do that, which, by the by, they do not. Surprise, surprise. ITunes is the only way to add or remove files to the iPod, and that is that. So, rather than sifting through my atrocious mess of misplaced ID3 tags, I just made another directory inside My Music, and copied in all of the songs I wanted to put on the player for Better Half. Then, deleting all of the music in my iTunes library, I told it to just import that one directory, and then planned on copying all of that music to the iPod. Well, I was very careful to fill the directory almost to the maximum capacity of the player, to get the most out of it. I started to copy everything over from iTunes, but then noticed the size of everything I was moving – less than half of what it should have been. After a quick glance, I realized it only copied… less than half of the files. Granted, some of those files were buried under multiple layers of directories, but, come on… When I tell a piece of software to import a directory and recurse to all subdirectories, I expect it to do just that. Well, it did not, so, I had to do it manually.
Five hours, a gallon of gas, and several hairs later, we had a player that actually booted, talked with its host computer, and played music. My Creative Zen Vision:M was fully functional out of the box, could talk with Windows XP without the installation of any drivers or software, and even came pre-installed with music and video files (something I will never know about the iPod, since it refused to work). To say I am dissatisfied with the quality of the product would be putting it very, very, very mildly. Apple has always been a scheme of flashy advertising making up for lacking or mundane products – take the Shuffle, for instance. “Look at me, I am all cool and stuff because you cannot see what is going to play next!” “Uh… yeah… there are probably a thousand other players on the market that do the exact same thing, for half the price.” “Yeah, but I’m made by Apple, so I must be better!” Right. Do not get me wrong, in some fields, Apple excels considerably, but they are far, far from being the be-all, end-all they are so often portrayed as by their creators and fanboys alike. And before the argument ever arises, yes, I know they are the most secure OS out there these days… that is because NO ONE CARES ABOUT APPLE. Face it, they comprise such a small percentage of the market share, virus writers, who are predominantly out there for either the fame of it, or for the perverse joy of screwing over as many people as possible, will want as wide a distribution of their malicious code as possible… and Macs simply do not provide that. End of that story.
And the end of this long, painful story? I was always an anything-but-Apple kind of guy… and, for the record, yes, I have used Apples, throughout my years of high school and college. With that experience, I have found that I definitively prefer Windows systems over Apple ones, and have never harbored any desires, whatsoever, to go over to Macs for my primary machine (or secondary… or tertiary…). In the end, the only major thing I see Apples have going for them is the aesthetic design of their equipment… I like the minimalist, clean lines they tend to make use of, though intensely dislike the cutsie-poo aspects of some of their hardware. However, this, most recent experience with the iPod, the Apple store, and everything else has positively convinced me that Mac will never, ever receive any of my money at any point in the future. Since Better Half won the current iPod, I have no complaints about that – free is free. However, in the future, I will definitely be looking to other companies for my computer/MP3 player needs, and I will recommend to anyone who asks me to do the same. This kind of blatant idiocy does not deserve to be rewarded by my business.
(And, yes, this was my longest post ever, measuring in at 3,600+ words, including these.)
After getting past the attitude I see nothing here at all. Have a miserable life, you seem all prepared for it. Luser.
ipods suck (simplified version)
In light of the fact that my "ipods suck" post has been receiving a positively amazing amount of traffic, I realized that the core message of it might have been lost under my frustration, anger, and general purpose irritation at…
I am have nothing but problems with my girls i pod.
I feel your pain , i think i could write a book on how many hours i have spent on her 40g icrap. I have 2 rios they both still work i have had them for 2 years or so an never had any problems with them. The software is easy to use just drag and drop and done. Ipod you have to use that hair pulling software, itunes .
ok she got the ipod as a gift for her birthday , everything worked fine She downloaded 1000′s of songs ripped all her cds , just hours of time filling it. She went to show it off to a friend and the scroller stopped working. Called apple support and they told her to send it back. apple sent her a box she rapped it up and week or so later it was back, reformatted. It was ok because all the music was saved on itunes. we plugged it in reloaded all the music an it was fine. A weak later she told me it would not turn on . So i flipped it over to see what kind of battery was in it . there was no battery cover on it. . So i went to apple site they said you need to sent it back to have the battery changed . ??????????
(are you kidding my!) does apple feel that people are incapable of changing a battery ? 2 days later a box came and we sent it back again. It came back a week or so later again and the music was gone, Formatted again . I reloaded the music and everything was fine. Well her laptop crashed (where all the music was stored) and she asked me to save all the music on my pc i said sure.I downloaded Itunes and did the hole install . I plugged the ipod in and began to browse to the ipod .It was empty! My jaw hit the floor!!!!!!
all that music was gone !Hours and hours of ripping and downloading just gone. Well i had to fix this she was going to kill me . I tried ipod recovery software like 5 of them all them wanted me to buy ,so i broke down and bought 1.
I recovered what so called music that was on it but when I played all the songs were trashed with screeching noises .
I gave up and just told her and you know how that went.
Well i downloaded tons of music and gave her some of mine
she got over it . About 2 weeks later the battery dies so i send it back .I get It again like a week later nothing on it again. Great , I get all the music back on and next day my computer crashes. So all the music i own is on this ipod. I fix my computer and download itunes .It tells me that there are up dates so i start to download them .I guess i missed a check box somewhere and it reformats the ipod.There’s more to the story but how i came to find your site is i typed in ipod sucks and there behold other people that feel my pain ….
To put it simply, wing it, I definitely, *definitely* feel your pain. Sorry to hear that you had such an unpleasant experience, but know you are not alone in the world. iPods definitely do suck.
First of all: If you’re looking for problems, that’s all you’re going to find.
The fact that millions (MILLIONS) of people are *choosing* iPods (as opposed to being forced to buy them) and iTunes as their digital music devices doesn’t signify anything to you? If they suck so bad, why are they selling so well? Apple is not just about style, they’re about simplicity and elegance. A lot of people (because of the iPod) are realizing this and are buying Macs in more numbers than ever.
You were able to go to an Apple store to have someone look at it for you. Do you have a Creative store or any other manufacturer’s store with trained technicians on staff that can help you if there’s a problem with one of their players? How you manage to spin this negatively amazes me.
Yes, there’s an appointment system in place to see a technician (Apple calls them “Mac Geniuses”). Not all red-shirt (or black-shirt, whatever they’re wearing at the time) employees hold the same position. The ones on the floor are basically salespeople. The technicians work behind the bar, and they’re a busy lot (hence the appointment system). Some salespeople can help out with simpler problems (like iPod resets and whatnot); anything deeper needs to be seen by a technician. If you don’t have an appointment beforehand, you often have to wait. Name any another electronics manufacturer/retailer that offers that service.
Another clarification: the 4GB black nano is *NOT* a second-generation nano. The second-generation nanos are all anondized aluminum (and only the 8GB version is available in black). The iPod you’re describing (with the shiny metal back) is a first-generation nano; since the Apple store installed the latest firmware when they restored it, I’d bet that if you install the latest version of iTunes (7.0.2), you’ll have a lot fewer problems than you’re describing.
As far as your ID3 tags are concerned, iTunes uses a pretty standard online tagging database (CDDB, I think) to populate items ripped into it. If you have items with bunk ID3 info prior to installing iTunes, I can’t hardly see how that’s Apple’s fault.
It sounds like you are anti-Apple from the get-go. That sort of attitude is unfortunate for your wife (who apparently wants an iPod), in that your constant grousing will make her experience a lot less enjoyable. I’d recommend making an appointment at that Genius Bar to sit down and discuss your frustrations with a technician; you’ll be surprised at how much you might learn, and how much there is to enjoy with an iPod (even a lowly 1st generation nano).
Good luck to you.
Bad Weather, iPod Sucks, DRM
Note: Dear fellow (worst)writer(s), I’ll be posting a bit less in the month of April because I’m trying to focus on a really bad story I’ve been working on recently. As usual it’s going badly and most likely nothing will come of…
Fix a nano with do not disconnect frozen on the screen
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61705
Ok, I never took the time to answer Ignis’ comment, and I suppose I should.
Ok, thousands of people are buying iPods. And? Are you a lemming who just goes along with whatever the majority does? Are you the victim of a remarkably powerful, skillful, and widespread advertisement machine? When you get right down to it, Apple does not offer anything that any other company has not offered before them, generally at a cheaper price. Sure, they came up with the “click wheel” – never really saw the fascination, myself, and that is hardly something to hang an entire empire on.
Yeah, there was an Apple store I could go to – where the technicians were useless, and basically told me that I should buy a Macintosh computer to go with my iPod, since that was the only way I could guarantee the latter would work. If that is Apple’s idea of “tech support”, I think I will do without, thanks.
Apologies for the confusion concerning which model of iPod I was using – the Apple webpage was, surprisingly enough, unclear. That said, I will repeat my primary complaint with this entire debacle: The iPod WOULD NOT WORK with the software it came bundled with, out of the box. Period. Full stop. End of story. Why on God’s Green Earth (TM) would you ever ship a piece of hardware with bundled software when the two are not designed to talk to each other straight out of the box? Of course, if you had bothered to actually read my post, you would understand that we did try to update iTunes, and, oddly enough, the software automatically downloaded an out-of-date update to itself. Yeah, that makes sense.
As for ID3 tags, again, if you had bothered to actually read my post instead of skim over the parts that did not meet your viewpoint, you would understand that I am not blaming Apple for my faulty ID3 tags – but thanks for the strawman. Instead, I am complaining that iTunes and the iPod completely and utterly ignore the file structure I had crafted for my MP3s over the past years. Sure, the Zen still only uses ID3 tags when viewing MP3s, but at least it maintains the directory and file structure on the player. iTunes does not even bother – obviously its method is better than mine.
Oh, and what about “Better Half happened to win one of the shiny new iPod Nano” is so hard to comprehend? My wife was actually indifferent about winning the iPod – sure she liked getting an expensive toy for free, but that was about the extent of it. She has since won a Zune (I swear she lives a charmed life), and the difference in experiences has been about the same as the difference between Hell and Heaven. The Zune actually worked straight out of the box, talked with the computer right off the bat, and everything was happy and shiny and functional.
Honestly, I do not need to talk to a “Genius Bar” technician to get the overbearing, holier-than-thou, we’re-better-than-everyone-else attitude that Mac fanboys are so fond of – I get that simply by walking in the store and standing for about 10 seconds… or by having visits from self-righteous, literacy-challenged individuals such as yourself.
Thanks, but I think I will stick to using hardware that actually… you know… works.
All I want to say is that IPOD SUCKS! I will never buy another IPOD as long as I live. I wouldn’t even accept one for FREE. IPOD: an over priced piece of junk! I’m so sick of ipods I could spit!
In full agreement, Pam, no worries. There are so many better options out there for MP3 players – people would really do well to do their research.
second-suckiest
I can live with second place. Oh, and by the way, they still suck….