What's so fantastic about Apple?

[OCaptain]

Seriously, are you wondering why iTunes is bad ? How about ease of use ? Speed ? Portability ? Why should I have to go through an Apple application in order to download music to my player, what's wrong with plain old file manager ? Why should the song titles on the player be encrypted so that I can't see them with a simple file manager ? Why shouldn't I transfer music between my device and PCs that don't have iTunes installed ? What's the advantage of making this THE ONLY way (not even an option) of transfering songs other than busting my balls ?

Others have reminded you that it was a condition of the music labels to prevent piracy- DRM.

So blame them if you must blame anyone.

 

[OCaptain]

I took one look at iTunes and LMAO at iPod's, went straight out and bought myself an iRiver drag n drop MP3 player

Encapsulates everything I hate about Apple.

And what year was that?

 

[OCaptain]

not in my experience. You get just as many people who are huge berzerk fans of crap things as you do good things. You have a point about a smaller company having more of a cult following, but I've not seen a correlation between quality of product and fanaticism of fans.

Plus, I wouldn't say that Apple's products are "something good" as compared to Microsoft's "something mediocre"

In the case of smart phones, the iPhone certainly IS "something good" compared to what was out the month before it shipped.

 

[OCaptain]

That's the problem. Number features != how good the phone is. There are lots of craptastic devices out there that check more feature 'boxes' than much better devices.

In my opinion, it's certainly possible to fewer 'features' and have a better experience as a whole, making the phone a more desirable device.

But I am not going to get in some silly pissing contest about listing what phone has what features. If you think that is what makes a phone 'better' we'll just agree to disagree.

Apple, as a practice, has not competed on features so that spec shoppers can check them off. They don't do it. For months after the release of one of their new idevices (which one eludes me) Apple didn't release the information about its processor, something everyone else does first of all.

Apple competes on the experience that 80% of consumers can see themselves wanting to have.

 

[OCaptain]

Well, I've been an Apple user since the Mac, and for much of that time (excepting the mid to late 90s) Apple has had a product that was superior to its competition in many respects. I very much like OSX and have written a lot of software that runs in the underlying *nix layer. I have found very little I cannot do with it, including running Linux and Windows.

But they are just not high end gaming machines, so if you want that, go elsewhere. They are fine for playing Civilization and things like that, however.

And Portal 2.

 

[OCaptain]

well, TheL8Elvis, you're definitely showing me how much you dislike silly pissing contests.

He's right, though.

 

[OCaptain]

"A mere 30%"? For using what is essentially a jumped-up word processor?

Plus, that's not "a mere 30% cut in exchange for making the book available to every iOS device on the planet" as there's no guarantee they will sell your book at the end of the process. If they do choose not to sell it, then the only thing you can extract from the work and use elsewhere is plaintext.

I'm a writer. I don't think there's a power on earth that could get me to use this authoring software.

I'm a writer too, and it has me excited. You're underestimating what Apple is doing for writers.

1. They're giving you the tools to create and submit
2. They're providing a distribution center, payment collection and royalty distribution.

30% sounds fair considering your other options (self-publication, vanity pubs (full of legitimate ripoffs and scams), the difficulty of finding agent and negotiating with traditional publishing houses.

 

[John Albert]

hey, I'm only commenting on the talking points raised earlier in the thread.

Anyhoo, it's not unusual for people to get it wrong and actually have more than one digital asset management tool to manage their stuff. Yes, it's wrong, but people are wrong on the internet every day...

But you are the only person who argued that without iTunes, people would have to "split their music collection" amongst a number of applications. You're the guy who was "wrong on the Internet" in this case!

Apple perpetrated and propagated that woeful misunderstanding that iTunes is a necessary, comprehensive solution to all one's media organization needs, by making iTunes an absolute requirement for transferring media to Apple's own line of mp3 players.

Looking at the big picture, iTunes is an inadequate, clunky and pandering media management solution, partly because it's primarily designed around its role as a media marketing channel and DRM enforcement tool.

 

[John Albert]

As I pointed out originally, the tax portion of my reasoning is only a part of my choice. Overall considering my situation, the tax deductability of my Macs is relevant to me.

I don't think Brian-M was trying to tell you what is or isn't relevant to your business decisions. I don't think he was saying that your Macintosh preference is not warranted, or that you would be better off switching operating systems in the middle of your career.

Seems to me that what he's trying to say is, any computer platform you would have chosen to use would be tax-deductible as a business expense, therefore that point is irrelevant in a discussion of whether a Mac or a PC is more economical. Regardless whether you used a Mac, a Windows box, an old SGI box or Amiga from the '90s, or even an Etch-A-Sketch to do your job, you could write that machine off your taxes just as well, so it's really a moot issue. In that sense, arguing that you prefer Mac computers over Windows because you can write your Mac off is kind of like arguing, "I prefer apples over cherries because they're red." It would in that case appear that you're ignoring the fact that both apples and cherries are red.

Moreover, because the government does not reimburse you 100% of the cost of your work equipment in the form of tax write-offs, you'd still be saving more money overall by choosing a less expensive computer. That's all he was saying.

 

[Stray Cat]

Looking at the big picture, iTunes is an inadequate, clumsy and pandering media management solution, partly because it's designed around its role as a media marketing channel.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here John so sorry if I am, but iTunes makes it really simple to import your own CDs, it goes on line and finds the track titles and album info and even downloads the cover artwork for you.
This isn't a "media marketing channel", in fact it's the opposite.

iTunes is only a marketing channel if you're going to click on the iTunes store tab. In general use, there are no ads and no hoops to jump through and music purchased from other rival download sites and companies is easily imported into iTunes too.

 

[Stray Cat]

Moreover, because the government does not reimburse you 100% of the cost of your work equipment in the form of tax write-offs, you'd still be saving more money overall by choosing a less expensive computer. That's all he was saying.

If I spend £1200 on a computer, that full amount is deducted off my annual profits. I pay tax on profits (after I reach my personal tax allowance). I buy a cheaper computer and it translates to making more profit, which in turn means paying more tax. I'd rather have a more expensive computer and pay less tax, than have a cheaper computer and pay more tax. It's not necessarily about saving money using the tax deduction, it's about me spending my money on me and not donating it to the government.

Does that make more sense?

 

[John Albert]

This isn't a "media marketing channel", in fact it's the opposite.

The first thing you see when you open iTunes (while it's busy totally locking up your computer, in the case of the Windows version) is banner ads for popular music to buy through the iTunes store. That's the media marketing channel. ITunes does not offer the user any way to turn off those ads.

So yeah, it kind of is a "media marketing channel," just like any other adware.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here John so sorry if I am, but iTunes makes it really simple to import your own CDs, it goes on line and finds the track titles and album info and even downloads the cover artwork for you.

Lots of other, far less bloated programs make it easy to rip CDs and organize the resulting files into a directory structure as well. Other CD ripping programs used CDDB to automatically grab song titles and album art, long before iTunes ever came along. It's yet another case of Apple adopting and implementing somebody else's idea and then marketing it as if their own brilliant designers and engineers had invented in the first place.

On its own, iTunes is just a crappy implementation of a CD ripping/media organization tool. But when you bring an iPod into the picture, iTunes becomes a practical requirement. Without iTunes (or some other, lesser-known 3rd party tool), there's no way to transfer music onto your iPod, and even with iTunes there's no way to transfer music off your iPod.

That business model was deliberately designed to shoehorn iPod users into relying on iTunes (and its embedded marketing apparatus) for management of their media, and then maneuver Apple into a position to market corporate media to them through ads. The stupid garbling of the mp3 filenames stored on the iPod is the half-assed attempt at a crappy, clunky DRM scheme.

 

[John Albert]

If I spend £1200 on a computer, that full amount is deducted off my annual profits. I pay tax on profits (after I reach my personal tax allowance). I buy a cheaper computer and it translates to making more profit, which in turn means paying more tax. I'd rather have a more expensive computer and pay less tax, than have a cheaper computer and pay more tax. It's not necessarily about saving money using the tax deduction, it's about me spending my money on me and not donating it to the government.

Does that make more sense?

But if you made a smaller expenditure on the computer, then sure, you'd have more profits to be taxed, but you'd still have higher profits. So unless you're at the cusp of the next tax bracket and the (admittedly large) price difference between the two computers is the only thing stopping you going over that limit into paying higher taxes, then spending less in the form of overhead is still going to be result in a net gain in your profits after taxes.

Anyway, this is not even my argument here. I was just defending Brian-M because it appeared you were taking undue offense to his challenging of a single detail of your argument.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

If I spend £1200 on a computer, that full amount is deducted off my annual profits. I pay tax on profits (after I reach my personal tax allowance). I buy a cheaper computer and it translates to making more profit, which in turn means paying more tax. I'd rather have a more expensive computer and pay less tax, than have a cheaper computer and pay more tax. It's not necessarily about saving money using the tax deduction, it's about me spending my money on me and not donating it to the government.

Does that make more sense?

But again, assuming both computers would do the task equally well, you'd have more of your own money to spend the way you want by buying the less expensive machine. Let's look at some (extremely simplified) numbers.

There are two computers which will do your job, one costs $750, one costs $500. During the year, your income is $2000, and your tax rate is 15%.

If you buy the less expensive computer, your income before taxes is $1500, and you pay $225 in tax, leaving you with $1275 net income to spend the way you want.

If you buy the more expensive computer, your income before taxes is only $1250, so you pay only $187.50 in taxes. Is this better? No, because you spent the additional $250 on the computer, your net income is only $1062.50.

You're down $212.50 compared to buying the less expensive box, and have *less* money to spend on what you want, despite having paid less in tax.

This is because of exactly what John Albert said, the "tax write off" only saves you the amount of tax you pay on the expenditure, not the full cost. So you spent $250 more, and only saved 15% of the $250 in taxes.

Now there are tons of details: tax brackets, capital expenditure as opposed to an expensed item, personal property taxes, etc. But in general, the tax argument really just doesn't apply here as a justification for the more expensive machine.

 

[Kid Eager]

But you are the only person who argued that without iTunes, people would have to "split their music collection" amongst a number of applications. You're the guy who was "wrong on the Internet" in this case!

Apple perpetrated and propagated that woeful misunderstanding that iTunes is a necessary, comprehensive solution to all one's media organization needs, by making iTunes an absolute requirement for transferring media to Apple's own line of mp3 players.

Looking at the big picture, iTunes is an inadequate, clunky and pandering media management solution, partly because it's primarily designed around its role as a media marketing channel and DRM enforcement tool.

oh, yes - it's my turn to be wrong. I appear to have conflated the content of two different posts in constructing my reply.

In the true JREF tradition, when faced with such evidence the only response I can give is "you're ugly and I hate you all!"

 

[Chris L]

I know exactly what you mean, I bought an electric oven recently and imagine my surprise and disappointment when I got it home and found out I couldn't simply connect it to my gas supply.

Yes, demanding that customers use a piece of crap-ware to manage their music files is exactly the same as requiring someone with an electric stove to use electricity. After all, there is no technically feasible way to design and build an MP3 player that will let you manage music files like any other file type.

 

[Stray Cat]

Yes, demanding that customers use a piece of crap-ware to manage their music files is exactly the same as requiring someone with an electric stove to use electricity. After all, there is no technically feasible way to design and build an MP3 player that will let you manage music files like any other file type.

I see sales of "sense of humour vacuums"™ have risen over the last 24 hours.

How many people were surprised after buying their iPod that you needed iTunes to manage the media you put on it?

Because it's an easy decision to make; don't want to use iTunes therefore buy a different brand of MP3 player.

Want to cook using gas and not electricity, buy a gas cooker and not a electric one.

 

[Darat]

I see sales of "sense of humour vacuums"™ have risen over the last 24 hours.

How many people were surprised after buying their iPod that you needed iTunes to manage the media you put on it?

...snip...

I posted about this a while back about the iPad - when that came out it required a PC and I had to explain to several folk that you couldn't use it straight out the box to do what the adverts showed, that you would have to connect it to a PC.

 

[Stray Cat]

But if you made a smaller expenditure on the computer, then sure, you'd have more profits to be taxed, but you'd still have higher profits. So unless you're at the cusp of the next tax bracket and the (admittedly large) price difference between the two computers is the only thing stopping you going over that limit into paying higher taxes, then spending less in the form of overhead is still going to be result in a net gain in your profits after taxes.

You're still not getting it. It's not about having more money to spend on me, it's about giving the government less.
The larger my profit margin, the more tax I pay.

Anyway, this is not even my argument here. I was just defending Brian-M because it appeared you were taking undue offense to his challenging of a single detail of your argument.

No, I'm not taking offence, we're in an Apple thread, it's not serious is it?

 

[Kid Eager]

Yes, demanding that customers use a piece of crap-ware to manage their music files is exactly the same as requiring someone with an electric stove to use electricity. After all, there is no technically feasible way to design and build an MP3 player that will let you manage music files like any other file type.

I see a market niche for gas-powered mp3 players. Off to the lab I go.....