December 05, 2005

Organic oatmel stout, no less.

An iPod arrived for me today, a big black one. Not a white one. Because I think so different that having a white one is just too fascist for me.

I set this in motion first with some financial finagling, and then by directing the actions of several Chinese persons in Shanghai with a click of my mouse (later that same day, I made them get drunk and go tapir-tipping, using SMS messages sent from my cellphone). I spent the next few days doing the iPod Stairmaster: every five minutes or so, another CD would go bing! in my Mac mini, so I'd run upstairs and feed it another one. I had all but a handful of CDs imported when the small box arrived this morning, crawling with bird flu and delivered by a FedEx guy who looked like Stephen King.

I must say this now, to get it out of my head: for years, I have been hearing that Apples are superior to PCs in terms of crashes, intuitive interface, etc.

And, perhaps, that was once true.

I have owned a laptop running Windows XP since May. I have had to forcibly restart it maybe two or three times, and I am on that thing eight hours a day.

Over the past three days, while importing CDs using the latest version of Apple's flagship software product, one of its newer computers, and it's newest OS, I have had to force quit software or forcibly restart hardware a dozen times or more.

Why? Because iTunes doesn't know what to do if it encounters a bad track on a CD.

And before anyone gets all up in my grill with how I must've not had this or that set up right, I'll say it again: flagship software. You know, the product that basically saved Apple's well-designed ass. And before anyone keeps getting all up my grill: I troubleshot it, and it's a) a bug and b) ridiculous so c) shut up. And even if it wasn't a bug, the fact that there is no global search and replace function in the iTunes library is absurd, so shut up some more.

Finally: Steve Jobs? A most impractical man. The iPod isn't a goddamned Star Trek prop, it's a hands-on device. So why not use the nice-looking satin silver finish that's on my Mini, instead of shows-what-a-greasy-primate-you-are mirror-polished silver? Oh, Mr. Design God? Black headphones and a black sync cable with my black iPod, please. And would it kill you to include a wall charger with my $400 purchase, like you did with the 3rd generation iPods, instead of forcing me to charge via a USB port? What is it with you, anway? It's like the 3.5" disk drive thing: "Oh, nobody will use 3.5" disks. Because I don't want them to, and what I say fucking goes. I'll cut you, man!"

I won't go into how my $18 Radio Shack earbuds outperform the stock iPod headphones, because it's just too sad.

Now that the griping's out of the way: yeah, pretty damn cool, this little gizmo. I've used about 1/6th of its capacity, and because of Handbrake I'm not even more annoyed with Apple for making it far more difficult than it needs to be to get video I already own onto its bitty drive. I may in fact rip one of the Lord of the Rings movies onto it, just to be silly: the fabulous vistas of New Zealand, widescreen, 2.5 inches across. Take that, you landscape-proud Kiwis!

It's already proving its worth. I biked with the iPod to pick up the stout, and on the way back, the music made me take the long way around, up a hill, instead taking the usual shortcut.

The calorie-burning benefits of which may have been offset by said stout.

Speaking of which, I believe I'll have another one of those.

Organic, and all.

So you know it's good for you.

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By the way - I saw the new Astonished Head layout on Firefox for the Mac and Safari today, and it looks like crap. But that's my own HTML negligence, and not vengeance.

Not that I wouldn't be within my rights.

Seriously.

No jury would convict me.

Cocky bastards.