First of all, when I say that “Apple is dead”, first I must clarify what I mean. Is the company out of business? No, Apple has not gone out of business. Not yet anyway. When I say “Apple is dead”, I mean something else.
You see, I used to be an Apple fan, – well, iPod fan – back in the day, back when Apple was revolutionizing the world and bringing dedicated music devices to the world. Back when Steve Jobs was at his prime and Apple was changing the world. Back when people actually liked Apple because it was a great product. Back when iTunes worked properly. Back when you could jailbreak your devices. Back when you had an amazing user experience on your iPod that really made it great to listen to music on your iPod.
Well, those days are over. Steve Jobs has passed away, and his company has followed suit. What once made Apple great is now buried 6 feet underground with the company’s founder. Now, let me be clear, I have been against Apple for years due to a pricing system which is beyond wicked and abhorrent, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is a description of the eradication of good user experience, tyrannical policies, horrendous UI design, worthless devices, and most of all evil software updates that kill devices and destroy once good devices.
Even looking past Apple’s recent years of a continual decline in quality of products, software, and services, I have (had) remained a dedicated fan of the iPod, even though I was against every other Apple product such as MacBook, Apple TV, iPad, iOS, and every other iCrap product that was priced exorbitantly high – if even only for the principle that it was overpriced for no reason other than excessive profit and manipulative and deceptive marketing.
However, although it may seem hypocritical for me to say that I still liked the iPod even though I hated all the other Apple products, it really isn’t. The reason I liked the iPod was because it delivered a user experience beyond what anything else could offer. These were: The software, and the music quality.
My Samsung Galaxy Android-based smartphone actually does OK now that there is a former-ipod-music-player-ish app that somewhat replicates the user experience of the former iPods. However, the downside is that the music quality was not as good as, say, the iPod 4G. The upside is that I am not limited to the 64GB on my phone, and again the downside is my phone is a little larger than the iPod, and a smaller music device is better when working out.
Pictured above is the DoubleTwist app for Android
Another upside though is that my phone is one device, so I don’t have to carry around multiple devices. However, the downside is I can’t leave it in my car plugged in as a dedicated car music app. Again an upside is that it has more memory (RAM) and a better processor, so the device is faster, freezes less, and can have more apps and other things to use the device for.
My last iPod before the one I just bought was the iPod 4th gen 64GB, but the screen broke on it twice. Now I was ready to upgrade to the new iPod 5th generation, although I didn’t want to pay $400 for the new 6th gen 128GB that I’ve been waiting for so I got the 5th gen 64GB version instead for $200. I was so excited because I’ve been waiting to get the new iPod upgrade for years. I haven’t been so excited for a package in quite awhile. I was looking forward to a new, lighter, faster iPod for working out, and that didn’t have a broken screen.
I opened up the iPod to see a beautiful looking device, with remnants of the Apple feel as I held the turned off device in my hand. It was just what I had wanted, thinner and lighter, and slightly larger screen. I was thrilled. My excitement was short-lived, however. After charging it up, which it charged rather quickly, I synced it up with the latest iTunes and got ready to listen. Then I started to realize the severely degraded experience. The new music app has been totally redesigned, with a horrific redesign. No longer is it an easy click and scroll to your song. There are ads everywhere, all the things to press are so tiny, the UI is just horrendous.
I learned to turn off “Apple Music” which did all the ads in the new music app, after realizing I can’t create a new Apple ID without adding a credit card so using my really old apple ID from 10 years ago and after 20 popups, multiple emails from apple trying to verify me (no credit card was ever added to that account), and multiple errors, finally I got my old account added. Now I could enter Music in settings, all that just to turn off “Apple Music” integrated Apple adware.
Now there is a slightly better user experience in the music app without the “Apple Music” adware, but it is severely degraded. No easy way to switch between artist and album and songs list etc. UI is just wretched. How do I view all songs? No longer an option. How do I view all songs in all albums from an artist? No longer an option. And when you play a song, now instead of having a screen showing the song playing it has this tiny bar with an even tinier pause icon. You can click on the bar to open the page, but it isn’t intuitive. Everything is discombobulated. The whole thing is a disaster.
Worse, with iPod’s even stricter restrictions, Apple removed the ability to downgrade the OS to a previous version of iOS like my iPod 4th gen has so I could just get the same user experience as I used to have. There apparently used to be Groove music app which used to be good, but Microsoft purchased that and ruined it, now it no longer works and wants to connect to Microsoft when you open the app. And there is no jailbreak for my iOS, so I can’t even go into Cydia and download a 3rd party actually decent music app, if there even is one for this iOS version.
So ooohh, it has a better camera and a dedicated flashlight app. Big whoop. I have an iPod to play music. My phone already has a flashlight and an even way better camera. I don’t give a rat’s behind about “facetime”, and google maps is a stupid app to have on there since the iPod is a wifi-only device.
So the iPod is finally dead, and this is a sad day for iPod lovers. I will try to pick up a new iPod 4th gen, since it costs the same as a new screen for my broken iPod. I am very sad about this, since I’ve been literally waiting for years for the new iPod because I was waiting for the prices to come down. And to discover that Apple destroyed the iPod was devastating. Ok, I’m exaggerating. I wasn’t devastated, but I was really disappointed. Now there are no more iPods for me to buy. That beautiful feeling you once got when you used your iPod is gone. It is gone forever. Apple, to me anyway, is finally Dead.
Thanks for an honest review of Apple / Mac. My entire life I was chided for adopting the PC platform. “You can’t do graphics on a PC” rang in my ears. Yet, I had dozens of software apps for every one available on Apple. But then, that was the old days…. late 80’s.
Then came iPod and the iPhone. All were very overpriced beyond belief. Same with the computers.
Friends in the visual arts business often confirmed that their Macs did in fact crash – they did lose data – and had a brush (though rare) with viruses.
Still have a PC, still hate Microsoft, but have a wide variety of applications to enjoy.
People told you, “can’t do graphics on a PC”?? That’s hilarious. Graphics are HUNDREDS of times more powerful on a PC, I can’t see how people do any graphics work on inferior Macs! It must be so slow!
Graphics are dependent on hardware and software – PCs have far more software available, and performance on a PC is tremendously more powerful than a Mac, and for a fraction of the price.