I have to say, I don’t know what the Apple Computer corporation has done to be able to exert such a degree of mind control over otherwise intelligent people. The point behind the current iPhone mania just escapes me (but then, the attraction of having any kind of cell phone has continued to escape me). I haven’t had a great deal of experience working with Macintosh computers, but on the one extended occasion in which I did, I found it stifling (not to mention very expensive) to be so dependent on products produced by one company. People accuse Microsoft of being monopolistic, but my immersion into an Apple-only environment illustrated just how oppressive things can get when you have only one place to turn. Even those other companies who make software for Macintosh seem to design and price their wares with full awareness of how helpless you are to find any other solutions. There is, on the other hand, a virtually limitless supply of quality freeware out there for Windows users, which also makes the for-profit software market very competitive.

Today, in the NY Sun, a music writer who I highly admire, Will Friedwald, devotes his column to the inadequacy of Apple’s iTunes program. Friedwald now has a 900 GB music collection stored in iTunes, and has found himself running into some difficulties. For instance: having to wait 3 to 8 minutes to implement a single change in his library, such as adding some cover art.

My solution, at first, was to get more computing power: in early 2005 I bought a PowerMac G5, loaded it with as much RAM as it would take (4 GB), and more recently bought the fastest internal hard drive that is being made, the 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptor. The improvement in speed and performance is only slight.

The problem is not the hardware, according to the programmer, designer, and database expert, Steve Albin. It’s the way that the Mac operating system and the iTunes program have been built. The database portion of iTunes uses a foundation of XML programming, which is designed for very simple applications, not thousands of entries with dozens of fields. A superior iTunes would make use of a more robust programming language such as mySQL.

So, since he has spent so much money and time putting together his music collection in iTunes and now finds the program to have proved itself fundamentally inadequate, is he mad at Apple? Not a bit. He’s just begging them to take more money from him.

What’s needed is a new iTunes, re-built from the ground up, for the “advanced” music collector. There are different editions of FinalCut and other programs; the less expensive ones are aimed at more casual users, the more expensive ones are geared towards professional film-makers. We need something that might be called ” iTunes Pro.” What I would save in time and frustration (and the lack of the spinning beach ball) would be well worth whatever Apple would charge. This would be even more exciting than the iPhone.

Now that’s the kind of customer loyalty most CEO’s would sell their grandparents, children and family pets to acquire. Apple must have done something to earn it, right? I just must be missing something. No doubt I’ll hear about it.

…

Addendum 5:29 pm: That was quick. Thanks to Lyle for his perspective on the Apple/Mac phenomenon:

It’s like chocolate or strawberries - There’s no accounting for taste
- You’re looking at it from a mostly rational point of view - There
can be many factors in choosing one’s work space - The color you
paint a room to work in gives it a feeling - A color you like might
make me claustrophobic and visa versa.

I write and arrange music (as a Registered Music Therapist) and way
back in the 80’s wanted a computer for music notation - The advice
was to find the software you wanted and then a computer to run it,
and back then Finale was Mac only, as were a number of other
applications, and the stuff on the PC side didn’t match up - I think
a lot of Mac users come from that era - And I still have and use my
original computer, as well as the one from the mid 90’s - Macs tend
to last, and the other savings is not having to buy and mess with
peripherals - And free software is helpful only if it does what you
want it to do - With Finale I’ve always been able to get the music on
the page to look like what I have in my mind.

Don’t have, don’t want an iPod - Am amazed people willing to accept
that loss of audio quality.

…

Addendum 6/30/2007 10:55 am: Received several more reactions to the Apple question — here’s one from Richard (his own website is here):

What’s amazing to me is how mac owners become such salespeople for the company, but I’ve recently purchased a MacBook after years on a PC, and was impressed with everything about the purchase experience - the store, the sales team, the packaging, the plug and play ability, and my one add on (procare - 52 hours of individual training for $100, and priority care at the Genius Bar.) Built my website with iWeb and am hugely pleased. iPhoto - great, but iTunes a big “eh.”

This is after years of using company assigned laptops, and pc’s that always felt old before their time, clunky, and troublesome.

I’m a convert, but -

iPod: prefer the ambient sounds of life to walking around (dis)connected. iPhone: you gotta be kidding. But, I’m older than the average tech-o-phile, and don’t need to be that in the groove. iTV: I have no idea what that is.

I have a friend who buys every new mac product that comes out, just to have it. I just chuckle.

It just seems so easy, and customer friendly.

It’s also been pointed out to me that since iTunes in its current incarnation is a free program, the premise of my ranting above is a little flawed. Acknowledged, but, obviously iTunes is free in kind of the same way that Internet Explorer is free: it doesn’t cost you anything to acquire the program but the clear intent is to tie you deeply into an environment where your preferences and wallet can then be accessed. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there it is — it’s not altruism on Apple’s part. They want to leverage people’s dependence on iTunes, and, as Will Friedwald’s article indicates, it works. He bought more advanced Apple hardware to try and make the free Apple software run faster. Maybe that’s the nub of the thing that bothered me when I worked with Apple/Mac things: being dependent on the same source for both hardware and software.

And it has also been pointed out that since newer Apple machines can now run Windows in tandem with the Mac operating system, the great software limitation I’m talking about is now a thing of the past. Well, I guess that’s plainly true. I don’t know how easy it is for the average user to set up Windows on their Mac, or how many take advantage of it — but then, there’s a lot I don’t know on this subject, so maybe I should quit while I’m only slightly behind.

Another comment on iTunes from Sue:

I don’t have problems with mine slowing down, just with the annoying deficiencies in the programme. Something I always used to find annoying with Microsoft programmes …. well Apple can annoy with the best of them. As someone who cares about how well music should sound - OK, I’m anal when it comes to it - little things like the inability to accurately control the output levels drives me to distraction. I recently made some CDs and found it impossible to produce discs that mixed 60’s, 70’s and 80’s recordings with new recordings at a constant level like I can do on my “old” technology - turntable & cassette deck. The output controls on iTunes are pretty well useless when you’re making CDs and I find the numerous software packages on the market almost impossible to understand. Surely it couldn’t be THAT difficult to reproduce what I can do with my tape deck. Progress. What a laugh.

And some philosophical musings from Joe on the iPhone craze:

There’s a big story in the front page of my local paper about the line of people that were waiting @ the Apple store at the local mall to get the 1st iPhones. I guess people were waiting since Monday in the Apple store in the Big Apple (pun definitely intended!). I share your disdain towards cell phones (it drives me nutty to tell people not to use here in the library, as well as hearing all those obnoxious ring tones go off) & I don’t understand what the big deal is about. Also, a difference between WWII & the War on Terror: WWII, pictures of young men waiting in line in front of recruiting stations in newspapers; War on Terror: pictures of young men waiting in line for XBoxes & iPhones appear instead.

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