Anti-Apple

This is more a lesson in frustration than a productive use of time. You see, I'm multitasking right now - trying to do something productive while simultaneously re-sycing iTunes from my old netbook to my new one. This is the fourth time I've had to do it, and each time I have to look up conflicting reports on how exactly to do this. It wouldn't be a hassle if I primarily used one computer, and that computer happened to be Windows-based. Problem is, in my house, the most powerful computer with the best monitor is the one I built myself - and it happens to be Linux (UNIX) based (both because I like to play around with Linux, and it's free).

Now it happens that you can get iTunes on both Windows and Mac, although I imagine if you were trying to go from on to the other it would cause lots of grief. You cannot get iTunes on Linux, so I'm stuck using the relatively-underpowered netbook to manage the music.

After much consternation, I'm this close to giving my iTouch to Kathryn (who is very Mac-centric) if she would provide me with a cheap non-Apple MP3 player. Once you've "drank the koolaid" of Apple, you are completely locked in. Using iTunes on one computer is all they've made contingencies for. Moving my music/books/videos from one PC to another shouldn't be this hard. I know that, with every other MP3 player out there, your PC (or Mac or Linux computer) just treats it as another hard disk drive, and you can move files at will. I've got a big hate-on for Apple right now. Nice products, but you never notice the handcuffs they put on you when you buy them.