{"id":1064,"date":"2006-08-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2006-08-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-23T12:00:00","slug":"an-open-letter-to-steve-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/23\/an-open-letter-to-steve-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to Steve Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You have to laugh. Yesterday I received a mail-shot from Apple <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Frustrated with your PC? Time for a Mac.<\/p>\n<p>In the past 30 days has your PC:<\/p>\n<p>A. Crashed<\/p>\n<p>B. Frozen<\/p>\n<p>C. Made you want to pummel your screen with a sledgehammer<\/p>\n<p>D. All of the above<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>It just works. <\/p>\n<p>Another great reason to own a Mac.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To which I would reply<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Frustrated with your iPod? Time to give up.<\/p>\n<p>In the past 16 months has your iPod mini:<\/p>\n<p>A. Cost \u00a3170<\/p>\n<p>B. Had a battery die<\/p>\n<p>C. Had a hard disk die<\/p>\n<p>D. All of the above<\/p>\n<p>They just don&#8217;t work once your initial 12 month guarantee runs out.<\/p>\n<p>Another great reason to avoid iTunes like the plague.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Let me be clear at the outset. There are times when I&#8217;m watching the Watchdog consumer affairs programme on the BBC (I try not to but it&#8217;s sometimes on in the same room as me) when I find myself thinking &#8230; what do you expect? It&#8217;s a <i>business<\/i> you&#8217;re dealing with, not a charity. In other words, I&#8217;d like to think of myself as an informed consumer who has to accept responsibility for their own purchasing decisions (and, believe me, I <b>do<\/b>).<\/p>\n<p>So, when I bought not one but three iPod Minis about 18 months ago, I was aware of some of the pitfalls.<\/p>\n<p>1) Why bother paying money for tunes that I could probably find on the internet for free? Answer (believe it or not) is that I don&#8217;t believe artist&#8217;s work should be ripped off. In most cases, I&#8217;d buy the CD anyway and just copy it on to the iPod. Apparently I&#8217;m breaking the law doing that, too, but I&#8217;m not expecting the police around my house any time soon.<\/p>\n<p>2) Why buy music from a source that copy protects it and uses a proprietary format that I can only use on one manufacturer&#8217;s devices? Damn good question, particularly in hindsight, but I thought a) Apple&#8217;s a reputable company who won&#8217;t let me down; and b) My partner and my daughter were a little focussed on Apple&#8217;s products over all others <script data-pagespeed-no-defer=\"\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/<![CDATA[\n(function(){for(var g=\"function\"==typeof Object.defineProperties?Object.defineProperty:function(b,c,a){if(a.get||a.set)throw new TypeError(\"ES3 does not support getters and setters.\");b!=Array.prototype&#038;&#038;b!=Object.prototype&#038;&#038;(b[c]=a.value)},h=\"undefined\"!=typeof window&#038;&#038;window===this?this:\"undefined\"!=typeof global&#038;&#038;null!=global?global:this,k=[\"String\",\"prototype\",\"repeat\"],l=0;l<k.length-1;l++){var m=k[l];m in h||(h[m]={});h=h[m]}var n=k[k.length-1],p=h[n],q=p?p:function(b){var c;if(null==this)throw new TypeError(\"The 'this' value for String.prototype.repeat must not be null or undefined\");c=this+\"\";if(0>b||1342177279<b)throw new 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src=\"data:image\/png;base64,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\" style=\"display: inline; vertical-align: bottom\"\/> So, I gave in and thought Apple is in this for the long term and in a few years time, when it&#8217;s maybe time to buy a new iPod, they&#8217;ll be able to use all of their old tunes.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s what happened. Two of the three iPods lost their ability to keep a charge for more than an hour or so after 13 or 14 months. Not very handy in a portable music player. The other one had a faulty hard disk after 14 months. Note the dates &#8211; just outside of the one year guarantee.<\/p>\n<p>It is possible to get these repaired by third party companies (for any investors out there, this is a *big* business opportunity &#8211; mark my words!). However, the cost is pretty prohibitive, relative to the cost of the iPod itself and the repair is only guaranteed for three months. <\/p>\n<p>So we went to the Apple Store in Regent Street in London, booked an appointment and waited to see an &#8216;Apple Genius&#8217; (god, how *embarassing* must it be to have that on your t-shirt?!?!?). In the end, there was nothing the guy could do for us because the faults developed out of our guarantee period. But here are the punchlines<\/p>\n<p>1) The place was *full* of people with broken iPods and their reactions were not pretty! &#8216;\u00a3250 and it breaks in 18 months?&#8217; etc&#8230; etc&#8230; etc&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>2) Now you get to laugh at me. What would you do? The sensible consumer would tell Apple to stick their products where the sun doesn&#8217;t shine and never go near them again. What did this idiot do? Buy two <b>new<\/b> iPod Nanos? What?!?!? Why on earth &#8230;. etc. Because I have a 14 year old daughter who thinks that iPods are the second coming and has \u00a350 worth of tunes downloaded from iTunes Music Store!!!!<\/p>\n<p>Therein lies the problem. If Microsoft can be hauled through the courts for anti-competitive business practices, I&#8217;d like to see what the US and European courts make of a scenario where you buy a tune, it can only be used on one manufacturer&#8217;s devices and those devices seem to break just out of the guarantee period. It&#8217;s the most wonderful example of consumer lock-in I think I&#8217;ve come across.<\/p>\n<p>Make no mistake about it, I&#8217;m not looking for a shred of sympathy because I&#8217;m the world&#8217;s biggest mug, but<\/p>\n<p>1) I will be watching these iPods like a hawk. If the battery is getting weak, it will be going back after 11 months. Good luck with all of those returns, Apple. The Nano also uses flash memory, so I&#8217;m hoping there&#8217;ll be no hard disk problems. These are the last iPods I&#8217;ll buy if the experience doesn&#8217;t improve.<\/p>\n<p>2) Not everyone has my money and I feel really sorry for parents who saved and saved to get their teens an iPod mini a Christmas or two ago and will face this soon. I hate moaning blogs, but maybe there&#8217;s a parent out there who will read this, think twice, and I&#8217;ll have saved them from a little pain and a lot of money. I hope so. If I lose Apple a potential customer, well, they lost them themselves by their own strategy.<\/p>\n<p>3) In the long run, this <i>will<\/i> hurt Apple. Consumers will only keep being mugs for a period and it doesn&#8217;t matter <i>how<\/i> cool you try to make your company look &#8211; if you let your consumers down, they&#8217;ll move on.<\/p>\n<p>4) The iTunes\/iPod combination is anti-competitive and needs to be stopped. The simple answer is to make iTunes compatible with other devices. That way, even if there is copy-protection involved, I can buy another manufacturer&#8217;s devices when Apple&#8217;s break down.<\/p>\n<p><b>Updated later<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Here is a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpurcell.org\/blog\/index.cfm?mode=entry&amp;entry=1036\">how you convert iTunes files to be used on any other MP3 player<\/a>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the first one I found on Google, so I can&#8217;t vouch for it&#8217;s effectiveness because I haven&#8217;t tried it yet. You should make sure you read all of the comments attached to that article for other points of view.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Grash for pointing this out and I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s completely legal, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have to laugh. Yesterday I received a mail-shot from Apple Frustrated with your PC? Time for a Mac. In the past 30 days has your PC: A. Crashed B. Frozen C. Made you want to pummel your screen with a sledgehammer D. All of the above It just works. Another great reason to own&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/23\/an-open-letter-to-steve-jobs\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An Open Letter to Steve Jobs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":850,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/01\/i-just-drove-to-work-with-jonathan-lewis\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":0},"title":"I just drove to work with Jonathan Lewis","date":"March 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted by Mark Rittman's blog, I downloaded the interview with Jonathan Lewis from DBAZine. I have an iPod-compatible hi-fi in the car. Once I'd got over the shock of DBAZine displaying in my car and stopped wondering where my life was going, it was a very interesting and forthright interview\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1348,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/13\/the-monkey-shot\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":1},"title":"The Monkey Shot","date":"November 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, so I know I said Cuddly Toys wouldn't be appearing on the Oracle blog any more, but in the other place, but this is directly related to the conference.It occurred to me as I was walking around the exhibition halls that I should try to use my influence as\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 8 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/serendipity\/uploads\/monkey.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":981,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/08\/tips-for-a-clean-pc\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":2},"title":"Tips for a &#8216;clean&#8217; PC","date":"April 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm extremely relieved that the ongoing problems with my daughter's PC seem to have been rectified and haven't appeared for a couple of weeks now. Here was the approach I ended up taking :-1) Buy Zonealarm Security Suite on CD.2) Reinstall Windows (The SP1 version that came with the PC)3)\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1240,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/01\/the-wow-starts-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":3},"title":"The Wow Starts Now!","date":"April 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"(Oh, OK, I just used that subject line to annoy people - and\u00a0whilst tipping my hat to Tim Hall, who used it a while ago. Deep breath; flame-retardant jump suit on ...)For the past couple of weeks I've been using my new PC (with Windows Vista installed) for everything, remote\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 25 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":983,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/13\/the-dangers-of-windows\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":4},"title":"The Dangers of Windows","date":"March 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The thing is, I've read all of the articles about viruses, worms, adware and so on (and I've had my browser redirected a few times) but you never really think the worst will happen to you.Today I spent 5 hours trying to fix my daughters PC, which has become seriously\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1314,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/09\/one-day-soon-ill-install-something\/","url_meta":{"origin":1064,"position":5},"title":"One Day Soon, I&#8217;ll Install Something","date":"September 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"What a horrible week it's been from a technical perspective.I decided mid-way through the previous week that I was going to bite the bullet, give up on DTrace for a while and install Linux on the server so I could run the PX tests on 11g. Then Jeff Moss sent\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 20 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}