In Which iRage Some More

At this moment, our house contains the following Apple-made devices:

• one (1) 28" iMac, on which I am typing this post
• one (1) iPad
• three (3) iPhone 4s
• one (1) iPod Touch (first-generation)
• three (3) iPod Touches (second-generation)
• one (1) iPod Nano (sixth-generation)
• one (1) iPod Nano (third-generation)
• one (1) iPod Nano (second-generation)
• one (1) iPod Shuffle (second-generation)
• one (1) Apple TV

This last, purchased only months ago, brings our total Apple device count to 14, 11 of which are iPods, officially qualifying us for classification as an iHousehold. The reason for this is obvious. The three people whom I share a home with, despite being quite intelligent, are technologically...impaired. Apple's well-deserved reputation for ease of use -- "computers for people who hate computers," so to speak -- was a natural fit. 

Though I was (at the time) a devoted Windows fanboy, I was happy about the change, anticipating a much lighter load as our family's unofficial tech support. Even more so when Dad purchased a ridiculously expensive AppleCare extended warranty. And then I discovered the truth.

When Apple products work, they're wonderful. And, 99 percent of the time, they do work. But when they break, and they will eventually break for no real reason, good luck fixing them.

Case in point: one day, Mom mentioned to me that her contacts weren't syncing from her computer to her iPod Touch. Here follows a brief explanation of how we fixed this problem.

11:00 AM: We make sure all the relevant boxes are checked, uncheck them just for the hell of it, then check them again.

11:30 AM: No luck.

12:15 PM: 45 minutes of Google searching finds us only Apple support articles, which we follow to the letter. Nothing. We try rebooting things.

12:30 PM: The obscenely long iPod diagnostic startup is finally finished. It fixes nothing. We try updating iTunes and the iPod firmware.

1:00 PM: The updates have finally downloaded and installed. They fix nothing, but while you're here, would you like to consider an absolutely free 30-day trial subscription to MobileMe?

1:30 PM: We finally give in and call Apple tech support, brandishing the extended warranty.

1:45 PM: "You are number...NINE. THOUSAND. ELEVEN. In line. Please continue to hold. Your call is very important to us."

2:00 PM: We finally get a real person on the line. He tells us to make sure the boxes are checked, reboot everything, update our software...

2:30 PM: Having run out of the standard script, the Apple guy puts us on hold again.

2:40 PM: *sounds of low-quality Bruce Springsteen accompanied by the repeated sound of a forehead meeting a glass table*

2:50 PM: The Apple guy is back on the line again. "Are you sure the Sync Contacts box is checked?"

3:00 PM: We give up on AppleIsStupidAndDoesn'tCare and go back to Google.

3:30 PM: After discovering the location of the ultra-secret hidden debug console, we open it and begin looking for a relevant error message.

3:50 PM: After scrolling through thousands of incredibly helpful and detailed messages like "Tue Nov 29 18:25:07 Martinez-Family-iMac.local loginwindow[33] <Warning>: CGSDisplayServerShutdown: Detaching display subsystem from window server com.apple.loginwindow[33]," we (I) finally manage to determine that, out of Mom's over 700 contacts, exactly one is corrupted and is halting the sync process.

4:30 PM: BUT WHICH ONE?

5:00 PM: We make an interesting discovery: There is absolutely no way to find out. Mom begins re-entering all of her contact data.


Somewhere, Steve Jobs laughs.

Aside: a quick math lesson for those of you who haven't already figured this out: 11 iPods / 4 people = 2.75 ipp (iPods per person). Well, actually, considering I own exactly one of these devices, the iPod Nano 2G (the exact circumstances leading to my current state of iPhonelessness are left to the imagination), a more accurate equation is 10 iPods / 3 people = 3.33 ipp. Hopefully, you don't need me to explain why this is WRONG.

E-reader Rage

I, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, received an e-reader for Christmas. As a professional skeptic, I was wary of the device. Then I noticed the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy preview in the Books list, preloaded onto the reader, and my skepticism was gone. "I can read Hitchhiker's Guide on this," I said. "This is the single greatest invention in human history."

Eager to test out my new e-reader after devouring the Hitchhiker's preview (and scratching my head at the multiple German books also preloaded), I was happy to discover that our local library had ebooks available for download through MyMediaMall. Upon signing into this system, I told it to display all available titles. It displayed 20 books, the most interesting of which was Window Treatments and Slipcovers for Dummies, though Divorce ran a close second.

I, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, received an e-reader for Christmas.

Ebooks are still a developing technology, and evidently people are still clinging to the old ideas of distribution. In particular, I am stunned by MyMediaMall's decision to set finite limits on the number of copies of a book a library can carry. For our local library, every book has at most 2 copies. Combine this with the rush of people with e-readers, and there are no books left -- with very few exceptions, in particular the hundreds of elementary math workbooks.

I imagine technology-haters feel rather vindicated by this. "See," they say, "these fancy Kindles will never replace paper books." And the worst part is, I can't really argue with them.


Aside: I am "fortunate" enough [see my fingers?] to own the Sony Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300. I will not whine about its lack of Wi-Fi, lack of a keyboard, lack of conveniently located page turn buttons, lack of annotation capabilities, lack of PDF resizing, legendarily slow loading times, low-contrast screen, disproportionate power consumption while in sleep mode, or the utterly crippled manager software. Not here, at least. What I will whine about is the fact that you can't have PDF and EPUB library ebooks on the device at the same time. No, even that isn't so bad. What bothers me is that Sony refuses to acknowledge this as a glitch, instead explaining it away with "Load all the books of one type, then go back to your computer after reading all of them and load all the books of the other type." After the Playstation Move, I suppose this is just par for the course.


(To be fair, Nook support for library ebooks is also garbage from what I've heard, and the Kindle...well, the Kindle has an entirely different set of problems.)