The🐿️ is over Cupertino's Rent-seeker!
The Blind Squirrel's 'Monday' Morning Notes. Year 3; Week 34.
The🐿️ is over Cupertino's Rent-seeker!
This rodent well remembers a major Apple controversy surrounding the original iPod music players in the early 2000s. After a spate of robberies, the UK police were warning iPod owners there that wearing the distinctive white headphones could make them a target for thieves.
Apple representatives at the time - in a tone-deaf public relations gaff for the ages - reportedly suggested that some people would “rather be robbed than change the color of their headphones”. The brazenness of this story jumped back to the 🐿️’s frontal cortex last week. Let me explain.
This rodent was a one-time ‘Apple everything’ consumer. In the early 2000s, my desk drawer contained more iPods than Baby Driver. I was as excited as Phil Dunphy about getting my new iPad when they first came out (to revolutionize the hundreds of hours per year spent on planes). I was gutted when Apple TV turned out to be just a set-top box!
I admit that a ‘Crackberry’ addiction delayed my (keyboard-less) iPhone adoption until the iPhone 5. Without the invention of Air Pods, my podcast consumption would be nothing like what it is today.
But I am afraid that the innovation (and joy) dried up long ago. Have you ever tried to move an iTunes / Apple Music / iCloud subscription to another country? In short, it’s almost impossible. Have you ever had any joy with Apple Pay customer support when your pre-teen ‘fat fingers’ a rogue Robux or TikTok coin purchase (Thank you, Master 🐿️)? Nope.
At what point did the designed obsolescence of Apple hardware start to grate and when did you start to imagine that Air Pod cases were deliberately designed to slide out of your trouser pocket and go missing forever? Are you now at peace with the failings of iOS’s spellchecking capabilities and at what point did you give up on and disable the utterly inept Siri voice assistant?
Minor irritations have a tendency to accumulate, and this rodent has finally had it with Apple. The 🐿️ had already given up on AaaS (AirPods-as-a-subscription). Lost earbuds are now replaced (same day) with whatever is on special offer (for $30 instead of $300) at Amazon.
My old iPhone 13 Pro Max will - once the latest iOS software update inevitably starts to create performance gremlins - be replaced by a (superior) Xiaomi or Samsung phone (at a fraction of the price). At that point, the Apple watch will probably end up gathering dust in a drawer (after willfully refusing to talk to my replacement Android device).
Device frustrations aside, the final straw with Apple came last week…