I don’t make a habit of blogging about gadgetry per se but there are a couple of comments I want to make about Apple’s latest lot of shenanigans.
Apple has cancelled the iPod Classic.
In all the screaming and howling about the watch and the iPhone 6 and its variants, and the payments ideas and all that, this is not getting anywhere near enough traction and discussion. I do not expect them to reverse this decisions because notoriously, electronics companies do not actually listen to me.
My first Apple product was an iPod nano which proved to be inadequate on the storage front so was replaced with a Classic forthwith. It probably will not make Apple happy to know that I have had that same device for the last six years, particularly as I am on my third iPhone in the same period.
I like the Classic. It has enough storage. It does exactly what I need it to which is play music. And it does not need to be connected to the internet. The alternatives, the iPod Touch and the iPhone, top out at 64gig. Sure, you can access stuff through the cloud and that’s fine if you’re at home with Wifi, pay next to nothing for data and are not roaming. Maybe in the US this is actually a sane way of doing things and of course, the EU is working on getting rid of data roaming charges anyway but…frankly, there’s a stretch of the rail line between Dublin and Cork, around Tipperary, where the mobile signal is fairly limited. I listen to a lot of music and storage matters to me. But I also want to be able to carry that music around with me in my handbag and that means the 128gig iPad isn’t really a replacement option either.
So I am deeply, deeply unhappy with Apple over this move, and unhappy enough with Apple to look at my contact points with Apple (currently an iPhone, an iPad, the aforementioned iPod Classic and iTunes via a Windows machine) and see about replacing them with non-Apple equivalents. It will take a while, but there are likely to be some benefits, key amongst them, Apple will not be able to deliver music to me which I do not want.
I am not really a fan of free stuff that I don’t want and the latest U2 album is on the list of free stuff which I don’t want and which should not have appeared in my library without me asking for it.
The biggest selling U2 album is the Joshua Tree and it, apparently, has sold twenty five million copies. In no version of this universe is it likely that half a billion iTunes users wanted their new one and yet Apple gave it to us and yes, it’s sitting in my library.
You can look at all the technology stuff that Apple does, and then look at this promotional gimmick and wonder why they did it. Why did Apple feel the need to do this?
I really have no idea. You would have to assume that companies do stuff like this to support the bottom line but ultimately, U2’s last album, released in 2009, sold five million copies. Compared to the Joshua Tree, that is not stellar. Compared to half a billion people who suddenly find themselves with the new album…which they probably did not want…it’s pretty pathetic. On U2’s part, it screams of a need to be loved.
On Apple’s part, it screams of a company which finds itself having to do the sort of PR it has not traditionally needed because the cachet of its own brand was enough and which is demonstrating that it just does not know how to do it. U2 are not cutting edge. They’ve been around for 30 years. Classic rockers. Seriously, if Apple wanted someone which was on what I assume was their brand message, I’d have chosen Daft Punk. Of course, if Apple think that U2 is on their brand message, then I’m inclined to wonder what their future holds.