Yesterday I purchased an mp3 player that, get this, was NOT an iPod. For the same price as a 2GB iPod my 8GB Sansa e280r has an FM tuner and a record button, not to mention a carrying case to prevent scratches. As I began transferring songs to my new device I stumbled across a small misfortune: the songs purchased from Apple's music store were encoded in a format only iTunes could read, making it impossible to load these songs onto any other player. But wait. I had purchased these songs so they were mine and I could do what I wanted with them, right? No. The only way to transfer these songs would be to burn them to a CD and re-rip them. Thanks, you conniving diabolic piece of fruit. Here is a list of reasons why Apple blows:


1. Their customer service sucks. My first iPod had a defective battery. I did not purchase any kind of extended warranty on it because I did not think it would be necessary at the time. Wrong I was. Because I did not buy the warranty I was only allowed one call to customer service and I would have to pay for any call thereafter. Their solution to my problem? Pay a shipping and handling fee of $30 and get a refurbished iPod. No thanks.

2. iPod is seriously flawed. Sure, it's cute and easy to use. But what happens when your battery dies? Uh oh! Either get a refurbished one (assuming you purchased the extended warranty) or buy a new iPod. These batteries don't last forever. In fact none of mine have made it to two years. My new mp3 player has a REPLACEABLE lithium ion battery. Wow, who could imagine?

3. Itunes will sabotage any later effort to switch to a different manufacturer. Itunes uses a protected m4p format to ensure that no other media player can read the songs you buy from their store. If you've only bought a dozen or songs this won't be a problem, but if you've got over a hundred such as myself, you'd better get yourself some blank CDs and start burning.

4. It's all hype. Why was my superior mp3 player the same price as an iPod that holds a quarter of the music? Because SanDisk doesn't piss away money on quirky advertising and hoity toity stores. Oh and did I mention that my Sansa has expandable memory?

5.Their stores smell like B.O.



This concludes my completely unbiased review of Apple. Is it fair to form an opinion of a company after purchasing only one of their many products? You're damn right it is. I would never spend thousands of dollars on one of their computers when a glorified flash drive couldn't last a year. Good riddance, Apple.