[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Assuming you're not making a completely arbitrary case based on your own assumptions and being another simpering conformist on an Apple thread (Apple being another company that made make-believe nonconformity a marketing strategy, which means that people who notice this but privilege other brands representing mass-produced consumer devices as being less conformist are also make-believe nonconformists), let's say for the sake of argument that you really are in a class that uses iTunes U.

I am a cripple who doesn't watch TV.

Then you seem to be complaining about access to free content from an Apple service, content which can be played on any device from an Apple service once it's downloaded.

I'm complaining about the software that I have to use to download that content.

Apparently this bothers you because you can't separate the service from the brand name that happens to be attached to it.

This bothers me because the iTunes software is a buggy mess that has caused me more headaches than all other software combined. (All the way back to Commodore PET and Apple II.)

To those of us who went to college in the days of note-taking and tape recorders, that really does sound like incontinent whining.

I played CRPGs in the days of drawing maps on graph paper. I still expect modern CRPGs to work properly.

Everyone who looks at an Apple thread as an excuse to take out their aggression on random Apple users has the same neurological disorder that compulsive Apple users do: they're victims of BIS (Brand Identification Syndrome). "My brand is better because the specs speak for themselves and I bought it after careful comparisons. That means it's real tech, whereas yours is illusory tech. My choices make me important."

I suffer from Brand Alienation Syndrome. I don't care who's name is on anything.

Not exactly -- all consumers scry their tea-leaf choices based on whatever Pavlovian enticements make them privilege one product over another. None of these companies care about you or anyone else and none is particularly special or egregious.

Mostly I scry with cash-leaves or magic chickens.

Brand wars are a Roman arena to distract you from your true condition. Reality TV shows work the same way when they valorize or vilify ordinary people on a ludicrous scale.

Nos morituri te salutamus.

Doesn't the relentless pursuit of easy targets ever make people feel a tad Fox-News obvious?

I couldn't relentlessly pursue a one-legged tortoise.

No matter how good specs or features might be, every post gloating about them at someone else's expense makes the same tired Dawn of the Dead analogy directed at shambling consumer herds -- the shambling masses to which, amazingly, the authors of those posts imagine they themselves do not belong.

I have an old Dell Axim that used to belong to Moses. The backup battery is kaput. I have to reset it every now and again. I paid $12 for it. It works better than iTunes. I could go on...and on...and on. (I'll save it for the "Apple hates cripples" thread.)

I'm not a shambling zombie. I'm the guy yelling, "Apocalypse--schmapocalypse. Free guns, baby!"