Different doesn’t mean better…

Ok.  I have just got to ask… does iTunes and my iPod make our lives easier?  Personally – that answer is nope.  Harder in fact.

Here is one of the most popular technologies to come along in the past twenty years or more – lauded as a better way for me to purchase, access and manage my music.  HA!  All it is – different.  Not easier.  Not faster.  Not better.  Just different.

In fact – I am fed up with it all.    I think I’ll just go back to my 8-tracks and vinyl.  Well maybe not.  But goodness sakes – it just doesn’t need to be this hard.

This afternoon I try to connect my iPod to my work computer after I set up a new iTunes account at work, so I can download and pay for some Led Zeppelin rifts to listen to while writing PowerPoint slides for a presentation I need to give in a couple days.  No problems yet.  But, after a couple hours I am getting ready to leave for the weekend.  Thinking it’d be nice to listen to the same tunes over the weekend, I try to transfer the songs from my account to my iPod and bring them with me.  Nope.  No go.  I get the warning saying – this iPod is associated with my home computer and unless I want to wipe off the entire 500 songs that are already on there and start from scratch – I can’t use my iPod.    

I know I am hardly the first one to figure this out.  Maybe even the last one.  Doesn’t matter.  My point is this:  iTunes and iPods are a great example of the tech industry giving me something different, but not giving me something to make my life easier.

If you look around the vast majority of the tech landscape, you’ll see many examples of the latest shiny new thing being lauded by everyone.  Yet when you step back from it all – you can see, it is just a different way to do something we used to do – not really a better way or an easier way. 

If the tech industry is going to get smart, they are going to figure out that at some point people don’t really want different.  They want better and easier.

Now then, where are my scratched up CDs?

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