By Steven Schwankert At long last, after all the two of them have been through togetherduring their 'Great China Adventure', the Grouch is taking a swipeat his beloved Apple. Despite significant evidence to the contrary,The Village Grouch is a mere mortal. He makes the occasionalmistake. About three weeks ago, after being machineless in Beijingfor almost that many months, he finally took delivery on his latestbrain export device, an Apple Powerbook G4, 15-inch, essentially asuperior version of the laptop that saw its logicboard burn out. One of the first things the Grouch did was connect his iPod to thenew machine.
With 30G packed into a device the size of a pack ofcigarettes, he had been toting around the contents of his harddrive for a financial quarter, and wanted to offer them a new,permanent home. In his excitement, perhaps, he informed the machine that yes, hewanted to make this new laptop (actually a slightly pre-ownedversion purchased from a friend) the primary base for this iPod.Seconds later, when he noticed his music library disappearing, hecancelled the transfer. It was too late. Not more than 10 seconds passed from the originalchoice to the cancellation, but in that blink of an eye, a musiccollection that represented two years of work and editing and over2000 tracks was gone. The Grouch was apoplectic.
He was on day two of a three-week trip,one that would take him offline and out of reach of most majormedia for at least nine days. Gone. Checked music library files. Gone.
Checked on the iPoditself. Gone. The soundtrack of the Grouchlife. Gone. In desperation, the Grouch turned to Apple's office in Hong Kong,where he used to know the guy who runs the show.
To paraphrase, hesaid Grouch, you're buggered. Even if the Grouch brought the Pod totheir service center, there would be no way to retrieve the tracks. Now, frankly, this doesn't make any sense. Any computer user whohas ever held a Dummies book in his or her hands knows that whensomething is deleted, the space it occupies simply becomesavailable to be overwritten, like any building under 10 stories inBeijing. However, until overwritten, the file is still there.Certainly in theory, the Grouch's tracks should all still be on thePod, as only a few were actually replaced by his friend's strangechoices of Thai techno.
More disturbing, 500 of those tracks had been purchased via theApple Music Store, Apple's revolutionary, legal online musicoutlet. When the Grouch asked Apple in Hong Kong what happens tothose 500 tracks that he paid for and therefore owns, he receivedno response. The Grouch, both in this column and in his other incarnations, hasbeen a staunch advocate for copyright protection. With theexception of a few tracks given to the Grouch on burned CDs, everysingle one of the more than 2000 songs on his iPod were 100 percentlegitimate, purchased either directly from Apple or on CD viaAmazon.com or at traditional retail stores like HMV in Hong Kong. But you know what? The Grouch has now officially reached his limit.If his older, burned out machine won't fire up one last time, he'lltake the CDs he has and re-rip them.
Then, every missing track hecan remember will come from somewhere else–but there's no wayhe's paying to own them again. He owned many of them on cassette,then upgraded to CD. He even paid again for some in theirelectronic format. But there's absolutely no way he's going to paya third or fourth time for tracks that he legitimately owns andwould still be enjoying had it not been for an honest, errant mouseclick.
Apple's zealousness in its support of copyright protection has gonetoo far. Frankly, it doesn't owe the music industry anything. Thatindustry dragged its heels for years until finally a computermanufacturer produced the music player and the online musicdistribution channel for which the market had been waiting. Enoughalready.
Let the music industry do a little innovating for achange, namely with its artists and channels. The Grouch isn't renouncing Apple. Hell, he just bought his seventhor eighth Apple laptop, and is using his third iPod. What's hegoing to do, switch to a Wintel product? Yeah, that day willcome–probably the day after the Grouch becomes a Man.
Usupporter. It was bound to happen that one day the Grouch would bite into anApple with a worm in it. He just wishes it hadn't eaten all hismusic first. About the author: Steven Schwankert is a former editor of Computerworld Hong Kong,based in Beijing. He can be reached at tvg@thevillagegrouch.com. I am an expert from Home Appliances, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as kitchen chimney hood , r 22 freon.
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