What gives, Apple?

My class was canceled today, so I'm bored enough to write a blog post three days in a row. Yay. Today, I take on Apple.

Since I know people get rabid about this, let me start right off the bat by saying I'm not really a huge PC fanboygirl. I do prefer to use PCs in general because I like building my own machines and being able to replace parts, but I don't really have a problem with Apple's products (other than that I find them to be a wee bit expensive.)

I do, however, have a spot of trouble with the Apple Image™. It bugs me that Microsoft et. al (aka PC people) are the nasty corporationey corporations, and Apple is the friendly little guy. It may be that as far as companies go, Apple is friendly (I wouldn't really know), but they are just so damn proprietary. And as much as they appeal to "creative types," (and I'm being generous when I say that, rather than, for instance, "pompous hipsters") there are some issues with iTunes and the iPods that really eat at audiophiles and even some mid-upper level music collectors in general; the annoyance often extends to the point that many of those types of people look elsewhere for portable music players and music playing software. It's ironic that despite Apple truly mastering and maintaining the standard for portable music players meanwhile purporting themselves as an upper-echelon brand, they've failed to hold onto the truly elite music aficionados.

I don't even place myself in that category - I have way too much music in a lossy format that I don't have the energy to replace with higher quality audio - but it does bother me that when I choose to download *cough* buy music that is completely uncompressed (that is, it retains 100% of the original sound quality intended by the artist and production team), there is only one lossless format that Apple will allow to play on iTunes and the iPod, even though numerous other formats exist.

And since I kind of went there earlier, allow me to mention that you can only buy lowish quality 128kb/s bitrate Apple-coded files (AAC format) from the iTunes store the majority of the time. I believe one record company did authorize the release of 256kb/s (basically double the quality) songs for $0.30 more per song through the iTunes store, but as of yet that is all that Apple has done to acknowledge higher quality song files and provide them to the consumer. Considering how many people use the store and the iPod, I find that kind of sad. Apple would like me to believe that they are the kind of company that's giving the average consumer a better, classier option, but in their music-related market (arguably a huge aspect of the company) that's simply not the case.

On another note, I bought some awesome rain boots and they finally came yesterday. I'd never owned them before because I thought it was kind of silly to have hardcore rain boots here, but a combination of two factors made me reconsider my opinion:
1) Since I'm living at home again now, I don't really think that my mom would be super stoked about me wearing my flip-flops in the rain like I usually do. It's her job to worry, she's a mother!
2) With an El Niño coming this winter, it's likely to be rainier than usual. So why not?
Besides, they're so freaking sweet. I love houndstooth!



And with that, here's some more music...