Why, oh why, iPad/iPod?

I've never really been a fan of either my iPad or iPod. Each of them gets one use. My iPad is used for reading ebooks, and the iPod for daily Mandarin revision with a flashcard application. They're clunky, arcane devices, hidden behind the almost unusable and arbitrary experience that is iTunes. 

Something else I have been using them for is to take advantage of free internet bandwidth. Internet in New Zealand is metered, and a gigabyte can cost something like $2 NZ. It all adds up quickly. So when someone offers free internet, instead of using their limit of 100 MB a day, I can use 300 MB a day with my three devices. I can download a podcast over a couple of days, resuming the download on additional days.

Or I could, if Apple's iTunes downloading wasn't incomprehensibly badly designed or broken. Pause a download? Chances are that it will start downloading from the beginning again when you resume it. Download get interrupted? Chances are that it will start downloading from the beginning again when you resume it. This is basic functionality - I've downloaded iOS updates several times over, again and again, when it happens on the PC iTunes application. Search the internet, people have been complaining about it for years..

I look forward to the day I can replace these devices with something more user friendly.

Edit: And that day may come sooner!  I dropped my iPod on the pavement and the screen shattered - replacing the screen costs a good fraction of an Android phone..

Sansa Clip

This is how an "mp3 player" should be. Focused, tiny and flexible. The battery lasts for a week or two. I can copy arbitrary files onto it, like the iPod/iPad applications that I can't download at home because iTunes is so backwards and clunky. Weighs so little that when if it gets knocked off whatever I have clipped it to, I barely notice. No DRM to enforce arbitrary anti-usability restrictions (I do not mean that as a euphemism for piracy either). I'd like another, as a backup.


The more I use my iPad or iPod Touch, the less I want to use iTunes. Yesterday while doing some work, I started downloading the operating system update for the iPod Touch and after two hours the whole 600MB was almost finished downloading. But I needed the bandwidth to download something else, so I paused the download and proceeded to get whatever it was. Then I resumed the upgrade download and..


From the beginning, for another two hours.. What is this? Apparently, it is still 1994 where Apple live. Decide to download something and do not want it? You have to find out how to contact Apple support (no mean feat) and ask them to remove it from your download queue. Bought your device in China? Then despite having changed your language to English, the EULA screens (and only the EULA screens) are going to strangely be in Chinese. Then there's actually having to use the program day to day. I like the ideal of a "good enough" portable digital camera/phone/gps device.. but the idea of it being lumbered with iTunes destroys any possibility of me getting an iPhone.

Tried using Facetime over the iPod Touch in the office with a coworker. It was a nice gimmick. But it seemed rather.. what's the word? Token. It didn't seem like a natural action. The idea is good, but the device just doesn't make it feel natural.