Learn from the mistakes of others

Charles Wright does a little tinkering with an iPod and a desktop.

January 26, 2006

HERE is the question you apparently mustn't ask if you're an iPod owner: How do I transfer the songs on my iPod to a PC or Mac?

We can't find this prohibition in the End User Licence Agreement, but it must be there somewhere because two of our friends - one a Windows iPod owner, the other a Mac-based user - recently asked precisely that question in Apple dealerships in Sydney and Melbourne and were treated like master criminals.

"You can't do it," they were told with noticeable firmness. "It isn't possible."

The only reason we can think of for this vehement, and unfortunately completely wrong, advice is that in the world of Apple there's a pervasive view that people who ask that question are intent on music piracy.

Here at the Bleeding Edge Centre for the Examination of Intentions, we're convinced, however, that most of them have far more honourable motives. They simply want to know how to recover their music collection in the event or the actuality of a catastrophic failure of their computer hard drive. Or they might want to back up their music collection to a different computer.

They ought to be made aware that it's quite easy to do.

... ... ...

Though why anyone would be stupid enough to suggest dragging an iPodload of files onto a desktop has be at a loss.

That was stupid back in the old Mac days. It's just insane now.

And I'm with Charles on the point about piracy. Get over it corporate fuckwits. You've never been able to control what we do with stuff - it's beyond stupidly impossible in Digitalia™.