I dropped Facebook years ago and rarely wish I had it. It's annoying when there's a useful, niche group there, otherwise I don't care. I ranked Apple second despite typing this on a MacBook and not a computer running Windows. I'm really jaded about Apple currently. Ten years ago they made some of the most usable electronics I'd owned. They borrowed and stole from others and made it nice to use. My Samsung phone with Android is as nice to use as any iPhone. I have an iPad. It's five years old and won't be replaced. I use it to watch movies at night when I'm in a bed and breakfast that doesn't have a TV in my room. And that's about it. Apple Watch? Don't care. iPod? Why when I have a phone? The key to Apple's demise: iTunes is awful. Truly, truly awful. This happened to me last night. "Your texts were green!" "Yep!" And that was the end of it. Nobody cares. I put Microsoft after Apple because I use it for work. And it works. I'd have an easier time switching to Windows at home than I would anything else at work. When this computer dies I will likely replace it with one running Windows. I opted to drop Amazon before Google because I figure I could search for stores selling what I want if Amazon didn't exist. I've gone off the deep end of buying from Amazon. It's just so easy. Cat food, granola bars, my business casual clothes. I also remarked to someone who asked me if I still used the same email address (we hadn't spoken in a couple years). My answer was yes, I think it would be harder to change my email address than my phone number. I have Gmail.What will your friends say when you lose access to Apple’s messaging service and your texts start coming in green?
That's one syllable long of a haiku. It also contains a bigger truth. iTunes used to be about making an easy way for people to use their iPods. Then it became an easy way for people to buy music from Apple. Then it became an easy way for people to buy music and movies from Apple. Then it became the only way you could sync your iPhone. Then it became the only way you could manage your media. Then it became the hostage-taker of your media by a company that decided fuck you, you own a U2 album. Acrobat Reader is this awful thing because it's a giant application with a CAD engine, a media embedder, a full-featured mail server and god knows what else that makes it so that the people who use Creative Suite can rest assured that their customers can view content as intended. But iTunes serves no master but Apple. It's horrendous middleware that exists solely to lock Apple users into the ecosystem. Much like iChat or Facetime or whatever the fuck they're calling their ad-hoc five-protocols half-proprietary clusterfuck of messaging tech these days - Apple could have come up with an open protocol that did all that shit and catch Google and Facebook completely flat-footed. But they didn't, they haven't, and they won't because siloing is far more important to them. I think Apple let iTunes become such a heinous chunk of shit because they recognized the future of media wasn't ownership, it was RMR and if all you're doing with iTunes is streaming their shit, it's acceptably bad. No worse than Spotify, surely. This corrosion is hitting Google, too - Android used to be dope, but it's steadily turning to shit, too. Having experienced the clusterfuck that is Google hardware support, they don't give a fuck. Even when you are the customer, rather than whoever they're selling your eyeballs to, they give zero shits about your customer satisfaction. Microsoft, I believe, understand that they're in danger of being left behind because of their calcified, prehistoric approach to business and engineering... but they're still putting that calcified, prehistoric approach front and center. Amazon? Amazon hath become Walmart. They are the Walmart of the liberal elite, the guys who browse People of Walmart while shipping Sahale Snacks to themselves via Amazon Fresh. They are every bit as vulnerable to disruption as Walmart is. Their business model relies solely on monopoly pinch points. Alibaba is on the blockchain.The key to Apple's demise: iTunes is awful. Truly, truly awful.