Fie Tunes

Y'know, in an era of one-click in-app purchases constantly trying to bait or trick you into making a million microtransactions, I'm continually amazed at how hard iTunes works to prevent itself from taking my money. Quite virtuous of them, really.

Start with their password requirements, more stringent than those of major banks, which mandate a password of such arcane convolution as to guarantee I can never remember the damn thing and have to recover it every few months. Or the fact that I'm then forced to re-verify my billing methods every single time. Or the fact the verification isn't going through, for some inexplicable reason and moreover lacks any option to re-send the request. Or that lovely pop-up ordering me to "fix" the fact that it's not my default music player. Or that it's one of the last programs in existence which demands a full system reboot whenever it patches itself, which is, naturally... often... yeah, let's leave it at that. Or that Apple's auto-update shoves itself to the forefront at utterly random times. Or that patching this flimsy clutter of unusable features takes longer than most 50GB AAA video games. Even if I get it working, iTunes has the worst loading times of any browser, digital distribution platform or similar software, compounded by constant pop-ups demanding I verify my password because this is apparently the only piece of modern software which cannot check a damn IP address!

And hey, while all this might still be villainous, I could understand if it were at least calculated, Machiavellian villainy, if Apple could reasonably assume it had us all by the shorthairs and could treat us as badly as it wanted for lack of competition. However, music downloads are the perennially contentious poster-child of data distribution. Forget online radio or other official stores. There are several methods by which I could presumably be listening to music for free (like, idaknow... YouTube?) and yet I freely choose to pay, to support the industry, to make a charitable donation, only to be cockblocked by your idiotic gatekeeping device at every single turn. I could buy a bank-breaking car with a thousand dollar stereo system with less hassle than I can shill out ninety-nine cents through iTunes to blast Baby Got Back on that same stereo system.

In an era of online credit libertinism, let us raise our glasses to iTunes' puritanical chastity. Really, take a bow, thank you for working so hard to stop us trying to give you money. You're an inspiration to us all. Let it not be said that I can't appreciate the value of an inept parasite. I'd sing an ode in your honor but YOU WOULDN'T LET ME BUY IT !