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Apple Sucks1


KB Gunn

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I bought an iPOD at the end of 2010. I was not aware at the time that Apple would abandon loyal customers. There is no reason other than greed for them to not backwards support my ipod touch. They would not allow Digitech to update the Stomp Shop app for the iStomp guitar pedal that I recently purchased unless it was 4.3 or greater. Why? In order to force us to buy another $300 iPod touch even though the old one works fine. That's why. I doubt if there is any electronic limitation that prevents them from allowing me to upgrade to 4.3. This is unacceptable.

Digitech decided to make 12 of the pedal sounds free instead of 2 as they first introduced it less than a year ago. They could not change the price ($10 each) on the old app version which is compatable with my iPod. They had to upgrade to do it and therefore locked me out of any changes they make to their product. They say apple won't let them upgrade for anything less than iOS 4.3. Instead of getting them free, I have to pay $100 to download the pedal samples. They would be free if Apple would let me upgrade my iPod Touch to 4.3. What is stopping them? This is bad business. I have had 15 Mac computers since 1985, including the iMac Quad core intel I am using to key this post. Unless they make it possible to support slightly older hardware like mine, I refuse to buy another Apple product ever again. Shame on Apple for making me waste my money on a now limited device.

WARNING!! To all guitarists that want to get the iStomp pedal for their pedalboard. If you have an Apple iPod touch that runs on less than 4.3, you will not be able to download any of the pedals from your iPod. You have to have a relatively new iPod.

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You should see what companies who created hardware that plugged into the 30-pin connector are saying about the "Lightning" connector.

Granted, the old connector has features that no one uses any more, and never will. So what? So there are some unused pins.

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Apple has been an early adopter and early abandoner of technology ever since Steve Jobs returned and dropped the floppy 15 years ago. This approach has its pluses and minuses, but it's a well known aspect of Apple as a company. Love it or hate it, it's probably helpful to consider this before you buy.

Best,

Geoff

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Yep - I left Apple around 1982, after shelling out $1400 for an Apple IIe, only to find they stopped all support for it a month later. I don't forget nor forgive, ever, when I get screwed over. Apple will never see another dime from me.

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Well, I have an Android tablet and I can't find any useful audio applications for it. I've been told from a few different sources and from asking the question "Why not?" in different ways that the problem is that because there are several manufacturers, you can't guarantee that your app will work on all of them. I'm testing the Audio Control SPL meter app now and, because of where the audio (at least on this tablet) comes out of the application development software kit, it's pretty much useless. The audio is compressed (dynamic range, not data loss) before it goes to the app. Calibrate it at one SPL and and lower levels will read high and higher levels will read low. This is from an honest company who knows how to make audio measurements, so it must work right on some Android device. But like anything else based on a computer, you can't test it on everything.

I should have traded the tablet in on an iPad or iPod Touch when it was new. At least if an app was tested on one iOS device, it will work on any other one at least of the same model and OS version.

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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
...and it cuts both ways. Microsoft's attention to backward compatibility and legacy support is commendable and important to many, but also limiting.
Quote Originally Posted by TimOBrien View Post
... at least you didn't buy a Zune.

;-)
And, of course, with the board demanding the Apple-ification of MS, that once-fabled MS legacy support is disappearing fast.

They are desperate that Windows 8 not be Vista all over again -- and they're doing most everything they can to prevent the 'deification' of Win 7, parallel to that of XP -- the beloved OS that still runs 40% of the world's computers. But as Windows versions now begin proliferating more rapidly -- ginning up ancillary sales, they hope, and churning the hardware market, they and the builder community hope, the ability of third party software vendors to support them all properly is being eroded.

And you can see that in the products of over-reaching companies like Adobe, who bought Macromedia in order to acquire Flash -- and then has proceeded to mismanage and hobble that franchise with buggy releases and ongoing security nightmares. For most of the last year, millions of Flash users on XP have had big problems negotiating the various buggy Flash versions... complicated by the fact that popular browser Chrome tends to use an older Flash build that is all but 'hard-wired' into the browser. So, for the first half of this year, for many the then-current version of Flash running in Firefox would frequently crash, hang up, video and audio would stutter, and audio sounded 'underwater.' Finally, a less buggy version of Flash was released, Firefox with Flash became somewhat usable again -- but now Chrome has been 'updated' to the buggy version. (Google deserves plenty of blame here, of course, if for no other reason than building (often) non-current versions of Flash into Chrome.) And worse, running Flash content (even passive background ads which are EVERYWHERE on the net) in one browser seems to at times interfere with the other browser.

All this used to work great.
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But we digress.......

The whole point of this is Digitech has a real problem on their hands with the iStomp. By teaming up with Apple and their refusal to support legacy products, they now have a stomp box that will not allow many users to stay up to date. I bought the iStomp early this summer. I am just getting into using it and was so excited to find out that they added 10 free sims to the original 2 that can be downloaded for free. When I tried, I was blocked from downloading the update. It seems to me that Digitech could easily just change the price from $10 to $0 for the ten new free sims in the older app version. However, the way I understand it is that Apple will only let them upgrade to change things and they are not allowed to support earlier iOS. My 2 year old iPod touch is now obsolete. Yeah, I know about Moore's Law, but still if the thing is fully functional, why abandon it? Apple has lost me as a customer if they will not fix this situation. I have never had this happen in the 27 years I have used apple products.

At least if a guitarist buys an iStomp now and finds he can't download the Stomp Shop app to his 2nd generation iPod Touch, he has 30 days to return the iStomp due to incompatibility. I however am SOL!!!

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Wow, 27 years and 15 computers to realize you're being shafted. I pity the kids getting on the iTrain now... there's a world of waste ahead for them.

Quote Originally Posted by KB Gunn View Post
It seems to me that Digitech could easily just change the price from $10 to $0 for the ten new free sims in the older app version.
It is not in Apple's interests to allow that - they didn't get rich making 30% of $0. The joys of a closed system...
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Quote Originally Posted by Gus Lozada View Post
Ahem... MIDI? biggrin.gif
Not sure I get your point...if it's that Lightning accommodates MIDI but the 30-pin didn't (I have no idea, I'm just guessing) then you could use something unused (like the 30-pin parallel printer port pins) for MIDI. That way the connector would still be physically compatible, even if the data stream isn't in one or two small respects.

As to companies like DigiTech relying on Apple, they're having a hard time getting the hardware needed to let the iPB-10 work with the latest iPad and had to come up with a mod.
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Quote Originally Posted by KB Gunn View Post
But we digress.......

The whole point of this is Digitech has a real problem on their hands with the iStomp.
Both Digitech and their customers have a problem. When you sell (or buy) a piece of tech that depends in a very fundamental way on another piece of tech designed and manufactured by a separated corporate entity, then *someone* ought to be damned sure that one of the following holds true:

a) there are guarantees (for what that's worth from a corporation...) that there will be guaranteed compatibility for some specified duration
b) that you - as a consumer - are willing to freeze your tech at whatever revision works at the time of purchase
c) that you - as a consumer - are willing to write off the "loss" when your two chunks of codependent tech become incompatible

Unfortunately, (a) will never happen. That leaves it up to you - the consumer - to anticipate this kind of problem before it happens. Caveat emptor, indeed...

It's not just Digitech that has this problem. There are a bunch of lemmings - er, manufacturers... - jumping on the "new MI gear must integrate with iOS" bandwagon. I think this is ill-advised.
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Quote Originally Posted by TieDyedDevil

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It's not just Digitech that has this problem. There are a bunch of lemmings - er, manufacturers... - jumping on the "new MI gear must integrate with iOS" bandwagon. I think this is ill-advised.

 

I wonder if a company the size of Yamaha or Roland could create an Android-based tablet designed specifically for the music industry.
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Quote Originally Posted by TieDyedDevil View Post
Both Digitech and their customers have a problem. When you sell (or buy) a piece of tech that depends in a very fundamental way on another piece of tech designed and manufactured by a separated corporate entity, then *someone* ought to be damned sure that one of the following holds true:

a) there are guarantees (for what that's worth from a corporation...) that there will be guaranteed compatibility for some specified duration
b) that you - as a consumer - are willing to freeze your tech at whatever revision works at the time of purchase
c) that you - as a consumer - are willing to write off the "loss" when your two chunks of codependent tech become incompatible

Unfortunately, (a) will never happen. That leaves it up to you - the consumer - to anticipate this kind of problem before it happens. Caveat emptor, indeed...

It's not just Digitech that has this problem. There are a bunch of lemmings - er, manufacturers... - jumping on the "new MI gear must integrate with iOS" bandwagon. I think this is ill-advised.
Kiss the sort of interoperability we had for the last 2 decades goodbye. Apple has shown the way, giving the other manufacturers and their demanding boards of directors a model for greatly enhanced exploitation of customers through increased vertical integration and customer lock in. You can see the signs of the sea shift across the computer industry. Third party market integration and cooperation is seen as a sucker move. The Golden Age of personal computing comes to an end. (And I'm only half kidding.)
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
I wonder if a company the size of Yamaha or Roland could create an Android-based tablet designed specifically for the music industry.
I wonder if the desktop music production and video production communities might not end up in the Linux world eventually.

That will mean a very different set of market relationships. Software oriented to serious recording and production will once again become niche-ware, prices will rise, as the general market moves ever more toward music-manipulation as entertainment. (Nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it will mean divergent economies of scale.)
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
Well, at least you're only half-kidding. I didn't think you were kidding at all...
I was kidding about it being golden...

wink.gif


My tone might be ironic-Jeremiad, but that doesn't mean I'm not basically calling it as I'm afraid I see it.

That said, I was doing my posting from my tablet earlier today -- and that always makes me especially cranky. Imagine.
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I wonder if the desktop music production and video production communities might not end up in the Linux world eventually.

 

 

Linux isn't totally device independent, and somebody's got to keep the OS and applications in step with the available hardware. Harrison does it with their large format consoles, but those cost enough to pay for a real software development and support staff. You run the version of Linux that they provide with the console, on the hardware that's built into the console.

 

There's no reason why Apple couldn't buy Avid and make the $50,000 Pro Tools system and $150,000 studio or live console. And for everyone else there would still be Garage Band.

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I sent the following email to my contact at Digitech. Maybe this will be the solution to the problem:

 

I noticed that on my version of Stomp Shop, you have added new pedals since you first introduced this app. Is it possible for you to still access that first pre-update version of the app or are you locked out of it since you updated? If you can still access it, why can't you change the pricing on the 10 apps that are now free to $0.00? Also, this will allow us that have less than 3rd generation iPod Touch units to still be able to download new pedals that you offer later on. In other words, make changes to the old app as well as the newer one for newer iPods and iPhones. This would solve the whole problem....

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I think Gus was referring to the 3 unused pins of a MIDI DIN connector. That was my take, anyway.

 

 

Yeah. You said "the old connector has features that no one uses any more, and never will. So what? So there are some unused pins."

 

MIDI has had some "unused pins" from its very initial design. And lasted 30 years.

 

So, having "some unused pins" should not be an issue.

 

 

 

... specifically talking about the 30-pin to Lightning change, well, (1) that's how Apple rolls, anyway and (2) if it will help for future designs, I'm ok with that.

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