Ipod = Ipoo

Last week something happened that was so devastating I’ve only just been able to bring myself to write about it. The incident embodies everything I feel about APPLE products. It’s a love/hate relationship.

I’m someone who can always ‘just make do’. Allow me to illustrate with an example. Say for instance the toaster broke- I would ‘just make do’ with using the grill instead of buying a new one. This is not a reflection of tight purse strings- just plain laziness. For the past 1.5 years I’ve been ‘just making do’ with an ipod shuffle. At least once a month throughout that period of time I would think to myself- “Geez…I’ve really got to get a proper ipod so I can enjoy my gargantuan precious music collection properly”. So hallelujah last week I finally took the time to purchase myself a brand spanking new nano after work one night. On the train ride home I fantasized about how wonderful our life together was going to be. Bette Midler on Bourke Street. Sneaky Sound System on Smith St. Friendly Fires and Florence and the Machine on Fyffe. I was going to enjoy Melbourne with my entire life soundtrack always cued up and ready to go. Awesome.

Then I got home… and disaster struck. Somewhere in between re-installing some mac software updates and **cough** paying for and downloading more new music… My entire I-TUNES library shit itself. All the music… gone. I have no idea what happened. A virus? Karmic payback for stealing music? All I know is I had 4 years worth of burned, ripped, unzipped and downloaded tunes on there. And just before anyone chips in with “my oh my didn’t you have it backed up?”- NO I DIDN’T FUCKING HAVE IT BACKED UP! So I sat in tears on the couch yelling expletives at the screen and holding my now totally useless new ipod nano in hand. It was a dark moment.

I’ve had a few dark moments with Apple. The e-mac (remember them?), the i-pod mini (discontinued due to design faults), the macbook…. Every piece of wonderful technology I’ve owned from Apple has been plagued with issues. I wonder if other people have experienced such intense highs and lows with the brand?

My recent life experiences have pointed me in the direction of believing something good can come out of everything that happens. No matter how bad things seem. So I’ve been whoring my USB stick around like it’s the town-bike collecting music off everyone I know. Old stuff, new stuff- whatever I can get really. And the great thing is that I’m discovering some totally RAD new artists/bands/songs. It’s like being a foreign traveller in a new country… and I’m having so many of those awesome moments where you hear a song for the first time and fall in love with it. New experiences.

So the good to come out of losing the soundtrack to my life… is that a new one is being lived and written. New month… New music… New motto: “Apple: I hate to love you, and I love to hate you”.