Apple broke my Shuffle

You may have noticed my previous blogs about Apple's iPod Shuffle. They were not overly positive: one, two, three, four.

This may be the last blog entry about my Shuffle, as Apple broke it definitely with the update of iTunes to 8.1. They enthusiastically introduced several problems. For example, you no longer get any warning if you try to copy the same song twice several times from iTunes to the Shuffle. But the killer problem is that autofill no longer works with podcasts, even if you manually switch the setting "skip when shuffling" to off. As my shuffle has served me only to listen to podcasts, it no longer serves any electronic purpose at all, and I will henceforth use it as a clothespin for my wet laundry.

It is clear that the people who design the Shuffle are no geniuses. It all reminds me of the charming clumsiness of a two year old child who touches crayons for the first time ever without any idea how they are supposed to be used.

There is no longer any hope for even a lonely spark of sensibility in that team, so I give up on my shuffle. When a certain level of incompetence is reached, there is no use fighting against it.

How Apple managed to make their simplest device so utterly user hostile is something to brood over during long nights, but I do not think there is any better explanation than a smattering lack of small grey cells.

I do not see any reason to defend the Shuffle team at Apple. I'm fully aware of the theoretical possibility that there are individuals in the team who are clever. However, the team taken as a whole shows no sign to be brighter than an intoxicated amoeba. This may be because of lacking time, budget, bad management, bad organisation or any number of reasons. But regardless of the reasons, I would not bet on them winning a quiz against that same amoeba.

Since I bought my Shuffle last spring, I have had numerous incomprehensibilities, nonfunctionalities and unusabilities. The changes in 8.1 are not a simple incident. They fit perfectly into a larger pattern.

Unlike many other posters in these fora, I'm not complaining about Apple's disrespect for its customers. Apple is a commercial company that occasionally has to be rough towards its providers, sometimes towards its shareholders and sometimes to its customers. That is how realistic commercial companies have to work.

When it comes to the Shuffle, on the other hand, the problem is simply an unusually irrational idiocy.