Stupid Apple!

As much as I love my iBook, want a iMac and find my iPod handy, I hate Apple. I recently bought a remote control for my iPod. You know, the one that goes in between the ear-phones and the iPod. The one with the clip to conveniently attach it to your clothing so that you can get to it.

As it is designed to be used in a manner that makes it susceptible to the buttons being knocked, the Apple engineers put a hold switch on it, so that you can disable the buttons while not in use. After less than a week of use, the hold switch fell of my iPod remote control. While it was locked. Needless to say, I was a little surprised.

Naively, I took my remote to the Apple store at which I purchased it. After a bit of a wait (they were busy) one of the staff told me that I had to phone Apple and gave me the number. When I phoned Apple, the telephone operator told me (after a while on hold) that I needed to fill in a form on the Apple web site and then take it and the item to be returned to Australia Post (what I do with it then was left as an exercise for the reader). As annoying as this is, I can accept that Apple is a big company and, as such, they need procedures like these to get anything done.

What really shits me off, is that I can't submit the form on the Apple web site because it requires credit card information. I don't have a credit card, I don't want a credit card and if I did have a credit card, I most certainly wouldn't give it to a company in these circumstances.

While I love Apple's computers and find my iPod and Airport Express base station handy, I can't help but be appalled at:

1. the fact that a remote control, a device designed to be carried around, broke after less than a week; and


2. that I need to enter my credit card details to return an item that, as I see it, was not fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

I suppose that I need to phone the help line again to find out what I'm supposed to do, but in the mean time, I can't help but resent it.