Oh, Mighty Apple

Obsolete

Apple giveth and Apple taketh away.  My favorite little Nano and Shuffle iPods have been discontinued. That doesn't mean they immediately cease working, it just means they gradually cease to work well.

Like a bossy parent, Apple in all their wisdom decides for us what we need next. The problem is, we don't know what we want until they tell us.  Then our familiar old computers, phones and gadgets fall by the wayside.  We grumble but eventually shell out money for new toys and finally come around to liking the new bright shiny thing.

I was still sulking about my old iPods last week when John surprised me with a fancy new iPod Touch.  I don't mean to be unkind, but this is my typical snarky response: "What's THAT THING supposed to do for me?"

Well, as it turns out, quite a bit.  As you can see from the home screen, this isn't just a music player, like my beloved but ridiculously unsophisticated iPod Shuffle.  When connected to WiFi, it has most of the functionality of an iPhone. So while you're at the gym listening to tunes, you can also text, email and check your news feeds.  The ultimate multi-tasking gadget.

Over the years I've built up a nifty collection of thousands of songs in my iTunes library. Many are stored on my computer, like uploaded CD's from our own collection. But a significant number are 99 cent singles (heavy on the 70's light rock) that I've purchased at the iStore over the years. Even though I "own" them, they live somewhere out in the Cloud.

When you think about it these mini-purchases start to add up. As Amanda said, "Mom, nobody does that anymore!"  Well, maybe just old and/or dumb people. Even if you just buy a few a month (which I do) you've already spent more than a monthly subscription to Apple Music, where you can listen to your choice of 30 million songs.

So I started a 3-month free trial, and of course I'm already hooked.  Warning: you can waste a lot of time fiddling around with 30 million songs.

My favorite feature is the "Apple Music Editor" who comes up with new suggested playlists every single day, based on what I've listened to recently.  Yes, I know-- snoopy!  I have very eclectic tastes, so my personal editor has to work hard. I like to think of them as a nerdy type, drinking latte and sitting in a cube down in Cupertino all night trying to come up with new suggestions for me.  But of course my editor is just an algorithm, somewhere out there in the great electronic vastness of Apple.