I used to hate iPhones and Apple. A lot. I respected their design, and their user-friendliness, but hated the closed ecosystem of iTunes, and their inability to play downloaded TV shows (without conversion). Also, the fact that I couldn't move music around to wherever I wanted it was a big problem for me.
So, my rebellion against Steve Jobs began when all my mates were getting the 1st gen iPods, and I rebelled by...
getting a 60 gig Creative Zen Jukebox. This thing was awesome - massive capacity (compared to the iPod), great sounding player with great sound - way better than all my friends iPods (we did listening tests, nerdy much?).
All was well until I couldn't put music on it anymore from my laptop. It was meant to be drag and drop, but neither that, nor the bundled software would work anymore. I even went to Creative and asked them for a replacement but the problem persisted.At this point I was still on my high-horse about not becoming an iZombie.
So I sold it on eBay (no complaints from the buyer, thankfully) and moved on to my next non-iPod product: The Cowon iAudio M3:
Why was this better than a fruity device? Again, more storage space, slimmer form factor, great battery life and a nice remote. Also, it could record with a line-in, which I thought I would use all the time, but in truth, only used once or twice...More importantly, it had a great, thick, bassy-sound to it.
By the time I was ready for my next device, I decided that video was important to me. Could an Apple device suit me here? No, as it wouldn't play all the episodes of Lost and BSG that I had "obtained" through the internets. Conversion would be involved. This was a problem. Crunching video at that time, was a very time consuming process, which my PC couldn't handle.
So what did I get next? How did I end up taking a bite of the Apple? Stay tuned to the blog for the next and final part of my confession...
