Grrr, Apple fail!

Apple just released an upgrade to the iPod Touch's OS. While it's free for the iPhone, it's $10 for the iPod Touch. Minor annoyance, that, but I suppose I can cope. After all, I'm not paying $700+/year for phone service, so I'm still saving money. So I fire up the iTunes store on my iPod. Not there. Not anywhere. Gotta go to iTunes to get it.

A little background: I run Linux. Apple doesn't like Linux; no iTunes for me. So that's my first complaint from back when I got my iPT: can't use it without iTunes, can't iTune w/o Win or OS X. Grrr. So I borrowed the iMac at work, and got my iPT turned on. From then on, I get most of what I listen to (i.e. podcasts) via the iPT's wireless connection. Plus I loaded up on free apps from the app store (The Weather Channel, Last.FM, Twitterific, etc.)

So then I wanted to put some videos onto the iPT, and broke down and started running Win XP in a virtual machine to be able to run iTunes. That worked well enough, and using Handbrake let me rip my DVDs into a format that the iPT can play. So far, so good.

Now I want to upgrade my O/S. I go to iTunes, and it says it can't install the new O/S until I upgrade iTunes to 8.2. Grrr, again. Okay, I upgrade. And I reboot. (This is Windows, after all.) Now can I upgrade? Okay, it downloads the upgrade, announces that it's backing up my iPT, announces that it's upgrading my iPT, then gives an error message. Something about an unknown error, go to this web page for more details. The details say to reboot Windows. I do so.

And now Windows doesn't see my iPT. At all. Doing a lsusb in Linux shows that it's plugged in, but Windows doesn't see it. And the iPT gives the original "I need iTunes" display. I reboot Windows a couple more times, with no luck.

Okay, fine. Since I got my iPT, we got a MacBook for Wife. I figure that if it doesn't work on Win XP, I'll plug it into the MacBook. MacBook sees the iPT, sees that it's hosed, restores the old O/S (2.2.1, I think?), then sees that I've purchased the 3.0 upgrade, downloads it again w/o complaint, and installs it, leaving me with a pristine iPT running 3.0. Success, perhaps?

I take the iPT back to my Win box, where my backup resides, and plug it in. It sees the iPT now, and gives me the option to load it up from the backup. I'm getting hopeful. I restore, things are looking good. Well, sort of; it's missing a few of my apps, but they're the ones I never use (SSH, TV.com, etc.) I'll deal with that later.

But all of my podcasts are gone. Maybe 60 or 70 eps of various shows that I've downloaded. A much larger Grrrr! So I'm done with messing with this Win XP VM. I plug into the MacBook again. And...

It proceeds to erase all of my apps! WTH!? Why on earth would it remove my apps (and their configuration) without giving me the chance to either stop it or validate them or something?! This is seriously bogus! And when I quit cursing Uncle Steve's lineage, and go to restore them, it knows that I've "paid" for these free apps, and offers to let me download them again "without paying". If you knew they were legit, why the !@#$ did you erase them to begin with? (And yes, I had logged in on the same iTunes account on the MacBook as I had on the Win box.)

All of this seems to be in the interest of Apple not letting me copy stuff that I own to places that they don't think I should copy them. Or, to rephrase, all of this seems to be Apple assuming that I'm a criminal and taking steps to punish me before I can prove myself innocent.

Feh. I'm wondering more and more what Android devices are out there, or what the state of Linux on the iPT has gotten to. This is *NOT* what should happen to someone playing by the rules.