Steve Jobs isn’t doing his job
Saturday, Aug 14th, 2010Nothing in life is simple, I tell people.
Take for example the act of deleting music from the iTunes music library.
Considering the advancements mankind has made in science and medicine, one might mistake such an undertaking for a simple task. But if you’ve ever tried to remove “Cher” from your iTunes music library, only to have her reappear again and again in future library restorations, you’ll be able to sympathize with me here.
I’ve been seeing the ghost of Cher for quite some time now. Because of some comments a concerned male friend made during a trip to Virginia beach, I deleted her 1989 hit album “Heart of Stone.”
Unfortunately I didn’t follow — to the tee — the correct procedure for Windows users to permanently remove songs. I ended up paying dearly for it later.
For Windows users, the stuff you see in the iTunes library isn’t the actual files. What you see in the iTunes library can better be described as pseudo-files or files created within iTunes that tell your player where the real files actually are. So if you delete songs in iTunes, you aren’t necessarily deleting the real files.
No problem! Not such a big deal! Just delete both files. What could possibly go wrong?
Such was my logic when attempting to rid myself of Cher, and spare myself scrutinies from male driving companions curious enough to search through the artists on my iPod. I also decided to delete many other unfavorable songs, most notably the other stuff I had downloaded during pre-pubescent years.
To accomplish this, I did the following:
- First I deleted all the songs I didn’t want from within the iTunes library.
- Then I proceeded to locate the original files. Don’t ask how I was able to find the original file locations. Normal people throw everything into the “My Music” folder. Suffice to say, I am not a normal person. And no, at the time, I was not aware of the “view in Windows explorer” button.
- Once the original files were located, I then attempted to delete them. But wait! Which files did I need to delete? I had not made an itemized list of all the songs deleted within iTunes so I was unsure of which of the original files I should delete. If I deleted files that I didn’t delete in the iTunes library, I might get missing file errors because the pseudo-files created by iTunes were pointing to non-existent locations.
- I then scratched my head and decided to let it go for the time being. At least, having been deleted from the library, the songs would not play in iTunes.
So with the problem taken care of (at least temporarily), life went on. I might even say life went on blissfully. I learned new things. Saw new places. I attended weddings and recitals. I even went on a few dates here and there.
Until one day, tragedy struck: my PC wouldn’t turn on. The hard drive had failed. The disk had spun its last spin. It was dead. Kaput. Along with all of my hopes and dreams.
Luckily, I had a backup of all my hopes and dreams on an external hard drive.
As I did with all my other files, I restored the original music files from the external hard drive onto my PC’s new hard drive.
“Take THAT life,” I often say. “Your inconveniences are no match for my preparedness.”
And so life went on blissfully, as before. The sun rose and fell. New opportunities came and went. I made new friends, kept some of the old. Moved from one dorm to another. I got a little closer to completing my degree.
And then: tragedy struck. Once again. This time the damage was irreversible.
I was in my dorm playing poker with a bunch of guys. Music was emitting from my laptop. Shuffle was on in my iTunes library. And just after AC-DC’s “Thunderstruck” had finished playing, this happened:
I believe that was the last time I hosted poker night.
What’s the moral of this story?
Yes, I’m sure if I made an itemized list of everything deleted within iTunes and then proceeded to delete the original files, all of this could have been happily avoided. And I’m sure there are programs and maybe even options within iTunes that can provide me with the means necessary to permanently delete music files in Windows.
But the moral of the story is that Steve Jobs and the folks over at Apple have failed mankind. They have failed in their endeavor to think of absolutely everything we humans need to live happy lives, on the default setting. I don’t want to consider downloading add-ons, programs, read any tutorials or – God forbid – compile a hand-written list to complete basic tasks like deleting music from the iTunes music library.
Steve Jobs has failed humanity. Yes, that is the moral of this story.
P.S. If you are a MAC user, you can’t relate to any of this. Because of seamless compatibility — heck the same people who build your OS built your iPod — you can delete original files with one click of a button from within iTunes. So give yourselves a pat on the back for making at least one good decision in life: MAC over PC.
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A glowy picture of my dog
A glowy picture of my other dog
