Another bite out of the Apple

I just discovered another flaw in my iPod nano. As usual, the hardware is great, the software is problematic. My first complaint was that they force you to download and use iTunes. Other programs like Windows Explorer are able to move files onto the nano, but it will only play songs if they are added via iTunes. If I go to a friend's house and he wants to pass a song to me, then he either has to download iTunes, or else he can move the file onto my nano, and it won't play until I take it home, copy it onto my computer there, and finally use iTunes to add it back to the Nano? The only purpose for that is for Apple to maintain control and establish a monopoly on the use of their software. It doesn't help end users.

Anyway, the new thing I discovered today is that my nano appears to have a copy of every single song I've ever loaded onto it, even thought I thought I had deleted some of them. It lets you create folders to help organize or categorize your music. It also creates a default folder with "All Songs." I usually go straight to folders and don't mess around with All Songs, but yesterday I tried it. Instead of moving forward through the songs, I moved backwards, and discovered dozens of podcasts and old time radio shows that I thought I had deleted.

For some reason, it automatically keeps one copy of every file in "All Songs" and another copy of every file in the individual folders. If you delete songs from the individual folders, it doesn't remove them from All Songs. Which explains how it stays filled up to the maximum lately, and doesn't make much room even when I delete a bunch of songs.

I realize they were trying to keep instructions simple (it came with a tiny fold-out pamphlet, ten pages long but each page is literally one inch square). But this is the kind of thing that would have been helpful to know months ago.

What I'm finding is that Apple makes assumptions about what's most useful to consumers, and doesn't even tell you what they've done. Hopefully there will be more products with open source software and hardware when I'm next in the market for some tech.