The “Break it Down” Blog

Looks like quite a few folks are not happy about iTunes 7, probably one of the most buggy releases of iTunes to ever lay it’s hands on us.

The reports trickling in are that besides being generally buggy there are issues like skipping during playback, failed synchronization, library errors, and poor sound quality (how’d that happen?).

Nice QA Apple, this sounds par for the course though, let’s look at the history and how it manages to undoubtable repeat itself over and over and over:

1. Underdog company is humble, caring and has a great product.
2. Underdog company garners huge amounts of attention because it’s “cool” and “not corrupt like competator XYZ”
3. In 2-5 years the underdog company gains enough momentum to be covered in mainstream media
4. Underdog company starts releasing refreshed products and hardware as “major” new items much to the dismay of it’s customers that are used to more gusto with the releases
5. Underdog company starts to slip on QA processes in it’s products, but it can, because it’s too cool to waste time on items like that
6. In another 2-3 years, the company that was surpassed becomes the underdog, and we go back to step #1.

This happens every single time, the same cycle. And now we are watching Apple peak in the next 2-3 years and Microsoft will usurp apple with the next version of Windows after Vista with (finally) good design, stability and gusto. By then the Zune #2 will be out and Apple won’t be the only player on the field any more. Whoever gets humbled next will start caring and stop releasing shit products for us.

In the mean time, we should enjoy getting railed by Apple, because they are cool and hip and do great minimalistic design… oh yea, I don’t care. This cycle annoys me to no end, because it’s an implied (guarunteed?) obsolescence in any product or platform you sign on to, there is nothing more frustrating for someone that likes to keep his “ducks in a row”. Grrr.

I’m starting to see the writing on the wall here, Release 10.5 of Mac is buggy as sin, so is Windows Vista, everyone is upset and cranky, and Linux comes from behind for 1 or 2 years with some surprising additions to win 1% of the desktop market. Then in 2008 Microsoft and Apple release refreshes of their OS’s with major changes and patches, so everyone quiets down for a few years and goes back to working, then in 2010 Microsoft and Apple try and blow eachother away with two phenominally advanced releases and we have a nVidia/ATI situation.

Then in 2012 the first combination of chip/platform vendor and operating system vendor occurs when Microsoft and AMD merge. Which means in 2013, Intel will buy Apple, or something along those lines.