I think there are only two entities in this world that I have a strong love-hate relationship with, and one of them is Apple.

Some of Apple’s products are absolutely fantastic. I own an iPod Mini that will almost certainly be replaced by an iPod Touch when the battery finally dies. I would love to have a Macbook Pro. To me, the G4 Cube is still the coolest desktop computer ever built (before being turned into a tissue dispenser…). The Apple LCDs are sexy beyond words. And for productivity and general usage, MacOS X is my OS of choice.

On other other hand, Apple’s software, especially the versions it releases on Windows… can be, to put it mildly, absolute junk.

By which I basically mean QuickTime. That the software as a media player sucks is hardly news, but I’ve kept it, because 1.) I can use anything else (i.e. MPC) to play what I want, and 2.) iTunes requires it.

And then it gets updated, and all hell breaks loose. Not only does it hijack the file formats to play in QT (I had already set mp4 files to play in MPC, thank you very much), but when I try to go back and un-associated it from the default files it tries to associate with, it just refuses to release them. I can uncheck everything to tell it I don’t want it to open ANYTHING, but it’ll go right back to the default values. So I search around the web seeing if anyone else has run into this problem, and lo and behold, there’s a few threads about it on the Apple Support forums. And the people there had the gall to suggest having to go through Windows File Types list and changing them back one by one.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Guess what, there’s an easier way to get file type associations back to normal. It’s called uninstalling your piece of shit software. And that’s what I did. And hey look, my JPEG files open in a fucking proper image viewer program again! Amazing!

Of course that leaves the problem of how do I use iTunes. I like iTunes. I hate Apple’s insistance on making their Windows apps look like they do on Mac, but at least the software itself is useful. Even if there was a better media library program, I still wouldn’t switch just because I already have about 13K+ songs added in iTunes, and I’m not about to waste any part of my life redoing all that, rating songs, making smart playlists, etc. So what to do… enter QT Lite. And now stupid MPEG files in Firefox/IE won’t try to open using QT either. Thank god, and good riddance.

Back to the Apple Support forums for a second… that related to the other reason I hate Apple. Never have I imagined that a company, of all things, and by extension a good deal of its customers, can be so fucking smug. Seriously, you have good products. You don’t have to act like a fucking douche about it (looking at you, Mac vs PC ads).

In conclusion, I love Apple products (or most of them), but I absolutely despise the “Apple Culture”.

And in case anyone was wondering who the other company I have a love-hate relationship with, probably shouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s Sony. They’re seriously just Apple-Lite in that regard.

OK, done ranting.