How Apple embarrasses me

I started using Macs before 1984, when the platform was called “Lisa.” It’s been an awesome ride, and I’m nothing but grateful.

But that’s not to say that it’s not been entirely free of frustration. Most of my issues, if I can generalize to a single point of contention, is that they’re developed for the environment of the company’s offices in Cupertino, and not for the real world.

Starting with decades of power connectors which were more fulcrum than useful, levering off when a laptop was put into a lap, to iPhone ringtones which are just too quiet for city life, to the company’s ever-increasing attempts to lock out jailbroken iPhones (which will, ultimately, drive to over to Google’s Android phones), to my latest frustration: the inability to convert iPhone ringtones (.m4r) alert tones back to any other format; I want to make some .aiff files (to convert to .cab files to substitute the built-in iPhone SMS and email arrival tones).

I understand that some .m4r files are copy-protected, but can’t iTunes “just work” and check? No protection, convert.

Sheesh!