MY APPLE, Part 2
After I wrote My Apple, Part 1, I finished reading the book “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, which was published in 2011 and printed again, with an added epilogue, in 2013. In case you don’t know who Steve Jobs is, he was the co-founder of Apple Inc. He died, in 2011, at the age of 56, of cancer. I was feeling very sad, as I read the book, learning about his life, and the development of electronics, because I didn’t wake up to the ‘latest and greatest’ in technology until the late 1990s. I had been too busy with my family and my career. But I was ready for an Apple laptop, when the kids were grown and when Jean-François introduced me to the PowerBook G4 in 2005.
At Christmas, 2006, I was expanding my horizons and bought an Apple iPod, to listen to music on hikes in Lynn Headwaters, or on walks on Grand Boulevard. The first iPod models were released in November, 2001, with only 5GB of storage capacity (about 1,000 songs). But by the time I bought one, I could choose between a 30GB, a 60GB or an 80GB iPod (which could hold up to 20,000 songs). Amazing! I bought the 80GB one and put all sorts of music and even audiobooks on it. I was in 7th heaven! Until that time, I had used a CD player, but it could only carry one CD—not long enough for one of my hikes.
The years flew by and my iPod slipped out of use and was almost forgotten. Recently, I thought I should get the battery checked or replaced. Well, I soon found out that Apple stores don’t carry parts for any of their products that are more than 7 years old. Huh? ‘Planned obsolescence’ is still alive and well, eh? I was told that if I looked around, I could probably find a small shop that might have some old parts, but there could be no guarantee that they would do the job. I had become accustomed to having a guarantee of the quality of Apple products and their service. But I didn’t know about the policy of not carrying parts for devices that were more than 7 years old.
Luckily, I can continue to use my 2006 iPod. It’s loaded with music of all kinds, and audiobooks, that are great to listen to when I’m working in my garden. It plays as well as it did when I first bought it—touch wood!—but now I know that when it dies, that will be the end. It might not be worth it to try to find parts for it at another shop. How sad.
However, on a positive note, I’m told that the latest iPod costs a lot less than what I paid for mine in 2006. And the new iPod will probably increase my knowledge of Apple technology by leaps and bounds. I may even learn how to make recordings that I’ll edit on my laptop. Who knows!
Fiona