New year, new iPod

So, a good eight years after everyone else, I finally bought an iPod. This is the first thing I have ever bought from the Apple company, and to be honest, I felt a little bit of my soul disappear as I handed over my cash. It's not really worth going through the sequence of events that led to this satanic acquisition, though suffice it to say that it's because there's no other company who make an mp3 player with a capacity higher than 16GB, which is a good fifth less than the mp3 player I bought in 2005.

Even given this enticement, Apple very nearly missed out on my custom anyway. I went into the Apple Store in Southampton at the weekend, a course of action that anyone who knows me well could have advised against, strongly. I've looked in through the door of that shop on any number of occasions and actually physically shuddered. It's always packed with what I could charitably call morons, diddling delightedly with the latest iPods, iPads, iPhones, iPings, and iNdscreen iPers. And that's just the staff. So when I went in, I wasn't expecting good things. And true to form, within half a second, I was approached by a loon in a red t-shirt and a dreadful zany hat which just screamed, "Look at me, I'm a fun guy with an important statement to make concerning my individuality." This loon addressed me, saying, "Hey, how's it going, buddy?"

Now, I don't wish to come across as a crusty, growly twat who is obsessed with the importance of the maintenance of social roles. I may be a crusty, growly twat, etc, etc, but I don't wish to come across as one. That notwithstanding, I do feel that the "Hey, how's it going, buddy?" does rather cross a line that should remain uncrossed in the field of customer-staff relationships. As a result, I left the shop immediately and bought the iPod in Sainsburys instead (where, incidentally, it was a good £20 cheaper than it was in the Apple Store anyway).

Having thus established with my readership that I bought the thing because I had no other viable options, and had a dreadful experience whilst engaged in exchanging my soul for it, I feel slightly better about myself. So what happened when I arrived home and opened the box to play with my new toy? Well, reader, I shall tell you.

The iPod itself is very nice and sleek. It's a black one incidentally - when I asked to buy an iPod in Sainsburys, the girl checked the computer and said, "We've only got it in black," in a tone of voice that implied she'd had prior experience of moronic Apple customers coming in and throwing a tantrum if they weren't stocking the iWhatever in the right shade of purple. I decided to be reasonable, and said that was fine.

Anyway, so when I opened the box, I looked at the iPod and decided that it would be suitable. I rummaged further through to see what else I got. A wire to connect it to the computer - fine. A pair of Wanker Indicators - sorry, a pair of Apple headphones, in white rather than black. This is another symptom of the Apple disease that affected Mr Zany Hat - the accessory that is supposed to indicate that you're crazy and counter-cultural because you're subverting the norm, yeah? When in actual fact you've simply got a pair of white headphones, which is sadly part of the uniform of every other nitwit who can be viewed at no charge on every high street, bus, train, etc, of our miserable world.

In case you weren't sure, I wasn't keen on the headphones. I have replaced them with some black ones.

The final item in the box left me bubbling with an inexplicable but implacable fury. It's a sheet of stickers for me to personalise my iPod with. Now, that's bad enough obviously (there we go again - YOU'RE AN INDIVIDUAL! SHOW IT!), but the uniformity of the stickers provided was a depressing lesson in Apple's opinion of its customers. There were two stickers, both in the same colour, both of them the same shape - and what was that shape? Yes, of course it was the Apple logo. Really. So Apple expect us to stick stickers of the Apple logo on our Apple-branded iPod that is - lest I remind you - identifiable at a glance as an Apple product, and they expect us to do so in the name of personalisation? I had to be actively dissuaded from going back to the Apple Store and sticking an Apple logo sticker on Mr Zany Hat's face.

I'd love to finish this article with the revelation that the iPod is vastly inferior in every way to any other mp3 player out there, but sadly, I have to admit that it's great. I give myself a mere two months before I've been corrupted completely and start buying everything Apple make, queuing outside the shop for the release of the iPhone 7 and the iNdividual 0. Until then, I will nurture the bubbling pit of fury and despair in my stomach.

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