5. So, Apple Won't Just Give You An IPhone?

Apple is not friendly to Tom's Hardware and Gear Digest. First we're PC, meaning "Intel-Microsoft Personal Computer", not "Politically Correct." That Macs now sport Intel Core Duo CPUs doesn't mean Apple has gone completely over to the Light Side. And, it's clear to many in the PC world that the company just plain doesn't trust us PC people to fairly or maybe even intelligently evaluate their products.

I'm sure this view was reinforced back in the days when I wrote a couple of my "Who Designed This Crap?" columns about the iPod, which I loved to spell "Ipod". The first column was titled "The Great Ipod Scam". The opening section, titled "Ipod Nightmares", went like this.

I don't remember most of the dreams I have, whether nice or nasty. But, man, did I remember one from last week. I was on this really long and rambling road being chased by millions of Ipods of every size and shape. Though none of their earbuds were plugged in, there were so many of the things I could hear the mother of all mixes, every song, podcast and TV show available on Itunes.

That's not all; behind all the Ipods was a bunch of silent zombie-like humans led by Steve Jobs. All of them had tons of folding money falling out of their pockets and eye sockets. I recognized most of these celebs. Everyone was there from Job's Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak to ex-Disney head Michael Eisner to a passel of entertainers including Britney Spears, rapper Ghostface Killa, Michael from NBC's "The Office" dragging a zombie birthday cake and Josef Suk, classical violinist.

As with most bad dreams, I awoke in a sweat of horror before the final reel. So I don't know if I got caught or not. It was then that I realized I was not new to Ipod nightmares. It's only that my previous nightmares were real.

I wrote on about how I was fed up with all this iPod as an icon of the 21st Century crap. How the thing was nothing more than a cutesy portable music player that tended to capture you inside one vendor's hardware and software selling (iTunes) world. I groused about how my early-adopter Nano (not Apple's preferred "nano") was always getting scratched. Why? Because, at the time, there were no cases for the thing and Apple didn't release enough information for a case maker to put together a decent protective device for the tiny music player before the Nano's release. No, it waited until everyone's Nano was already scratched beyond recognition. Then I opined that the dawn of the iPod was the real "Day the Music Died." Oh did I get flamed to death even by PC types, but it was fun.

The Big Bopper, Richie Valens and Buddy Holly died in an airplane crash and Don McLean saw it as "The day the music died." in his signature song "American Pie".

My second iPod column featured a cartoon by Jen Sorensen parodying the tons and tons of iPod accessories that were available even then. Why here it is!

Thanks Jen for letting me use the cartoon.

Before I wrote the columns, I had submitted a request for one of the earliest Intel Mac notebooks. After the two columns came out, I got a rather curt reply from an Apple PR person, telling me that they had decided not to send the Mac. Now, far be it from me to connect the columns with the refusal, but, gimme a break. It does seem like more than a coincidence.