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THE Lowly Peon
- it's so great to be back in chicago! the weather is awesome, the view from this office is awesome, the city feels awesome. aweso...
apple vs amazon
17 April 2009, 2:59pm
why is it that apple so repeatedly does not fail me while other services do?
the other day i got a hankerin' to listen to the only living boy in new york [iTunes link, not amazon] by simon & garfunkel, off their 1969 record "bridge over troubled waters".
iTunes doesn't have the whole album, which disappointed me. i own the album back in chicago, but rather than dealing with waiting until i go to chicago, finding it, and ripping it, i figured i'd buy it for a few dollars. amazon.com has an mp3 download service which tends to be slightly cheaper than iTunes. because of the extra steps involved, and reasons which i will describe below, i tend to stick with the more trusted apple.
so i bought the album just before i went to work yesterday on my mac mini. i figured it'd be ready by the time i got home.
being the moron that i am, i accidentally set my mini to sleep after an hour of no use. in iTunes, this would be no problem. i could continue downloading later.but in amazon, it gave this bloody message: "download no longer available. please contact customer service." doubting that i had done anything strangely wrong or unusual, i asked google what i should do. sure enough, everyone said to contact customer service.
what?! you're gonna make me send an email to download something i already purchased?! no. you already forced me to download a special application. make that application learn a little better. it's not like i tried to do it on several computers. it's not even like i waited several days. i waited less than a day, and when i came home, it failed to download.and the funniest part is that it downloaded everything up to track 8 — the only living boy in new york.and people wonder why i stick with apple for almost all of my media/computer needs?
comments
Will
[17 April 2009]Maybe you shouldn't set your mini to sleep after an hour of no use?
Poppy
[17 April 2009]Amazon has recently given us some fairly pressing reasons to be suspicious of their general competence anyway. You've heard about Amazon Rank, no?
THE Lowly Peon
[18 April 2009]yeah, i turned off the sleep thing. i should have done that. it was a mistake. but what if my network lost connection? that's not necessarily something i can control.
update— i heard back from them. they made me uninstall the downloader, reinstall it, and then download the other tracks. but then i noticed that ALL of the tracks were gone. and given my "high speed" internet here (roughly .2kb/sec, no joke), it'll take quite a while to download. and if it doesn't finish in time, i'll go through the same problem again. and then i'll give up and buy it elsewhere.
poppy— i hadn't heard about that, but it's giving me more reason to never support amazon again!
THE Lowly Peon
[18 April 2009]and i really wasn't exaggerating about the .2kb/s.