I have purchased about one dozen Apple iPods. A few of these were purchased as Christmas gifts and others as toys for myself. I often wish that I had not bought all these Apple devices. The reason is that Apple consistently tries to rip off its customers. The first example I had of this behavior was with an iPod 60 GB player with video. It is a nice device that works well, but the gotcha is that you have to buy a special Apple cable to view video on a TV set. With time, I figured out that you can switch the outputs of a standard $6 cable and get audio and video out of the iPod.
You can buy Apple’s cable and pay $19.99 or you can use a standard 3.5 mm A/V cable with a three plug RCA output. Contrary to what Apple would want you to believe, a standard cable will work. It is just a matter of deciphering what Apple did to make it look like it wouldn’t.
Apple changed the order of the signals sent out from its jack so that the video signal would not come out of the standard yellow RCA plug. Instead it comes out of the red one. If you have a standard A/V cable (You can buy one for about $5.97 at Amazon.com.) you simply plug the cables in as follows:
- Red RCA to Yellow jack
Yellow RCA to White jack
White RCA to Red jack
A more recent example of this nickel and dime attitude is evident with the iPod Touch–a device that costs several hundred dollars. To watch video on a TV, it requires an expensive cable that connects to the special Apple port on the bottom of the device. It costs $49 and was designed so that people like me would not circumvent the Apple tax on an already expensive device. To force you to buy the cable, Apple crippled the 3.5 mm A/V port on the Touch so that it would only output audio. As silly as it may sound, I refused to buy this cable and decided to forego using the iPod touch with a TV. It wasn’t the $49 so much as Apple’s price gouging. Fortunately for me (and Apple), a person who knows how stubborn I can be, decided to buy it for me as a gift. (I still have not opened the box and have considered returning it.)
The most egregious gouging that Apple is guilty of is charging $20 extra for five applications that were shipped with the iPhone, but not on the iPod Touch. These applications are stocks, weather, notes, mail, and maps. These are small widget-like applications and not extensive tools. Thousands of Touch owners have complained about this extra charge and signed an on-line petition, but Apple has not budged on this extra fee. It is particularly galling since these new applications are now included in the 32 GB iPod Touch at no extra cost. Those of us that supported Apple from the start and purchased the 8 GB and 16 GB versions are basically told “too bad.”
There is a rumor that the 2.0 version of the iPod Touch and iPhone system software will be free for iPhone users, but cost another $20 (maybe more) to current iPod Touch users. This update will include Microsoft ActiveSync technology for synchronizing with an Exchange Server. Many users will want this upgrade. Apple is counting on this so that it can once again nickel and dime another $20.
Don’t get me wrong, charging for upgrades is fine. I have no problem with a business making money. I just get the feeling that Apple tries to get ancillary revenue on many small and often ridiculous items. I think that it should clearly announce its intent to charge for all minor upgrades and to admit that it treats iPod Touch customers as inferior to iPhone customers. We can then decide to go along with the program or select a competing product like the Microsoft Zune.
Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting
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