I finally told Larry last night that I won't be using the 'Mac after John passes his laptop along to me. I'll set it aside and use it as a backup, so I can have something that will connect (however slowly and inefficiently) to the internet in case the laptop goes wonky. He was fine with it. All things considered, says Hubbins, it's not surprising that the iMac is going downhill. It's almost six years old and according to him, I've been pushing it to do more than it can do. I completely disagree with that. The Mac has far fewer files saved to it than his PC, and the only additional programs I have on it are Dreamweaver (which I never reloaded after it crashed the last time), and Photoshop Elements 3, which isn't even a complete piece of software in my humble opinion (I can get more done with MyImager.Com, so what does that tell you?).
Last night, the final straw; I tried to use my iPod *the ONE Apple product that has always worked for me* and found that entire sections of my library are gone. The album art is there and the title page that gives the name of the band, the title of the album, etc. comes up, and it shows the length of the song. Then it blips on to the next one in the sequence without playing the song, and continues to do this with each title in the group before going back to the menu page.
My video files are also gone. Same issue. A screen image with the title, length of video and artist name, but no actual video.
As best I can surmise, the last time I loaded CDs to it (which was about three days ago), it tripped something, which wiped out everything I had loaded previously. The only music that will play are the recent additions (Rob Zombie, Michelle Branch, Evanescence and a few others).
I am most assuredly pissed off.
The CDs I loaded can be reloaded so that's not a big deal, except for the amount of time it took to do it (so many hours) since I can't sit around all day and do it uninterrupted. I built my library up over the course of eighteen months. For me, it's the loss of the videos and the Eagles songs that is the worst. There is no record of the videos on Larry's iTunes (I purchased them on his PC), so they can't be replaced now without making more purchases. The disappearance of the Eagles songs purely pisses me off because I don't have the CDs - those songs were also purchased individually when I had a little extra money to spend.
And the Bob Dylan albums...oh gawd...seventeen of them including the last one, Modern Times (SO DAMN GOOD). Jim Croce. Marilyn Manson. All the music I liked most. The stuff I listen to when I want to relax or break up the monotony of the housework. The stuff I listen to when I'm alone and driving so I can crank it and sing along without feeling self-conscious over the possibility that someone else might hear.
Larry figures there's a conflict between the material that was loaded using the iMac, and what was put on using the Windows system. It never did this, before, though. Until now the only issue was that I couldn't sync the iPod with the Mac.
Larry seems to feel that we can save the videos in spite of the fact that they and much of the rest of the material adamantly refuses to show up on iTunes. I've already tried everything I could think of and visited the Apple site for additional help. There was none.
What I'm going to have to do is reformat my iPod and start over once John gives me the laptop. I hate to do that but if I'm going to continue to use it, I will have to take the loss and start over.
Fuck you, Apple. Right up the processor.
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