21 Ways for Jim Edwards to Complain About Meaningless Bullshit for Ad Money ⇥ businessinsider.com

Why am I linking to a Business Insider slideshow that’s clearly linkbait? Because it’s amazing linkbait. And, naturally, such an impeccable piece of punditry comes via the Macalope.

First of all, you’ve gotta give me credit for linking to the single-page version. The actual slideshow is 21 pages long, and why would you want to give Business Insider those page views?

I’m not going to go through the whole list; I’m sure your forehead will prefer it that way. There are a couple of moderately valid points on this list — a dialog box asking for my Apple ID password when downloading free apps seems silly most of the time. But allow me to share some more flavourful favourites from Jim Edwards’ list:

I recently switched from using a Windows PC and Android phones to all-Apple products, all the time.

I see. This is going to be a “different products sometimes behave differently” adaptation crisis, isn’t it? Buckle up; it’s time for a ride through first world hell:

In iPhone, if you want to phone someone you’re texting with, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of the message chain to hit the call button. In Android, you just tap the person’s name anywhere and a call option pops up.

That damn fruity company only gives me one way to call someone from inside Messages. Sure, the iPhone has a super convenient gesture whereby you can tap the status bar and jump to the top, for two total taps to call someone.

Apple’s desktop navigation is designed to be confusing. Do we really need the desktop and “Launchpad” and “Finder” and “Mission Control” and the “Dock” just to get from A to B?

That damn fruity company gives me more that one way to switch between applications. Sure, all of these things are different — Launchpad is an application launching layer, the Dock shows your frequent apps and currently-opened ones, Mission Control is a way to see the windows of all apps and virtual desktops, and Finder is the file system. But Mr. Edwards would prefer just one way. Or two. Not four.

There’s no Advanced Task Killer on iPhone!

Exclamation point! Oh no!

On iPhone, you have to switch off every single app individually, by hand. It. Takes. A. Really. Long. Time.

(Of course, there’s no need to kill iPhone apps unless they’re stalled, but still … some of us just want them off.)

Of course. Way to cover your ass with facts there, Jim.

iTunes only lets you play your music on five different machines.

It’s easy to log in on five different machines — your iPhone, your iPod, a work Mac, a home Mac, perhaps an iPad — and then you’re out of machines.

Except iPods, iPhones, and iPads don’t count against the five-computer authorization limit.

However, Apple does give you the option to pay a bit more for some songs and let you put them on as many computers as you’d like.

Do any iTunes tracks still have a DRM wrapper these days?

iTunes banned me from listening to any mp3 it wasn’t familiar with.

That sounds harsh.

The most infuriating part of iTunes was when it declined to play any files it couldn’t find rights-management codes for.

Oh, so it’s a DRM issue. Presumably Edwards purchased these tracks from another store which does still use a DRM wrapper.

I had to ghost these onto a CD, and then re-ghost them back into iTunes — so Apple thinks they’re from a CD I bought — just to hear them again.

“Ghost”?

This is my music, that I own, and I paid for, and yet Apple controls where I can listen to it.

Ridiculous.

I’m pretty sure it isn’t Apple that’s controlling another company’s DRM-ed music.

The App Store doesn’t have IrfanView.

What the hell is IrfanView?

There are some really great apps that have been available for years on PCs that can’t be used on Macs. I really miss IrfanView, the super-simple, super-fast photo-editing software for people who can’t be bothered with Photoshop.

This guy sounds like Ric Romero: “some Windows applications aren’t available on a Mac. More at 11.”

Apple’s function keys are designed to screw you.

“Designed to screw you”?

PDF files are a crazy lottery!

On PCs, PDF files just open into your browser like web pages. Everyone uses Adobe Acrobat to open them.

But because Apple has its own PDF viewer, Preview, you never know what’s going to happen when you hit a PDF link on the web. Will it open like a web page? Will it download directly into your download folder? Will you need to change the filename suffix? Will it do nothing?

Who knows! It’s Preview!

If you wish to subject yourself to the sadomasochistic hellscape that is Acrobat, it’s available for the Mac. The rest of us will be comfortable with Preview which does, in fact, render PDFs in Safari.

Caps Lock has a mind of its own.

Are you kidding me?