With their pathetic 13 month average battery lives, contant stream of "new" products forcing buyers to purchase a new product at least once a year if they wish to stay up to date, and strangly incompatible audio formatting (.ACC), Apple has been repeatedly accused of planned obsolescence for its controversial Ipods.

(But at least there's no planned obsolescence for rapacious capitalism.)

The ipod nano's have their batteries soldered to the fucking case, so even if you were thinking about maybe trying to replace that battery that crapped out after 13 months of real-world use yourself, well, unless you happen to have a soldering iron.. good luck. Luckily, the larger models only use adhesive, and you can buy battery replacement kits online for around $20.

The .ACC audio formatting is fucking stupid. Programs do exist, however, that can extract all that music from your Ipod back onto a PC, but you either have to illegally download or pay a rather obscene amount of money for them.

Apple is constantly coming out with "newer" and "better" technology that forces consumers to buy new Ipod products about once a year if they wish to stay up to date, or "in fashion". No, i do not give a shit about fashion. But if i drop $500 on an 80 gig device the size of my hand, and Apple comes out with a 200 gig product the size of a golf ball 9 months later, i am going to be royally fucking chapped. Unfortunately, i haven't the resources nor the political sway to sue the bastards, in the event that such a misfortune did occur.
I may have just ruined that for myself.


I am still planning on purchasing an 80 gig model, mainly because everything else on the market is just as bad.

At least there's no planned obsolescence for rapacious capitalism.

Score.