Try moving to another country. Moving from the US to Canada caused most of my iTunes collection to vanish. For most of my collection the licensing I had paid for in in the US was not valid for use in Canada, which has different distribution agreements, publishers etc. So when I updated my Itunes account to my Canadian address and payment methods most of my stuff just disappeared. However other hand our vast collection of DVD’s and CD’s came over the border intact, so yes there is something to be said for owning physical media…
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It could just as well have been a gift from someone.
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A really shitty experience, but I feel like the takeaway - switch to Android - the author took from this is completely the wrong one.
If you go all-in for Android and purchase gift cards from questionable sources, you’re going to have the same thing happen to you all over. Granted, yes, Android will in general have better interoperability between various 3rd party apps, though that’s not hinted at in anyway in the article.
Some more sensible ideas:
- don’t go all in on one eco-system for everything.
- don’t buy gift cards from questionable sources, especially in light of itunes giftcards being the prime choice in all sorts of recent scams.
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if it was a gift from someone who purchased it legitimately, it wouldn’t have shown up as stolen…
I think, cancelling this person’s account was drastic and unnecessary, but I’m just saying i wouldnt trust buying gift cards from a third party site like that. Like, I’ve known people who bought concert tix off Craigslist only to find out they were counterfeit at the last minute. And it’s not like those gift cards are hard to find.
yeah I understand that sounds like victim blaming. Apple should cut this person some slack and not be draconian, but also, buyer beware.
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What you need… IS LINUX 
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Of course big corporations know what’s best for you, and giving them all your data is for the best of everybody, what are you, a pinko? 
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but pretty bad.
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I have learned over the years that one can always escalate- maybe going straight to Tim Cooke was overkill, but certainly you can always find someone who either cares, or cares that your escalation will make them look bad.
It just takes time, and effort, and often resources, maybe even money (paying for overnighting letters) and stress… you know what, never mind…
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Yes, this! If you go all-in on an ecosystem, you can get all-out’d, too. Good luck with that.
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Hey, ya know, this whole convergence thing has been a gas.
When does de-convergence start?
Two new iPhones ago they stripped all the cds I had burned from my collection and put the rest in the cloud so I have to use my limited bandwidth and extremely iffy and slow cell phone connection to listen to music I own. Nah, I vowed not to buy any music again, ever. (The fuck-those-guys response) Not quite appropriate, but all my monkey brain could figure to do. I’m still buying the damn phones though . . . I dunno.
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" The truth is that Google or Microsoft (or Nintendo, or Samsung, or Sony, the list goes on) could just as easily cut off a customer for no stated purpose and without recourse."
This is the real takeaway. With any of these large software/hardware ecosystems you are at the mercy of the company. They can ban you without recourse or just quit the business leaving you with expensive electronic paperweights.Short of just doing without, or maybe getting some federal laws protecting you (HA!) you just have to gamble that they’ll do the right thing or can be shamed into doing the right thing.
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Apple always taketh away from everyone: See Final Cut Pro, Aperture, iMovie, and a trillion other apps, little features, and things you used to be able to do, like being able to make a service appear where you wanted it to, instead of the stripped and locked down version we have, or install extensions, or a headphone jack, or ability to upgrade ram or HD, or going back a version of iOS, or MacOS, or downloading an older version of OS X or or or or
Yeah, not the same, but Apple loves to take.
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I do this as well. Or obtain media DRM-free, and store it on a network share.
I use media devices which can play these resources off a network share, instead of a dumb “smart” protocol like DLNA.
I use a rooted android phone as well. I try to avoid apps unless I really need them (not even the airline apps for boarding passes).
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This kind of thing is precisely why I’m not loyal to anybody’s ecosystem and I don’t spend money on apps (aside from the occasional one that’s on sale for $0.99). Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen apps that I think are worth much more, and I even own a few of them, but only because I waited for them to go on sale at a ridiculously low price. The developers deserve better, but as long as there’s a gatekeeper who can take it away from me for arbitrary reasons I’m simply not willing to invest a meaningful amount of money.
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I imagine anyone could help solve a great deal of the world’s problems if Tim Cook would return their emails.
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He makes the point that this could happen just as easily with Google, but those of us on Android can at least side-load apps, music, media, etc. So if Google decided to do the same thing, we’d at least be able to keep using our devices (fairly comfortably, I’d think!)
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THIS, EXACTLY THIS- is why I use Linux.
People laugh but I have been telling people over and over this is actually possible and can actually happen, even more so with apple because they completely lock you with in an entirely proprietary garden of their products that only work with their things.
Everyone laughs and says there’s no way that could happen.
Here exactly what I said would happen, and could happen, happened. A company just stops supporting your software, and in this case, locks you out of an account that is linked between everything you own digitally, massively fucking you.
With Linux nobody owns my stuff, I have support for programs from people all over the world, and all the software is free, and almost always designed to be as interoperable with everything else and open source as possible specifically to avoid incredibly stupid bulshit like this.
I guess I’ll wait now for the first person to say but I’m crazy for using Linux. There’s always a bunch.
Enjoy possibly being held hostage by your technology, and losing access to all your digital everything, idiots.
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Do you have a Linux phone?
My iPhone died while I was at work and expecting an important email. So I did what any modern techsavy email expecting person would do and tried to log into iCloud on my work’s computer. You’ll notice the word “tried” in that previous sentence. Part of the authentication process was to send a text with a special number to my iPhone.
To my phone.
The broken one.
That had just died.
I was completely unable to check my mail via the computer in front of me because i needed my iPhone in order to prove to Apple that I am me. I called and they confirmed that yes, this is how the system is supposed to work.
On that day I decided I was out of the Apple ecosystem. I mean, I still use my account and was given an old iPhone6 that I am still using (free is still cheapest after all), but I now automatically forward my email to a Gmail account because I feel I have too.
What was I supposed to do if I was travelling abroad? How would I get a text message to access my email, boarding pass, get help etc., if my iPhone was stolen and I’m overseas? The threat of something like that killed the Apple dream for me. My next phone will be anything but Apple. I refuse to be so closely tied to any brand ever again.
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