Up The Hill Backwards

It ain't easy, this technology thing. What should be simple, is in reality, akin to a great big nasty squabble of Machiavellian proportions.

I'm trying to move 50Gb of material from iTunes on an old iMac running OSX Panther to an HP g-wizz PC tablet thingie running Vista. The extremely sophisticated method of transfer is a 2Gb memory stick. It's kinda like filling a bath from a sink using a shot glass ..with a hole in the bottom.

Now I know Jobs and Gates don't speak. I fully expect Mac to PC and PC to Mac to be a holy war. Problem is, I do expect Jobs to talk to Jobs. Apple to Apple should be warm and very cosy.

Ain't necessarily so.

I'm moving the material -- only ALL of my music -- to the PC because my 14 month-old iPod up and died. And unfortunately, its £150 replacement doesn't like Panther so won't synch with the old gal. The nasty little silver critter, however, does get on with Vista.

So to rectify, I've spent a further £80 on the snazzy new Leopard OS upgrade. but that won't load to the old Mac. This is apparently a common problem (blue screen), but fixes gleaned from online forums really aren't easy ..actually, they're bloody unfathomable.

Seems the uppity little shit of an current gen iPod is a snob and won't talk to any Apple OS older than Tiger, but as mentioned, it will cosy-up to new Windows.

And the rub is that I don't even want to continue running the crappy Mac. I want it retired and then destroyed. But it houses the last four years of downloads and burns -- some legal, some otherwise -- and took a considerable time to compile and catalogue.

Oh, and I don't consider burns an infringement of DRM as I paid the record companies a small fortune for the CDs in the first place, so feel perfectly within my rights to change the format of what's mine.

Thank God I hadn't yet begun the even lengthier process of ripping from my 1,000+ vinyl collection!