iLife or myLife

I don’t know whether you have noticed, but a rather unethical trend has developed in the electronics industry to boost profit margins. The scheme is as effective as it is cunning and, as far as I can see, it is quite pervasive. Everyone has a story or two to share. Here is mine:

As you may remember, we switched from PC to Apple about two years ago -- just like all the others who have filled the coffers of that Steve Jobs guy. And just like them, we fell for the slick marketing. After all, how could an Apple be worse than the ever crashing PC, right? Editing photos, posting podcasts, and sharing videos on a Sunday morning is supposed to be pure bliss. They call it “iLife”, you see.

Two years into owning that little snazzy device with all its nifty applications, and after having swallowed that initial lure, iLife has taken quite a different meaning.

At times I can’t help myself but smile at how they managed to reel me in, cunningly, patiently, but also mercilessly -- me, the hefty lunker, thrashing about spewing and gaping. But they succeeded. On too many Sunday mornings it has been either iLife or my Life.

Guess what I did last week...

I once again drove out to an Apple Store twenty miles away, my MacBook giving me the silent treatment on the passenger seat next to me. After many Sunday mornings spent in a not so blissful routine, I had resolved to give it another try at finding the answer to one of the most annoying glitches with one of its oh-so-marvelous programs.

This particular one has kept bothering me for the last eighteen months: iPhoto keeps loosing my pictures. Now, loosing pictures is a rather severe problem considering that iPhoto supposedly is all about STORING pictures.

However, thirty-four minutes later and after a heartwarming chat with two of the groovy young chaps leaning against one of the display tables with a self-conscious nonchalance, I left the store with a $200 purchase in my elegant fruit bag.

They had done it again!! They had sold me hope. They had convinced me that the only way to solve the software problem I was experiencing was to buy more products from them.

I bought AppleCare, and with it the hope that some time in the future I will get my money’s worth out of an investment in a product I made two years ago.

Boy, they are good at what they do!!

Not only do they keep getting a seizable chunk of my money, they also get my time and energy. Because, let’s face it, it won’t be Apple fixing the product, but I. I will be the one in front of the screen with some heavily accented person babbling in my ear about where to lick, double-click, or pull down on.

In Apple’s defense, however, I have to mention that Gateway Computers had me on my arms and knees behind my desk armed with a flash light, a pencil, and a screw driver unscrewing the back of the hard-drive encasement ten years ago....

And you’ve got to give it to them all. They have got it right. There is no doubt that it is a lot cheaper for them to have Ms. Jordan and a low cost third-world engineer figure out what’s wrong with their over-prized nothing-but-image product, than having a first-world engineer give it a try.

Chances are, they wouldn’t figure it out either, anyway. And for that there is a rather obvious explanation: The Jobs’ and Gates’ are much better at making money than they are at making computers.

So, no iLife for my life.

At least not today.