Switch

A year ago, I listened to CDs using Windows Media Player: I bought a MP3 encoder from Cyberlink systems to rip them, in a bundle with a DVD player that mostly didn't work. Never buy software! Software should be free! (I reserve the right to change my mind later.)

Then Microsoft released Windows Media Player 10, with integrated online stores. Every time I started the program, it connected to Napster and Court TV: nothing I did stopped it from connecting on startup. WMP is actually a great tool for organising music - the way you can drag and drop genres onto other genres (when you disagree with an album's bizarre classification) and also drag and drop artists onto artists (when they can't agree on a spelling) - but it's rubbish for listening to music through. Rangor swears by musicsnatch pukebox, but it has to be free software for me.

So I downloaded iTunes. Rangor pointed me towards it, and when work blocked access to iTunes downloads he found I could get it from apple.com.au - Steve Jobs should buy him a pint of Guinness: for my birthday that year I got an iPod from Becky. For her birthday this year, she got an iPod shuffle from me. This is typed on my 'new' iBook G3 (500Mhz 12") which I just got from eBay.. 384MB of memory and an airport card installed, which means I don't have to buy anything extra and I am well chuffed. It's well worth waiting a week or month on eBay for a bargain to come your way: the secret on this one I think was that it ended at 10.45 on a Friday night.

I last had an Apple computer in the house in 1979 or so: would have been a II. It didn't really work out for me then - a lack of games, probably - but I am liking it now, liking it a lot. I always liked BSD, too. Sometimes the Apple-S in the menu throws me baqck to that summer like Proust's madeleines.