Of course, the appalling fuck up that is Apple’s recent podcast software is why I stopped buying iPhones. I like to listen to podcasts, and the podcast software on iPhones is so ridiculous that it’s actually impossible to do so. It has the same feel as the deep and total fuck up the car industry made when it forced radios on people that prevented them from selecting radio stations. I had to give up listening to Radio Three in the car because of that utter Apple–grade screw up. Fortunately, there are competitors to iTunes that allow people to listen to podcasts, and I use them. Thank you Microsoft, for writing podcast listening software that lets people select the podcast they want to hear. I have to allow Apple one grudging acknowledgement: they’ve not screwed up podcast playback on the iPod shuffle—yet.

And that’s not the only old iTunes bug that I’ve faced today. I decided to listen to some music. I selected a track. I clicked on play. iTunes played a quite different track. There is a basic user interface principle that has been established from the getgo, and established by Apple at that: a command is applied to the selected item(s). No, Lord High Apple iTunes Designer, it is not applied to some random item, it is applied to the item(s) that the user has explicitly chosen. FFS.

iTunes has taken over from Word as the product that I find behaves in the most unexpected and idiotic way. Word is quite usable now. Mind you, iTunes is not the most annoying product out there: the Gimp still wins on the swearing stakes.