bob gets bloggy

Annoying Programs: Apple

Apple’s annoyances include interrupting you to check for updates on your time, resource-hungry programs that slow your system to a crawl, and digital rights management that mostly gets in the way of using content you’ve already paid for.

Apple’s software is firewalled on my PC and not allowed to check for updates. (I use Comodo Firewall Pro, which is free and very configurable, to accomplish this: http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html .) Also, I use DRM-free MP3s almost exclusively, mostly ripped myself from purchased CDs, so I only fire up iTunes when I want to hear a podcast from one of the few churches that lock you in to iTunes to hear them. For 99% of my podcatching I use Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/), which uses a lot less resources and works much better (using bit-torrent technology) for pulling down largish MP3s on the thin end of the net.