My iLife Bites

You can have my iLife. You're welcome to it. It was stressful, frustrating, tense and upsetting.

I'm not blaming Steve Jobs, at least not entirely. But he can take some of the blame.

I do a radio show. I guess that makes me a professional. But in reality I'm just a hack who knows how to do what she has to know and that's all.

I had the opportunity to create my own personal studio and so I took a long hard look at the wonderful world of Mac. It looked good.

My guy swears by it (when he's not swearing at it). I wanted to get out of the "oh no here comes another virus" merry-go-round. So, as I so happily announced not long ago, I bought a Mac mini.

She was a cutey. Small, stylish, incredibly quiet.

I navigated the essentials with no trouble; I've worked with Macs before.
But Logic Express was another story.

Imagine you know how to drive an automatic transmission Chevy and someone hands you the keys to a Lamborghini. "You've got five minutes to catch on - good luck."

It's designed for music. I don't do music. It has a gazillion features I didn't need and I didn't have the time to sit and learn it. And I had an impending deadline.

My hair has all dropped out, I haven't slept in two weeks and I've now taken to drinking vodka for breakfast. Okay, I exaggerate. But really - it was just awful.

So I have surrendered. I packed up Minny the mini and shipped her back. I pulled my old PC out of mothballs, loaded a demo version of Adobe Audition and am trying to get back on schedule.

Why, you ask, didn't I just use the Adobe program I can do in my sleep on my Mac?
Here's where Steve Jobs takes the hit. He's in a snark-fest with Adobe. He doesn't let that program be compatible with Macs. He's got Logic and that's what you'll use if you want an Apple, dammit. Or Pro-Tools...yet another program I'd have had to learn from scratch.

So I returned the mini but I'm eating the cost of the extended warranty I bought. AppleCare, apparently, is non-refundable even if you've never used it and you don't own the computer. Register it and it's yours. Thanks, Steve.

I can't return Logic, either. Software is not returnable. Good thing I'm just made of money., huh? At this rate I'll be working six months just to pay for the equipment and programs I need to do the job.

My employer is totally off the hook on this; they gave me a budget to get what I needed. Sadly, I gave it to Apple and it cost more than they gave me. I thought it was money well spent. Wrong. Now it's coming out of my own pocket.

So that's my iLife. Expensive, stressful and, ultimately, not worth living.

My name is Susan and I guess I'm going to be a PC forever.