Over the last few months, I've had this feeling, 'I'm sure I bought that film' as I went to watch and iTunes asked me to pay for it.
At first I thought it was me, when I wanted to watch The Social Network, which I hadn't seen in a while, it was £6.99 please and I thought - I'm sure I bought that already. There was a couple of time this had happened and I brushed it off more than once thinking, it must be me - getting a bit older - where did I put my car keys ?
One of the reasons I went to iTunes was because I had been through the VHS to DVD transition, and then the DVD to BlueRay move, all encouraging me to update my entire video library. The iTunes option made you think that if you bought the film from Apple through iTunes, you could view it for life through the same account - That now doesn't seem to be the case and I am VERY disappointed.
In the little information I can find out about this, Apple's lack of spelling it out at the beginning has no doubt got millions of people to re-build their video library - spending money with them, only to find movies are now after time being removed from their library.
I have 508 movies I've purchased over the last 12 years (less than one a week), and now I'm watching to see if that number goes down.
I found an article online where the writer states, if you download your entire collection to your computer, you can play them for life - for free. Goodness me - the average movie is like 1.5gb, so I would need 750gb of free space just to guarantee I could play in the future movies I have already purchased ?
I guess we are at the mercy of the biggest company in the world to determine, the future worth of our purchase. The Social Network had a long term purchase value of ZERO in my library, which I guess demonstrates how the Big Game of media control is played out in my tiny video library.
So I've quickly downloaded Downton Abbey on my iPad, and will now have to upgrade the computer my main library sits on so I can download everything - of course the irony is that computer is made by Apple, sold by Apple and I have to pay Apple to buy a computer to solve a problem Apple created.
Their Logo is representative of me, the bite I felt, How soon will it be that Apple who I have invested my work life and technology in, who make great products, control what I watch, when I watch it, how much I pay, continue to imply I get something which in reality I don't over time.
This didn't happen on Steve Jobs watch, but it seems a new reality with Tim Cook.
After thinking about this a lot, I won't give up on the technology but I feel like I'm being taxed in having to re-purchase a movie to counter Apples recent announcement of falling iPhone sales. This is not the culture of the company I have loved to be a user of over the last 15 years.
Phew, breathe Carl, breathe - Glad to get that off my chest.
