The Digital Piggy Goes to Market

This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none - Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter

PROLOGUE

 It’s a cloudy, cool Saturday night in mid-May.  I got up from a nap 30 minutes ago, and I truly hope that this large coffee at Starbucks will wake me up completely.  Today’s blog entry is along the less controversial lines of shopping habits and preferences.  My nap-addled brain can do no better. I had an idea about Star Wars prequels but that will probably need to wait.  

 A-SHOPPING WE WILL GO …

 I went to Central Market today – the HEB-owned enterprise at Greenville and Lovers Lane.  I hadn’t been in about 12 years, since it opened.   At the time @ year 2000, I thought it was a confusing, claustrophobic maze that forced you through a winding itinerary of snobby wine samples and bread boutiques.   Passing by today, I noticed the parking lot was jammed as always.  Maybe I misjudged … in a dozen years it could’ve changed its layout.  

 I parked ¼ mile from the door and ventured in.   Much to my surprise it was still a confusing maze, with people lining up 5 carts deep to order brisket or gourmet cheese.  I can’t even imagine someone having that much time – it would surely take 3 hours to complete your shopping list. Even if you have epicurean tastes, Whole Foods and Tom Thumb can surely get you to gastronomical bliss a lot sooner.  The Central Market layout reminded me of IKEA with arrows pointing “the way” and shortcuts offered to the impatient such as me.

 Any readers out there who love this store – tell me why.  Convince me of what I’m missing … keep in mind that I’m even a shopaholic foodie who likes free samples.

 THE ITUNES STORE

 Moving along, lets look at another form of retail – the iTunes Store.  The digital media giant opened its doors in 2003, and eventually became the biggest music retailer in the nation.  Along the way, it added movies, TV shows, audio books, podcasts, and lecture series as well cross-platform support for media-starved Windows users.  (Linux and Android users must as always “suck it” – no easy shopping portal for you).

 The iTunes Store is a wonderful idea and I for one have hardly purchased a movie, book or album anywhere else in 5 years.  I have to say though, that this shopper’s paradise has become so huge and unwieldy it couldn’t help but have some trouble.  Jason Snell, editor of Macworld, pointed out that in his house iTunes routinely gets confused by iCloud versus local synchronization.  It also gets confused by his iPad versus his kid’s iPod.   iTunes has tried to be too many things to too many people, juggling too many balls in the air.   I won’t pilfer from Snell, I’ll share my own iTunes woes …

•  My Music collection has mostly wrong artwork.  My iPod songs show art from albums I never owned.
• I purchased “Best of Ottmar Liebert” – 15 greatest hits.   iCloud has given me 22 songs from two other albums, including many of those hits.   But that’s not what I bought.
• Just loading iTunes on a (relatively new, powerful) Windows PC, causes my machine to go into a 5-minute lockup.  What the h*** is it loading – maybe it could wait until I make a demanding request.

 Snell thinks they should break it apart into separate apps like iSynch for synching only or iPlayer for playback only.  I have to agree in general even  if I’m not totally sold on specifics.  The iTunes Store needs a massive iTune-up.   Like a Wall Street brokerage, this behemoth is “too big to fail” and yet it’s faltering an awful lot.   Apple – fix your cash cow before it develops any further mad cow derangement.   I love it too much to leave it, but Google isn’t sitting idly by…. Other people less devoted to Apple may be drawn to the charms of a simpler interface.    

        

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