Apple vs. Amazon
January 26, 2012 Leave a comment
Image via CrunchBase
Let’s take a hypothetical situation (that is very close to reality, but it’s still hypothetical…) and say that my main PC hard drive crashed and burned like Chernobyl baby. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a music-aholic. Seriously, my music collection is everything from ABBA to ZZ-top in every available genre. Or at least it was until our hypothetical blue screen of death.For the last few days I’ve been trying to salvage my music collection.Apple, thankfully made finding my digital downloads extremely easy. God bless Steve Jobs and his iCloud. Any music purchased through iTunes is available to be downloaded to supported devices – no buying your music all over again. So, from what I understand, if I buy a new computer, install iTunes, and authorize the device, all of the music I’ve purchased through the iTunes store can be downloaded right to my new machine.
Amazon – you suck. Their “cloud drive” has been around just as long as Apple’s iCloud, but it blows.
This has been my recent experience. I have called Amazon twice in the last 24 hours. The first time, I told the help-desk representative that I had lost my files and I had no way to retrieve them. She apologized (for what I’m not sure) and said that she would “gladly” put my files on my cloud drive. Okay, until I checked this morning and felt the need to call them again because a great portion of my music was still missing. This time the help-desk representative informed me that MP3’s purchased more than 90 days ago could not be uploaded to my cloud.
Image via Wikipedia
The busted business part of Amazon’s cloud is that unless you have your purchase settings worked so that all MP3 purchases go automatically to the cloud drive, you will need to upload them yourself. If you don’t and 90 days later you find yourself without the file you downloaded it’s your loss not theirs.
All the Amazon guy could do was give me a $10 credit to help me “re-purchase” about $200 worth of music that had been purchased over the last 4 years that I’ve been a “valued Amazon customer.” Thanks….
The moral of the story is back up your music files, but the score of the Apple versus Amazon game:
Amazon 0, Apple as per your 60 page user agreement my first born is yours.
