Tip of Day: Beware of Upgrading

I ran across this old post about a dorm getting hosed after upgrading to a new version of iTunes and wanted to share it. The idea of it is that corporations have gotten into the nasty habit of hiding downgrades and marketing them as upgrades. Essentially taking away functionality to protect or placate some regulatory body or to maximize profits and not telling the user. The case below points to iTunes, which I have stopped upgrading. And I warn other iTunes users to stop upgrading - boycott it altogether. The same of course holds true for Microsoft. Don't upgrade Microsoft. Let's see who else we can think of. It becomes especially annoying by the way when you get these popups that say, X app is ready for a new application.

Here's the start of my boycott upgrade list:
iTunes (imposes newminor to major secret DRM barbs each time the upgrade happens)
AOL InstantMessenger (AIM) - now has advertisements all over it and that popup thing that comes up in IE somehow that is like the AIM homepage or something.

Others I suspect:
Adobe Reader (though I have not any proof yet)
GoogleTalk
Google Desktop
Gmail or Google in general (just wait!)
Loyalty cards (imposing more junkmail - not exactly the same issue but let's boycott them anyway?

Non dot-com examples:
Any insurance company!

Who else can we think of??

The Dead Parrot Society: Music sharing limits in iTunes 4.7.1: "Music sharing limits in iTunes 4.7.1
Posted by Ryan to category: Music & Technology
01:25 PM Apr 20 | TrackBack (29)

[or: Dear Apple, don't be sneaky]

This news isn't new, but I just found out about it this morning: The latest iTunes upgrade (version 4.7.1) severely limits your ability to share your music library over a local network. Previously, up to five users could connect to your library at any one time. Now, only five users are allowed to connect in any 24-hour period. (George Hotelling has a list of other useful iTunes abilities that have been 'upgraded' out of existence.)

These new limits on library sharing royally screw the college-dorm community, of course, and on a much smaller scale it's tweaked us here where I work. We have an informal network lovingly referred to as 'Radio Free Spokesman,' where 8-10 newsroom employees share their libraries, sample new music, create playlists for each other, etc. We're one of who knows how many groups like this, in office buildings all over the world. In my case, this sharing has exposed me to plenty of music I'd have never listened to otherwise, which in turn has translated into money for artists, via concert tickets and album sales.

All of the sudden, though, we've got brand-new hurdles in tr"