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All I wanted, was to use iTunes (while also dealing with a scammer)
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I remember using this type of title before. I wanted to spice things up but I cannot think of how. And after what I went through today with Apple Support, I’m unable to think right now. All I will say, is my next phone.. will …have to be another iPhone. Because fuck Apple products and their exclusive dependency between eachother (my watch and my AirPods).
It hasn’t even been a year since the last time, and once again I had to ‘nuke’ my phone to clear that freaking ‘Other’ storage so I can update the iOS. I would not be surprised at this point that Apple purposely adds unnecessary bloat to their iOS updates, just to fill up your phone. Because almost half of the storage is being used by the iOS.
You Apple fanboys don’t believe me…? Look at this.
Look at how much space the iOS takes. That’s nearly 7GB from the 16GB of this phone. It might not be long when I’ll be forced to get a 32GB iPhone (if one even exists) just so I’ll have room for the iOS, as it’ll be so massive that 16GB might not be enough anymore for
it + apps and pictures.
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But anyway, let’s move on from the iOS as I’m getting sidetracked. I knew I had to get
on iTunes and back up the phone, but I forgot how. And Google, was no help this time. Kept seeing to clear your Safari bookmarks and stuff to remove the Other storage, but that didn’t even leave a dent. And the option to use iTunes was assuming I had a Mac.
I asked Jero about it, and he was able to help me to remember what I did in the past.
So today I dedicated the time to get this done. Had to re-download it from the Windows Store and then use it. It wanted my Apple ID and Password. I was pretty sure I had everything correct.. but eventually I ended up getting locked out as it said the password was wrong. I had twice asked for an email to reset the password but I was getting nothing. And after doing an email send test to myself, the issue wasn’t on my end.
So I tried the ‘answer security questions’ option. It was asking for my birthday. Surely I would know my own damn birthday. …Kept saying ‘incorrect’ over and over. Omg.
I was forced to contact Apple Support. Thankfully (unlike Amazon) I didn’t go through hell to speak to someone. It only took a minute or two.
So I explained my problem and the steps that lead to this, already feeling stressed about the whole situation of just wanting something that’s relatively simple to do, to be
done.. that was having a lot of unnecessary ‘steps’.
The bot-like rep did not help, doing that “I see you need help with X, correct?” they usually do.
Oh how it irritates me so much when they throw your help response back at you in the form of a question, to ‘verify’ you’re actually asking this question. I seriously do not know why support reps feel they have to insult the intelligence of the client by asking such a stupid question. Like.. “uh, no. I meant something completely differen–YES, YOU FUCKING RETARD!! WOULD I SERIOUSLY BE ASKING FOR HELP WITH THIS IF I WASN’T NEEDING IT?!?!”
FFS… if you’re a (legitimate, aka don’t ask for gift cards to pay off an outstanding
balance) tech support rep, STOP doing this!! Stop with the stupid “am I correct on
that” questions! …Just stop!!
*frustrated sigh* Sorry about that. Lost my temper. Instead I did something kind of funny. I said: “I hope I’m not speaking to a bot, correct?” just to get back at that stupid question by asking them that stupid question. But as I said I had to re-explain myself multiple times to this rep, how I did this and that and nothing works.
This lead to having to go through Apple’s account recovery process on my phone. It wanted me to use my phone number, that I also had to use 2FA on my watch. This passed perfectly.
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Then it went to verifying my debit card. I got everything set.. except the expiration date. Now see, my card expires on [EXPUNGED]/[EXPUNGED]. But every time I tried to set the date to [EXPUNGED]… it kept setting the date back to April. And trying to set the
year, it kept setting it back to 2023. I was stuck on this page. The rep told me if I’m not able to enter the info, I would “have to wait several days or more”.
And I’m all “So let me get this straight: because of youall’s page being so damn buggy that I cannot properly enter the expiration date of my card which makes me unable to complete the account recovery.. I’m forced to wait up to two weeks to have Apple attempt to restore my account, just so I can use iTunes. Am I correct on this assumption?”
They knew they were backed into a corner by a very.. very furious dragon that wanted to fly to Apple HQ and burn it to the ground (with the higher-ups inside that don’t give a fuck about their customers. I’d give the workers time to evacuate as they aren’t part of the problem). And they were like “uhhh, ok ok. Can I put you on hold for a few minutes so I can look into this fully?”
Backed off and said “sure. Take all the time you want. I’ll be right here” (while ‘teasing’ the rep with one of my claws to their throat). To be fair, this is not what actually happened. They definitely knew my dragon fury, though.
It was also around this time that ‘Stylez’ messages me, with “Hiii” and pointing right
to “can you check out my game?” Immediate alarm bells rang in my head, but I’m not going to whip my e-peen out and flex (unlike Spoon’s moderation team).
I said “why am I getting ‘Your account has been compromised’ vibes all the sudden?” And they’re trying to lie to me. But honestly the only thing that ‘saved’ me (because I’m not going to lie, it almost fooled me because they were willing to wait for me to be scammed by them).. was dealing with Apple Support. The frustration I felt, actually helped me to stay focused on my goal.
Back to the main problem at hand, as I waited for the rep to get back to me, I decided to go back to that page and try setting the expiration date again. Then I began to notice something… I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. I’ve been setting the year before this year, which is wrong. After setting the year, I was able to set the month and then submitted it. But it wasn’t going through. So I tapped the Cancel button and then went back to the password thing. It asked for the password, and I tapped it in. And it went through. Told the rep, and they were quite happy to hear this and suggested I try iTunes again. So I did.. several times. The login popup kept popping up multiple times, saying
the ‘session has timed out, please log in again’ yet that’s what I’m freaking doing.
Finally, it let me in! …Geezus!!
So all of that time..
1. I was using a password I was assuming was part of iTunes (yet it actually wasn’t).
2. The lockdown on my account eventually had lifted on its own.
With that I ended the conversation with the rep, them having served their purpose.
Finally I can connect my phone to my computer and.. um, why is ‘Back Up’ grayed out? Did a search and one says “restart iTunes and that usually fixes it”. The other option that wasn’t so great said “it’s likely because your iOS is outdated“. Dear god please let that not be the reason, but at the rate things were going.. I felt my pessimistic side was going to be right. After the restart I checked again and.. awesome! There it is! Holy fuck, a restart actually fixed it!
Backed up my phone. Then I decided to see if the restore still works the same way it did before (by removing a small handful of pictures). After having to disable ‘Find My’ in the settings…
Really, phone…? I swear, if it wasn’t for the fact I have an Apple watch, and Apple ear-buds, I would be going to an Android phone. So, I can’t even test to see if the backup will even work because of the fucking Other storage. The ‘nuclear option’, is my only option. As this won’t even tell me just how much free space is required for the restore.
And on top of that, it was doing another backup.. that I didn’t tell it to. But I let it as I didn’t want to corrupt anything on the phone.
It took so long as after it got done, it seemed frozen on the Sync step. Took what felt
like 15-20 minutes until it finally got done with that. And after looking up how to remove everything on my phone, I ‘launched the nuke’. Now everything’s wiped (including that damn ‘Other’ storage).
And well.. that’s it. I was able to restore the backup and everything’s just fine now. What really more can I say? It still works. I’m happy. 🙂
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I got Spotify now (But it’s not a ‘music genome’ like Pandora is…)
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Yes, this is very random after what I was just explaining. Though this is something I’ve been having an issue with in the background.
I’m talking about Pandora. And it’s mainly of how old the service is (and I do mean
old.. like 1/4 of my life in the 21st century revolved around it), honestly I’m surprised it’s even still functioning. Especially with its aforementioned age seems to not really be compatible to modern means of music streaming, aka, my Alexa.
And this has been a problem that’s been four months ‘in the making’. But it originally started as another problem. The original problem is when I tried to link my Alexa to Pandora.. and I couldn’t find my custom station. So I asked Pandora Support and they eventually helped me to find said station.
This is when I run into the second issue. When trying to say “Alexa, play Benie’s Tracks on Pandora!” to play my custom station, it picks a station that sounds somewhat similar to my request to play. And I told Pandora Support about this. I also thought I might have to contact Amazon about this, but thankfully I didn’t have to.
But I was back and forth with Pandora Support, them wanting to know what stations it’s picking instead of the ones I want. So I gave them a list of what Alexa said back to me;
“Benie Radio on Pandora” (did this a lot)
“Trans Radio on Pandora”
“Ben’s Truck.. station on Pandora”
“I can’t find any stations on Benie’s Trod on Pandora”
“I can’t find the song Benie’s Trod on Pandora”
As you can see, it was hearing ‘Benie’ some of the time, but not ‘Tracks’ right.
Though, possibly the funniest fail of them all is when she (Alexa) said “Thumbs Up My Butt Radio by Pandora”.
What!? 😂
But this is where the laughter stops, and the annoyance with Pandora’s Support team began. They told me they would look into the problem and get back to me another
time, and to be patient. At the time I was OK with this, feeling it would probably only take a day or two.
..A month passed instead, yet no response from Pandora Support. I asked them if I could get a status update, and all they said is “we’re still working on the issue. Thank you for your patience”. So, more waiting. Fine.
…..Fast forward to now (three months later); still no response from Pandora Support.
Okay, I’m starting to lose my patience, Pandora. It’s been three months and you still haven’t gotten back to me. Remembering my days hanging with Spoon and him
using Spotify for his dance music, I really started to consider giving it a chance (as a replacement to Pandora). I had hopes it would be a worthy replacement. At least it had to be a better option. So I sent their support team another email showing my frustration, and saying I’m going to give them another month or I would cancel my subscription. I did this as a scare tactic in hopes I would have better communication with their support team.
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A few hours after I sent it, I thought “I’ll just give Spotify a chance. If I like it, then I’m just going to cancel Pandora anyway. Because over three months of nothing is ridiculous. I’m tired of waiting”, and that’s exactly what I did. Wanted to check out their pricing
plans, and was saddened they only have monthly subscription plans (no yearly, where it would be able to save me money in the long run). Yeah, getting the yearly plans are actually better, because you never really think of those monthly $9.99’s and $14.99’s adding up in a year ($119.88 and $179.88 respectively). That’s a LOT of freakin’ money you’re throwing away!! This is why you would wanna look for yearly plans to save some money.
That is, if you were like me. Of course there are ones that are unable to constantly pay a monthly fee. And don’t you worry, that’s quite okay. Most people are actually like this.
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Anyway, I had to contact Spotify’s support (through Twitter of all things) to help me with certain things as I was beginning the slow but steady transition of moving all of the thumbed up songs listed on Pandora’s website, such as why when I try to preview a
song to make sure this is 100% exactly what I have on Pandora, it skips the song and plays the fifth song in some list. They told me I got to use ‘the app’ (that I had no idea existed until I just happened to look and saw a ‘Install App’ button). Well that’s handy.
So now I got the app, and been quite busy adding songs. But while I’ve been adding
them, I can’t help that I maybe may’ve made a ‘fatal’ flaw. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t really feel like a flaw at all. ..It feels like something I had to do.
When I’m seeing this, for ‘RADIO’ labeled songs..
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This… (why are some of these songs listed as ‘UNAVAILABLE’ now?)
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And finally… THIS when trying to preview a song (even though I have Pandora One);
“Watch Ad”…? “WATCH AD“?! So my yearly subscription isn’t fucking good enough for you guys anymore?! This alone is what is forcing me to move over to Spotify.
This is another sign of the times. As everything is increasing in price, so does Pandora. And it seems Pandora One isn’t valued enough. Now they want you to go for Pandora Plus or their Premium versions to continue listening ad-free.
So.. my business of being on their website “isn’t valued enough” either. Which is why I’m doing this. I hate it.. especially when I recently discovered all I had to say to make Alexa work was “Alexa, play Pandora!” and it actually played my station. So, for these four long months of waiting for Pandora Support to get back to me.. that’s all I had to say, and they didn’t tell me.
I especially hate how I’ll be ‘throwing away’ a very cool thing that helped me to find new songs: the Music Genome Project, that’s exclusive to Pandora. It learned what you like listening to based on vocals and music, and paring it to other music that sounds/feels similar to what you like and don’t like. It’s truly ahead of its time, and one of a
kind. Especially the fact it showed up at the very early 21st century (we’re talking 2000). That is just amazing. This is what I meant with how I felt I’m making a ‘fatal flaw’… and I have to say goodbye to it due to ‘unavailable’ songs and ‘Watch Ad’.
Oh well I guess. Soon as I get done moving.. holy fuck, past me! You thumbed up a LOT of songs over the years.. especially the entire. fucking Skyrim OST!!.. *clears throat* but anyway, when I get done with all of that, I’ll be closing my account and saying goodbye to Pandora (once and for all).
Though.. fuck, gotta say, going over this playlist, and its history. Wow, the memories of playing Wurm Online while listening to them. Those long nights on my sailboat, watching the server’s coastline on my right as I’m heading home to Indie. Such fond memories.
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Though the Spotify desktop app isn’t without issues.
1. Spotify.. sadly doesn’t have every single song I have on my Pandora playlist. However, I can download them off of YouTube and link them to the playlist (if I want them that
bad).
2. There’s no way the app prevents accidentally adding duplicates of the same song. I read there used to be, but they took it out “because they’re working on a new desktop client”. …This is BS cranked up to 11 right there. And if anyone bitches, all they get is “please leave your feedback” instead of a transparent answer. …How are they still in business with this uncaring attitude towards their clients?
3. When using the ‘Enhance’ button that adds songs, manually adding songs gets disabled.
4. The shuffle feature.. doesn’t exactly do its job well. And there’s no way to control it’s shuffle rate. I have to use a 3rd party website to shuffle my playlist in order to have
it 100% shuffle right.
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But Spotify also has some good stuff with it;
1. To save resources on my computer, I don’t have to keep the desktop app opened to listen to my playlist as Alexa is fully integrated with it. Very awesome. 👍
2. When saying “Alexa, play Spotify!”, any song that was playing before, will continue playing at the exact point I stopped it at.
3. I can enable ‘cross-fade’, which blends the end of the song into the beginning of the next song.
And with that, I bid Pandora adieu. And you guys as well for reading this far. I’ve added all the thumbed up songs, except three songs I wasn’t able to add (as they weren’t there).
Two I got from downloading them off of YouTube and added them, but one song eludes me (that I can’t even find on Youtube).
It’s from the album ‘Italo Boot Mix 2006’. God, 2006. Is this when I got most of the music I thumbed up on?? If so it feels like yesterday!
Heh, sorry for the reminiscing. 😀