iMad at iTunes

Posted by Fred Lecavalier on Dec 6, 2011 in Computing, Entertainment, Personal, Reviews | 0 comments

I was at my friend’s place last weekend, we were looking at some apps for his iPad on the App Store. My friend had recently had issues with his credit card, so he was unable to buy any apps. Seeing as there was an app we wanted to get, I decided to pay for it myself.

Now, my first thought was to purchase an online gift certificate for iTunes and have it sent to my friend’s email address. I figured it would be the cleanest and fastest way. Alas, it was not. After browsing the Apple site and finding the electronic gift certificate options, I decided to buy. To my disappointment, I could not buy this online as there was a message displayed on the screen saying “Download iTunes Free”. Given the situation, I figured “Why not? I can just install it, order and remove it.” So after downloading iTunes, waiting a remarkably long time for it to install, I finally start it up and create an account for myself. I then proceed to put in my credit card details, and go off to the iTunes Store to find the electronic gift certificates. To my dismay, after pressing the “Buy Now” button, I was informed that my account is not able to send electronic gift cards, and that I should visit a local store to purchase one. Some swearing occurred, followed by a swift uninstall iTunes and its components.

Later that day, we discovered that we ran out of beer. So I decide to take a trip to the corner store to get some. While there, I noticed the stand of gift cards, and decide to look for an iTunes one. Once again, I found myself rather disgruntled to find out that they only had the ones for iTunes music and movies, but not the ones for the App Store. This is another thing I heard about from a friend, and I do not understand it. I cannot see why Apple decided to split up their gift cards into two categories and making the end-user have to choose.

Upon returning to my friend’s place, I chose to simply put my credit card information in his iTunes account, and we then proceeded to purchasing the app we wanted.

Like so many things, I feel like iTunes chose to follow the “Why make it simple when you can make it complicated.” approach.