Tag Archives: iCloud

iTunes, iCloud and the Halo effect

The Halo effect describes the tendency of we humans to ascribe attributes about which we have no knowledge to people or entities to which we have already ascribed another attribute. Some victorian “scientists” thus used to describe a “criminal physiognomy” by which you could tell a bad ‘un without having met them before, and this persists among many in the population today in the form of “I wouldn’t trust him / her because …” followed by some such attribute as their eyes being too close together, a generally nervous (“Shifty”) manner, having a “weak” chin, or even being short.

The inverse is equally common with behavioural scientists often telling us that tall and beautiful / handsome people are often considered more trustworthy or competent even at first meeting. Which is sort of where I find myself with Apple.

Whilst adding my library to iCloud recently (See earlier post) quite a number of my songs remained unmatched and therefore had to be uploaded. Apart from the time this would take, and the fact that the quality of the songs would not be upgraded unless I dug out the CD and re-ripped them at a higher bit rate, at least part of me was upset that the files had not, in some way, reached Apple’s high standards and had been rejected. Apple’s “Bella Figura” had been discomposed by the “Brutta Figura” of my files. There may even have been a bit of shame in there. This is so powerful that I nearly downloaded versions of these songs to replace the ones which until now I had considered perfectly adequate from the iTunes store, a process which begins with me spending money.  Nearly.

Obscured by clouds

Cover of Pink Floyd's excellent album Obscured by Clouds


I’ve invested the best part of the last two weeks getting my iTunes music into the cloud with iTunes match. I can now download any part of my music collection to any of my devices wherever I am as long as I have good 3G or broadband connectivity. This means that my iPhone in effect has all 17,534 songs (1521 albums) on it, which is cool.

However my experience has highlighted problems learning opportunities in three areas viz:-

1. Being an early adopter of technology,

2. Rural broadband in the UK, and

3. iTunes doesn’t always work properly and displays almost fractal complexity as you dig into it.

It has also given me a personal insight into the Halo effect surrounding Apple and its products.

In an attempt to be tidy, I’ll cover these in separate posts.