I just want to insert my 2 cents about the various comments lamenting the absence of Jobs.
Jobs was certainly a very talented and unique guy that clearly had golden instincts for marketing and product design. Nevertheless, Apple is still populated with a lot of exceptionally talented people and I think it would be naive to think Apple does anything, no matter how seemingly trivial, without having specific, calculated, self serving, reasons. I certainly do not know what their logic was but I am sure the lack of a simple refresh function, the deletion of power search, the removal of the API that rendered ITLU inoperable, the changes associated with the user interface, etc. all were with focused specific purposes. I strongly suspect that the overall purpose is, in one way or another, to severly limit the ability of users to readily transfer and/or manage their own music files and, by doing so, satisfy the paranoid needs of the music publishers relative to piracy etc. concerns.
I do not think anything would be different in this regard if Jobs still had his hands on the reins of Apple. Although I recognize and respect Apples need to protect the music and maintain reasonable contracts with the music publishers, these restrictions and limitations are seriously negating the value of their otherwise outstanding hardware. As a consumer, I want to be done with Apple because it is just too difficult to manage my music as I want to manage and store it. My wife and I just want to be able to reasonably easily use the music we perceive we own (we already paid for it via iTunes or CD purcahses).
Between our existing iPhones and iPods we will be stuck with Apple for sometime to come but my wife and I are certainly going to look hard at other hardware for all future purchases. For example, an iPhone 5 would require new cables, drop in charging stations, etc. so there really is no compelling reason to stay with the iPhone when we upgrade our current 4s devices. In fact, since the Andoid based devices use Apps that are not as tightly controlled as the Apps from Apple, there is probably a good reason, aside from anything else, to finally divorce ourselves from Apple.
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