I logged into iTunes the other day and was prompted by a huge message at the top of my screen to consider going ‘DRM-free’.

DRM-free to me means I can play my iTunes tracks on my Nokia. Or LG. Or any other music-capable device.

But I can’t quite get a straight answer from anywhere as to whether this *will* work.

So in the interests of the Mobile Industry Review audience I thought I’d find out.

Here, then, is the first screen that prompted my interest:

So, £98 to buy stuff I’ve already bought. But without DRM, apparently.

I hit buy. This message appears:

Yes, yes I am indeed sure. Take the cash off me please. The next prompt was a surprise.

I have to wait for an ‘electronic mail’.

What the hell is this bollocks?

I’m conditioned by iTunes to expect to press BUY and for it to START downloading.

So now I feel like a total pleb.

A total unmitigated idiot.

I press the BUY button. I didn’t press the BUY AND GET NOTIFICATION IN A FEW DAYS.

Fuming.

Absolutely fuming I was.

That’s £100 of JOY that’s only valid when you give me immediate satisfaction. Give me time to think about it and I start to think negative.

How shit is your bollocks back-end operation that you need to do some kind of manual processing that requires an ELECTRONIC MAIL to be sent to me with ‘instructions for downloading’?

I bet Steve Jobs wouldn’t have allowed that if his mind hadn’t, obviously — and understandably — been on other more important matters.

Bollocks Apple. 100% bollocks.

So.

We move on.

I avoid throwing machines out of windows. And a few days later, a day later, I really CAN’T BE BOTHERED COUNTING because I don’t actually KNOW how long the delay was (I kept pressing the BUY button repeatedly) — anyway, I got this email from the geniuses:

Right. So my account’s been working perfectly with the billing information you’ve had on file for ages. I’ve been buying tracks RIGHT UP until the moment I hit the BUY button.

And all of a sudden, after making me WAIT all this sodding time, you send me out a flucking note to tell me my account details aren’t correct?

You, er, did see the fact I BOUGHT stuff whilst I was waiting?

So much so that the £98 I was spending jumped to £102.93:

This is exactly — EXACTLY — what I’d expect from Microsoft.

Not from Apple.

It’s a stupid, rubbish and highly ineffective fix to have to ask me to wait an UNSPECIFIED amount of time to get an email. What the fluck is the point in having iTunes running on my system if I can just hit BUY — give you AND THOSE IDIOT RECORD COMPANIES more cash — if it doesn’t download immediately.

That’s how it worked the last time I bought iTunes Plus. I clicked buy. It downloaded them all.

No sodding email.

I’m still waiting for my ‘update’.