Sony hardware has no trouble convincing you to buy it. It looks nice and is built well. You can find Sony stuff in any Shiny Things shop, and the person who sells it to you will have tidy hair and white teeth. Back in the 80s and early 90s, this was all that mattered: a good looking hunk of technology that did something when you pressed a button. Not any more though. Nowadays, hardware comes with software to control it, and for all their genius at physical product design, Sony are still evil braindead corpse-fisting sub-cretins at writing software.

I’m sure it’s not just me. Here’s one man’s struggle against the brick wall of Sony Ericsson customer support. It looks like it’s actually Ericsson handling the emails, but they’ve clearly been infected by the Sony monster that loves the taste of customer viscera. I like the way he gets downgraded from “Peter” to “Consumer” by the second email.

That really gets to the crux of the issue here: Sony actively don’t want you to be a participant. Your job is to keep quiet and consume. Press the buttons if you must, but don’t get any smart ideas about having some kind of control over the device. The result is software with close to zero compatibility, zero configurability, and a custom-designed UI to keep you in the Sonyverse where only they have access to your eyes and ears.

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever buy anything from Sony ever ever ever again.

On the other hand, the hardware does look really nice…