The Pretender by Jackson Browne

A friend asked me recently about Sonos, since I’d mentioned in passing that I'd just spent some hours troubleshooting our speakers. He’s thinking about buying a Sonos and I surprised myself, as I always do, with the vitriol in my response.
I told him that I hate few companies in the world as much as I hate Sonos.
I told him that this was entirely my own experience, that there are evidently millions of happy Sonos customers and daily users who have no truck whatsoever with Sonos. Who are, in fact, delighted by these products and their magical Star-Trek-like functionality. I told him that I carry a nontrivial amount of shame about my feelings, but that my feelings nevertheless are relentless and they get re-triggered just about every time I attempt to use our Sonos and its godforsaken App. It's beyond my emotional capacity to regulate these feelings, which reliably exasperates my beloved.
“I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring / Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening”
I mentioned to my friend that I have a similar, yet distinctly different, hatred of Bluetooth technology, but that I found myself gravitating more and more to the various inferior bluetooth products in our midst, simply to avoid using the Sonos.
I am mystified that, after years of being driven crazy by Bluetooth products and hating them intensely, all it took was the arrival of an even more infuriating technology to magically turn me into a Bluetooth Believer.
Will we someday miss Bluetooth like we miss the MiniDisc? Will anyone ever miss the MiniDisc?
I can hear comment rumblings already: "What's your problem, Trev? Why all the hate? All those engineers working day and night, racking their minds just to make your life better, to bring pristine sound into your home without making you bust your hump with components, custom furniture and running a bunch of dusty cables."
Also: “What does any of this have to do with The Song?”
I know, man. I should absolutely get over myself.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Sonos, first for the amazing products and then doubly for helping shine a light into the dark crevasses underneath my naïve love of music, the simmering grief within me that fuels the pursuit. Thank you, Sonos, for revealing my inner angry maniac to myself, undeniably and revoltingly resolute.
“They say in the end it's the wink of an eye”
"The Pretender" is another song that hit me like a ton of bricks decades after I had ignored it, and Jackson Browne in general, as I was growing up. [Read the rest at playitlikeitsm...]