A new version of iTunes (7.4.2) is available. Would you like to download it now? No.

iTunes 7.4.2 addresses an issue with creating ringtones using iTunes Plus song purchases and includes bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

Dear Apple,

Stop it. You're really starting to get on my nerves. For a company that has Eric Schmidt on their board, you sure seem to be doing a lot of evil lately. I'm really starting to question doing business with you based on some of your tactics and community responses lately. In short, you're being a jerk.

A while back, you put the Apple TV on the market. Shortly after you did so, the community began to hack it and found all sorts of clever ways to make it better. There were ways to increase storage, add RSS support, and much more. When questioned about the hacking, you said it's your box, do with it what you please. To date, I'm not aware of you slapping people down for enhancing the product. Instead, you seem to be busy focussing on the iPhone.

Next came the iPhone and ringtones. In order to support the new iPods and the new ringtones for the iPhone, you released iTunes version 7.4 on September 6^th. I don't have an iPod Touch, iPod Classic, or an iPhone, but I was cool with this. One update that added features that didn't cater to me was acceptable.

Shortly after you launched iTunes 7.4 with ringtones, the community found a way to circumvent the requirement to pay 99¢ in order to convert music they already owned into a ringtone for their phone. In order to counter this workaround, you released iTunes 7.4.1 on September 7^th. This is one day after having just launched iTunes 7.4. In other words, you pushed another update out that had absolutely no relevance to me since I do not own an iPhone. Kind of annoying.

Today, I got a notification that iTunes 7.4.2 was available. While I don't know for sure what the update does at this point, the description implies that it is related to ringtones. That would make three iTunes updates within 11 days that have no relevance to me. Despite this, I'm still prompted to update my iTunes. Please note that I'm not even complaining about the 99¢ charge for making ringtones. While I find that to be totally absurd as well, it is less important to me at this point.

Please, stop this madness. If you really want to keep playing Whack-A-Mole with your valued customers, find a way to stop hitting me in the process. iTunes has become a monolithic program. Not only does it do syncing with iPods, it also manages Apple TV and iPhone. Maybe it is time to make iTunes more modular and only update modules as appropriate?

And while I'm here, let me just say that I find your continual iPod/iTunes changes to lockout third parties rather disheartening. While I understand your desire to control your user base and get them to use your products from end to end, I also wish you'd consider being less restrictive and try to accomplish this through quality, not force.. Stop changing DAAP/ROAP in iTunes to prevent third party streaming. Stop adding database checksums to the iPod to prevent software other than iTunes from managing them. Basically, just quit putting artificial roadblocks in place that the community will eventually break through anyway. You're just making yourself look bad and irritating part of your user base.

For a company that seems to value being able to use and interact with open source projects such as BSD, gcc, Postfix, and Apache, you seem to be going really far out of your way to screw over people who want just as much interoperability with you as you want with them. Stop it. You may end up convincing me to take my money elsewhere otherwise.