Let me get this out right from the start – I don’t really care for Apple Computer Company. I don’t like their marketing campaigns, I think their computers are gimmicky, and their form-over-function design principle is terrible. Yes, I have an iPod, but were it not the best deal out there for size vs. cost, I would have rather settled on anything made by Creative or Microsoft (the Zune looks awesome, by the way).

That said, I have to give Apple some credit; let me explain why. Being the poor graphic designer that I am, and the designer who spends more of his free time playing games rather than watching TV, I only have the most basic cable option Comcast can provide. Clocking in at a whopping $12 a month, I get about an equal number of stations to watch, which includes the local network stations, PBS, the TV guide channel (they try to entice me to upgrade with this) a handful of non-English stations. I get by watching these stations, and as I just discovered, the few that I can watch through the scrambling static, like History Channel, Food Network, etc. Sometimes though, after hearing my coworkers talking about things on the other stations, I want to watch shows like South Park. Unfortunately for me, Comedy Central isn’t one of the stations I can pick up through the void of static in between stations 20 and 60… so what can a guy do?

Enter my video iPod. iTunes offers up a lot of the shows I’d like to see now and then, and I can hook it straight up to my TV courtesy of my video recorder cable, so it’s just like watching TV, minus the commercials. So some months ago, after missing two or three episodes of South Park that sounded absolutely hilarious, I went ahead and bought season 10. Or so I thought. About halfway through the season, I stopped receiving episodes. Logging into the iTunes store, I found that, after I purchased said season, Apple decided to split up the season into two parts, and they decided that I had in fact retroactively purchased only one half.

Needless to say, I was not too pleased with this, but aside from writing a very nasty review for South Park Season 10A, there wasn’t much to do about it, other than to never order anything from iTunes store again. Looking through the store’s comments however, I found that countless numbers of people had already posted terrible feedback, warnings, profanity, and all other sorts of protest against this. I was content in seeing that Apple had not censored this info from the store, but still felt cheated.

Cut ahead to the present. I checked my email last night, and after sorting through the usual pile of junk mail, I happened upon a mysterious email from the iTunes store, which looked to be a message confirming a purchase. I hadn’t made any purchases on the store recently, so I opened the email with some caution, expecting to have to spend an hour or so sorting through some sort of credit card hijack attempt. Instead, and completely unexpectedly, Christmas has come early, thanks to Apple.

Apparently, in an effort to smooth over the mess that was created by splitting South Park season 10 into two parts, Apple has decided to give away season 10B to everyone who purchased A, and refund them for any episodes from season 10B they had already purchased. Of course, the total amount of money one would have spent on all episodes from season 10B comes to less than $20, but still – I can’t help but be impressed. Bucking the trend of the large corporation indifferent to customer concerns, Apple took the diplomatic route of giving people what they wanted. Initially I wanted to call this move generous as well, but since they are merely giving me what I thought I was ordering from the start, I can’t really say that… but I am still impressed.

Here’s the text of the email, in case you’re interested in seeing exactly what they had to say:

Of course, I’m not going to go out and buy a Mac anytime soon, or ever, most likely. But I think other companies who have trouble managing their public image should take note of this. I, and many others, have been surprised and delighted by this decision. It’s the kind of thing that people remember when they think about buying episodes of a show or digital music again, and it shows that Apple hasn’t lost touch with it’s customers yet. So kudos to Apple – you’ve done well.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 9 new episodes of South Park to watch. Thanks for reading, and hope everyone is having a happy holiday season.