Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me a hundred time, we'll still keep giving you chances. 

Sony has a long history of doing wrong by their customers, the apologizing for it, then doing it again.  It's sad, really.  A lot of grew up in an era when Sony represented technology and awesomeness.  Sony was the Apple of the 80's, and the Walkman was their iPod. 

The sad thing is that since the Walkman, Sony has not managed to come up with anything really ground breaking or compelling.  They keep trying, but they keep failing - miserably.  Here's a history of Sony apologies and screw ups:

First there was betamax, which Sony invented.  It was a superior format to VHS in almost every way so it should not have been hard to get adoption.  But because Sony cares more about money and restrictive licensing than they do about costumers and actually being successful, it fell flat on its face.  If you had a betamax player, you were a sucker.

Then there was minidisc, my first real experience with Sony.  They had already apologized for how bad they miffed it with betamax and had promised to do better with minidisc.  I bought a minidisc player and even picked up a Yamaha MD8 multi-track data minidisc recorder (I dropped $1200 on it in high school).

It was sad that neither on the consumer side or on the pro (semi-pro, really) side of things Sony failed to deliver.  Their music software, required to use your minidisc player, was riddled with bugs and restrictive DRM.  They promised updates that never came, restricted licensing of their technology, and soon the format I had invested so much in was dead in the water, just like betamax.  I was the sucker.

So I vowed that I would never buy another Sony product again.  They just didn't seem to care about costumers, innovation, quality, or anything really, other than making tons of money.  They didn't seem to realize that if you do all those first things, the money will follow. 

About 10 years later I broke my Sony boycott to buy a Sony Reader.  Surprisingly, I had a great experience with it and enjoyed it very much.  Their software still sucked - really bad - but by this time there were 3rd party solutions that could do much better.  Overall, I thought the Reader was good - better even than the Kindle and other alternatives because of its openness.  You must really suck if Sony is doing it better than you.

After my good experience with the Reader I thought Sony had turned a new corner, so I slowly waded into their sea of products.  I bought a PS3 and received a PSP for Christmas. 

The PS3 is a pretty decent gaming machine, but falls short in other areas.  It tries to be a home media solution, but doesn't have wide format support or decent navigation abilities.  It's pretty weak, really.  Every update they come out with adds stupid features that encourage you to spend more money rather than addressing the most basic issues.

Speaking of updates, they just released one that completely removed a major feature from their systems.  They removed the option to install other OSes - one of the main reasons I bought a PS3 over the alternatives.  They simply removed it, no questions, no options.  If you were running another OS it was deleted and there was jack you could do about it.  Sony responded to criticism by saying "STFU and bend over, we don't care about you."

The update was worse for me.  I installed it and it physically bricked my entire system.  I can't even turn it on any more.  Apparently they used such crappy solder to put the thing together that it litterally melts itself to the point it doesn't work anymore.  This isn't even an isolated problem, either - it's completely widespread.  Sony doesn't care about this either - they'll just tell you to buy a new console or pay $250 to have it repaired.

I tried to get my PS3 repaired at first, but I realized that I don't even want it.  My Mac Mini is a vastly more capable media server for my TV, and I didn't even play games all that much on the PS3. 

There are lots of other problems I have had with Sony and their products, but for the sake of brevity I won't go into any more detail.  The bottom line is they don't give a damn about their costumers.  Suffice it to say that I will be re-instating my personal Sony boycott and will always recommend my friends and family away from Sony products. 

Here's a neat, bulleted list of things I'd rather do than buy another Sony product for as long as I live:

• Stick a red hot soldering iron in my eye
• Peal the skin off my entire head starting with my eyelid
• Get on a plane with a bunch of rapid terrorists
• Bite my fingernails off, one by one
• Pull out each one of my chest hairs with a rusty pair of pliers
• Sit on hot coals
• Be buried alive
• Buy a Microsoft product