IS it me or did I get poor support from Apple? Any advice on this long one?

Question

OK, so I’m curious, am I a complete idiot or is something else going on here?
Please help…
Here is my story.
I contact Apple Support for my new Imac. Reason being, I am a PC guy who switched, and have had only one user on the machine the past 45 days. Now since I think I know what I’m doing, I want my wife to have a separate login, and be able to share the same Itunes/Iphoto/Imovie folders. I tried some Google/apple website ideas/book on Mac. But no success. So I call Apple support.(since I am covered for the first 90 days I think) And this is where it gets interesting.
First guy I talk to, I mention all the above, his first response. "Well, we don't support that kind of issue here, sorry,(after I state the typical, Huh? This doesn’t make sense.) He says, "ok ok, Lets see what we can do. But we are not supposed to be supporting this type of issue.”
I restate the issue, and he says "Well, I’ve never heard of someone wanting to share the same Itunes folder with another user on the same machine", I explain that there must be some misunderstanding, so I explain again that all I want is to have two different users, be able to share the same music files, and I say that I cant believe that he has never heard of this. The support guy then says," Well, I have handled over 10,000 calls, and I have NEVER had a call asking about this."
So I then ask for another tech support person, and after a 10 minute hold, I get someone else.
[First question for everyone, is this normal Apple Support behavior? I have the O'Reily book on switching to the Mac, and they have a couple of pages on the shared Itunes folder, which I explained to the tech and he said he never heard of it.]
The next guy was an annoying *** who was a know-it-all type. I’m fairly decent in the tech realm and with PC's, and I explained to the guy that I initially created other users, and was playing around with the folder permissions. And I thought that that might be where my problem is. He tells me that I need to follow his instructions, and we end up rebooting, and doing some fsk (or close to this) checks, and some disk repairs. They all come up ok. After finding out that I still cannot get access to my folders in my shared directory, he tells me that all my files are corrupt and that I probably lost them! (in my best Moe the bartender voice) WHAAAA ?!
I then proceed to my shared folder and do my own (apple I command) and tell the guy the permissions are for the other user. The tech then starts to lecture me that I never told him this and that we need to have a better open communication in a very condescending tone.
Now, this is the funny part, RIGHT after this lecture, he starts telling my to start putting some files into the public folder and telling me that anything in the public folder will be shared by all users. Public this, public that, blah blah public…I look around, and after a little while I say, there is no public folder here, just the shared folder. "Oh yeah, He says, that’s what I meant to say.." Open communication, Yeah Right!
We then get my files for Itunes in the shared folder, and finally are able to see the files from both users. But, when either user is in Itunes, we go into the general advanced prefs, and change the default folder to the new Itunes folder for the music, within the shared folder, and go back to Itunes, there is no music coming up. The guys has me restart Itunes, and nothing. We then do the same thing about 3-4 times, including rebooting, and no music comes up within Itunes.
At this point, my son was becoming a menace, as was my wife for we were supposed to be outside somewhere, and I was beyond frustration, so I just said, get me the case number and Ill call back some other time.
And get this, later that night, on a whim I open Itunes, see that there is still no music, click on Add to Library, point it to my folder that’s under the shared folder, and it now shows all my music. (whether or not this is correct, is another story, but It looks good to me)
So, can anyone out there offer any insight to this episode? Am I out of line? Am I missing something? I’m ticked off because I come from the PC realm, and it looks like I never made it t the glorious Mac land yet! Help!
Oh, as Steve Jobs would say, ONE MORE THING...During all this back and forth multiple user switching, I have the fast user switching on, and when you pick a new user, the really cool cube thing whips around, well, as of last night, it stopped doing it, and would just kind of refresh the monitor to switch users, and as of this morning, the cube thing is now back. I didn’t change anything with this, is this normal too?
Thanks in advance for any insight!
Art
Imac intel dua core   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   Itunes sharing and file permissions

Answer 1

Sorry your experience wasn't a plesant one, but most of the issues they work on are hardware in nature, not software.. I'm not taking up for Apple... I'd had my share of run-ins with them as well.
As for your iTunes issue... an EASY solution is to simply tell iTunes that the location you want your tunes stored in is your Public folder. Items in your public folder can be seen and opened by others, so your wife could easily access the files there.
For you, go to your Music folder, find the iTunes folder, and drag it to your public folder.
Next, go to iTuness>Preferences and click on the Advanced tab, then the General Tab, and the first window you see is the iTunes Music Folder Locataion. Click Change, then navigate to the iTunes folder in you Public folder.
Now, next time you purchase a song from the iTunes store, or import songs from a CD, they will be stored in the iTunes folder, in your public folder.
You wife does basically the same thing except she navigates to YOUR public folder, and the iTunes folder inside.
She will have to manually find and import any new songs you add but at least your entire library will be available for her to listen to.
There are other ways of getting the same thing done, but I think this is the easiest.
Quad 2.5   Mac OS X (10.4.6)