Skip to main content

Now I Really Hate iTunes

This morning, as usual, I plugged my iPhone into my PC. It needs iTunes running to 'sync'. Or in other words, to remain stuck in the iJobs max security prison. Unless, mysteriously during the night, my PC has become 'de-authorised'. Just let me use the damn thing!! If it's on my bloody computer, it IS authorised.

So I click 'Authorise'. "You are only allowed 5 computers to be authorised. You've reached your limit. This computer cannot be authorised unless you de-authorise one of the others." In the meantime another message tells me my iPhone will have 130 apps deleted if I proceed with the sync and don't authorise the PC. I can't, you bastards, because when I've long ago had to authorise this same bloody computer 5 times, and when I de-authorise ALL of them, I'll lose my bloody apps. Then I'll have to load every single one of them using my < 1MB internet connection - if it allows me to do so at all and I don't have to re-install iTunes and get a new Apple account ("we're sorry that ID is already in use" - YES, by me!!)... complete with a new password that requires numbers, letters (upper and lower case), and characters that are neither letter or number but totally screw up what tiny semblance of organisation there might have been in the several thousand ID/Password bollocks I increasingly have to remember. Can't wait for the day when every site and device simply knows it's me. By smell perhaps. Essence of Grombler. "Welcome back Mr Grombler. Is that a curry I detect. Next time you want a curry there's 20% off at .....". Sigh.

But iTunes itself has just been 'upgraded'. How can they possibly call it an 'Upgrade'? And what an even more odious thing it's become. In the old iTunes you sort of eventually learned where most things were. Not attempt at Windows symbolism, but not a million miles away. New iTunes, that every iJobs forces you to use, hides everything you previously got used to finding - like the settings for your iPhone. It tries to be as different from everything you've got used to as possible. It's even got those horrendous minute dots that you need magnifying glasses to find on macs which open or close stuff. But back to trying to find my iPhone. If its plugged in and syncing, there's a new button that appears that say 'iPhone'. Hurrah! But whatever you do, do not click it! It disconnects the iJobs. After the sync, it disappears completely. Clicking on a tiny little icon somewhere near the top left that looks like nothing I've seen before, brings up a list of options including 'Devices'. Of course your iPhone, now that it's finished syncing, doesn't appear there. Nor does your AppleTV. In fact nothing does, despite the fact iTunes is self-evidently being used on one.... which any day soon will need reauthorising.

What the new iTunes possibly does do is help you organise your music (about which I give a toss. Didn't need track names when I was younger, don't today) - although as everyone knows, it only plays music on iJobs (and previously authorised devices). Put something into iTunes and it's lost to the rest of the world. DO NOT BUY MUSIC OR VIDEOS FROM APPLE IF YOU HAVE AN ANDROID OR PLAIN OLD MP3 PLAYER. You've just wasted your money.

So iTunes is horribly designed, you can't find what used to allegedly be there, it manages things you're not interested in (and loses things you are - like when your iPhone syncs with Outlook, the previous IOS syncs your Notes. Not IOS 6!), and it forces you to own iJobs kit which are all loathsome... but beautiful in a mysteriously addictive way. Damn them!!!

Comments

  1. At last! Someone else who hates iTunes. Somehow the Apple cognoscenti mafia have elevated iTunes to to the level of uncritisisability (is that a word?) despite it being an awful program. Terrible. Crap. Unreliable. Always updating and needing re-boot. One of the main reasons I will never have an iPhone.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking an interest.

Popular posts from this blog

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo

Would we pay more for their stuff?

I'm confused. Brexiters argue the Germans, Italians and French will still want to sell us their cars, so continued free trade with the UK is in their best interests. But we'll have to negotiate this (with an EU unwilling to make leaving easy) by threatening to make their cars more expensive for British people to buy. We'll do this because WE need to make imports more expensive to try to restore our balance of payments. Are Brits prepared to pay more for their Audis, Fiats and Renaults in order to make British cars more appealing, or do Brexiters want to pay more in order to punish them for taxing our insurance and banking products? Either way, imports will cost more. While in the EU, we buy their cars because we like the choice and don't want our own government to tax them. Indeed it would be better for British car manufacturing if we went back to the good old days of being encouraged to buy cheaper British cars (made by foreign owned factories). Is that what Brexite

Addictions. Porn, Drugs, Alcohol and Sex. Don't prevent it, make it safer.

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat