Updating
Posted: Fri 20 July, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Geeky, Sweary 7 Comments »One thing I do very irregularly is update software. A case in point is iTunes. Or “Fucking iTunes”, as it’s known in this house.
Now fair enough, I get why a program can’t be running while it upgrades itself. That’s fine. It makes sense.
But in the name of all that’s fucking holy, why the blue blazing shit does iTunes need to shut down Fucking Microsoft Outlook while it upgrades?!? I could understand (ish) restarting a web browser. But email? (And yes, before any techie spod gets a hold on this one, I know poxy Outlook uses the IE rendering engine for HTML emails – well , until Outlook’07, anyway – but that’s a rant for another day. Oh yes.)
Even more annoying, if I tell it to “Ignore” the problem with Outlook, it goes back, tries again – and still insists that Outlook gets shut down. Apple has the funniest fucking perspective on the word “Ignore”, doesn’t it?
And then, not content with fucking about with poxy bloody email, once the upgrade is over and done with, it tells me it also needs to restart the entire fucking PC. Why?!?
And when all’s said and done, what sits there in the fucking system tray again? Oh yes, it’s Quicktime. Which I drop from the system tray every bastard time, because it’s a system-hungry piece of shit that doesn’t pissing bastard well need to be running every time I start the PC. If I want a fucking Quicktime movie to play, I’ll wait the extra ten bloody seconds for the fucking thing to start. That’s fine. I don’t care. But stop running in my fucking system tray all the time, you bastard piece of crap.
And then people reckon I should buy an iPod as well. Fucking Apple. I wouldn’t touch their hardware with a syphilitic leper’s dick.
Now now, careful.
If you use iTunes with a Mac it’s an entirely different story. But I won’t bore you with that.
iTunes adds a DLL to Outlook (tools>options, other tab, advanced options button, COM Add-Ins), and as Microsoft don’t handle dynamically unregistering DLLs too gracefully, then despite you telling iTunes to ignore Outlook it can’t as the DLL is still registered (and hence ‘live’ to Windows which probably has a registry setting somewhere that is causing the problem??).
As for restarting the PC, of COURSE you need to restart the PC. That’s just Windows Best Practise for installing applications, innit (again, I think this is around the re-registering of new DLLs which Windows can’t seem to handle without a restart).
I’m guessing they install that DLL to handle sync Contacts with an iPod. But yes, it’s clunky and crap, especially if you don’t have an iPod (but in Apple land, WHY NOT!! 😉 )
So, careful. It’s not ALL Apple’s fault.
I agree with the Quicktime thing although iTunes uses the Quicktime engine when playing MP3s so I think part of its libraries are always running anyway?? Bloody annoying though.
You’d hate running a Mac though, the mindset is very much one of “I don’t care how this works, it just does” which takes a bit of getting used to but is hugely liberating. I still marvel at the Wireless connection which required NO, NONE, NADA, configuration on the MacBook. Just worked. Out of the box.
My PC took feckin’ ages to configure, and wading through multiple property screens.. ick ick ick.
I’ll stop now, for fear of being branded a zealot!
You’re right, the Mac “Don’t care how it works” ethos would drive me utterly fucking crackers. Because I do care how it works, and I don’t want the computer to decide where stuff is stored. Hell, that’s the way M$ were trying to go with folders like “My documents”, “My Music” etc. – and I never use those, either.
My own systems, funny enough, don’t take that long to set up. With the new computer at work, I think I got it 98% the way I like it within an hour or so – and most of that was either Windows Bastard Update or downloading other programs I prefer to use.
As for wireless networking, the biggest problems I’ve had with wireless on my own PCs, laptop etc. were a) remembering the sodding password, and b) when someone else moved the PC and snapped the aerial off the wireless card. That’d bugger things even on a Mac. Other than that, it all set up fine – and has managed to do so even after two moves.
iam not to happy with itunes either, some how the sodding thing has rearranged all my mp3’s, not only has it put almost every mp3 into its own folder it has renamed alot of them as well, lucky for me i had most my mp3’s backed up onto dvd’s so its not so rather than have to resort them and rename the mp3’s i can just copy the files from dvd to hard drive,
lucky for me i only just backed them all up as i would of had a lot of work to do
Obvious question but . . . why do you use iTunes if you don’t (sensibly) have an iPod? Have you tried using MediaMonkey?
I use iTunes for downloads – well, that and eMusic, but it depends on what type of stuff I’m downloading. Also, Herself likes to use iTunes for burning audio CDs (which can then conveniently be re-ripped into a vaguely decent audio player without the poxy .mp4 protection)
As for Media Monkey, I’ve been thinking about trying it. I haven’t yet found anything that’ll cope with my full library of music (some 200Gb worth now) without crashing – except the other pox-ridden piece of shit, Real Player. If Media Monkey can manage it, I might give it some time – we’ll see. I’ve got some free time to play with it in, oooh, September or so. *grin*
farmer dave – why do you CARE where or what the files are called. As long as you can find them in the iTunes library… does it matter??
I’ve had a go at this one before, but all my music is in iTunes, I told it to put it on a folder on my D: drive. That folder and everything under it is backed up. What’s IN the folder… meh, whatever. MP3s have tags that hold information, they are more important to me than the filename. The filename can (and is if you burn an MP3 CD) be manipulated by the library application (iTunes, Media Player and so on).
Honestly, you need to learn to LET GO! 😉
Mediamonkey – doesn’t need a lot of time – download – point at folder containing music – errr that’s it. If you like to browse by album art it may be worthwhile giving the alpha version a whirl.