I have a hate-hate relationship with my iPod. Not because it doesn’t perform admirably – it does, and not because it stores a ridiculous number of tracks (10,028 at last count), but because its only contact with the outside world has to be with iTunes, surely the worst and most ridiculous piece of software that was ever thrown together and continuously sworn at.
What is it about Apple products? Brilliantly designed and manufactured, but having to rely on awful donkey-like software that either doesn’t work but won’t tell you it’s not working, or won’t recognise your iPod when you plug it in, or simply stops working and causes your laptop to crash.
It’s not rocket science
It’s not rocket science to design software, and many companies with bad software products have gone out of business as soon as customers have found a better alternative.
It’s only the popularity of the iPod and now the iPhone that has kept iTunes going all these years. Like the English weather, I’m stuck with it. It would be marginally more onerous to emigrate than to carry on putting up with it.
However, I have to say that a miracle happened last night. With the usual trepidation I started up iTunes and plugged in my iPod. Not only did iTunes actually add my most recent music, but it synced everything to the iPod without complaining or sending me unintelligible messages or stopping in its tracks like a broken-down steam train, or giving me the dreaded blue screen of oblivion.
Obviously there’s something wrong with me
I didn’t do anything different to the last several times when it failed to work, and I have no idea why it behaves in this erratic fashion. It certainly doesn’t let me know what kind of mood it’s in on any given day.
I am aware that there are people out there who don’t seem to suffer the same treatment I receive from iTunes. I’ve never been able to explain what happens to them in a way that they can understand, and their brows furrow for a while before they get bored and walk away. I think they assume there’s something wrong with me.
Does your software like you?
I think there are two kinds of software out there, rather like people.
There is software that adapts to your way of thinking. I know a lot of people moan about Word, for instance, but it lets you work the way you want, in the way that Windows allows you to set up a structure for your files that works for you, uncomplainingly and obligingly.
Then there is software that refuses to do anything other than the thing it’s going to do and if you want to do it any other way it simply refuses to budge or breaks. This drives me mad.
There’s a pig in the house
I’m ridiculously grateful to iTunes for working properly last night. I became quite emotional. I’m an I.T. professional, for goodness’ sake!
I spend my whole working life testing software, and here I am completely dominated by a piece of code that quite deliberately ignores me and does whatever it wants to do on my laptop, a bit like a very badly-trained fully-grown pet Vietnamese pot-bellied pig that I’ve somehow let into the house. I hope it’ll work properly next time, but I’m not holding my breath.
I want to make this very clear. There is nothing wrong with me. I’m a customer.
And the customer is always right!
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
Images: iPod earplugs by wmbreedveld under CC BY 2.0
Computer screen by Photo Optik under CC BY 2.0
Pig by Brent Moore under CC BY 2.0
