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Bloody Computers
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 11:00 amThis morning I made an elementary computing error: I decided to upgrade something, something that should have taken ten to fifteen minutes. Guess what?
Back in the days of yore, I used to visit one of my friends on an almost daily basis – what Furtle calls “poppage” and on occasion I would get mildly freaked out at when he would swear and rant at his uncooperative computer. This morning I came perilously close to emulating him, though I managed to hold back from whole scale violence toward the machine.
The background is thus: there is clearly a software conflict on my main PC between iTunes and something else. This conflict was not apparent while I was simply operating an iPod, but became quickly obvious once I purchased and registered my iPhone. The PC insists on identifying the camera on the iPhone and suggesting a range of applications to transfer photographs. ITunes does not like this, so it sulks. It sulks to the extent that it gives the iPhone a headache and then, like any old married couple with communication problems, they won’t talk to each other half the time. Moreover, iTunes insists that I can only make ringtones out of tunes I have downloaded, but then refuses to connect to the internet (which it need not do) to identify the song I select. I have reinstalled it once, but to no avail. I shall remove it entirely from my PC and reinstall from the ground up to see if that makes a difference.
Anyway, in anticipation of downloading and installing OS3.0 for the iPhone, which should be available today (it isn’t), I decided to update the iTunes on my laptop and configure that to work with my iPhone as an alternative. Of course, this is where I made the rookie mistake: I forgot that I hadn’t booted up the laptop for close on a year, so apart from feeling rudely awoken, it was anxious to update everything it could think of. I stopped that – I can do that later – but I *did* download and install iTunes 8.2.
Hah. Fifteen minutes my arse. By the time Norton had put it through immigration control – and this is with me hitting the cancel button almost continuously, it took FORTY-FIVE minutes. I am not confident enough in my computer knowledge to abort the process after a certain point for fear of creating worse problems, so I allowed it to continue.
Why do updates ALWAYS get to 95% completion and then sit there innocently while the last centimetre of the update bar sits there unconcernedly taking a break?
Oh well, I shall allow more time tonight. Doubtless it will take all evening.
Back in the days of yore, I used to visit one of my friends on an almost daily basis – what Furtle calls “poppage” and on occasion I would get mildly freaked out at when he would swear and rant at his uncooperative computer. This morning I came perilously close to emulating him, though I managed to hold back from whole scale violence toward the machine.
The background is thus: there is clearly a software conflict on my main PC between iTunes and something else. This conflict was not apparent while I was simply operating an iPod, but became quickly obvious once I purchased and registered my iPhone. The PC insists on identifying the camera on the iPhone and suggesting a range of applications to transfer photographs. ITunes does not like this, so it sulks. It sulks to the extent that it gives the iPhone a headache and then, like any old married couple with communication problems, they won’t talk to each other half the time. Moreover, iTunes insists that I can only make ringtones out of tunes I have downloaded, but then refuses to connect to the internet (which it need not do) to identify the song I select. I have reinstalled it once, but to no avail. I shall remove it entirely from my PC and reinstall from the ground up to see if that makes a difference.
Anyway, in anticipation of downloading and installing OS3.0 for the iPhone, which should be available today (it isn’t), I decided to update the iTunes on my laptop and configure that to work with my iPhone as an alternative. Of course, this is where I made the rookie mistake: I forgot that I hadn’t booted up the laptop for close on a year, so apart from feeling rudely awoken, it was anxious to update everything it could think of. I stopped that – I can do that later – but I *did* download and install iTunes 8.2.
Hah. Fifteen minutes my arse. By the time Norton had put it through immigration control – and this is with me hitting the cancel button almost continuously, it took FORTY-FIVE minutes. I am not confident enough in my computer knowledge to abort the process after a certain point for fear of creating worse problems, so I allowed it to continue.
Why do updates ALWAYS get to 95% completion and then sit there innocently while the last centimetre of the update bar sits there unconcernedly taking a break?
Oh well, I shall allow more time tonight. Doubtless it will take all evening.