The New New Desktop Thread

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
You're in the wrong business. Someone who can't get their computer to install a simple piece of software that elderly grandmothers have no problem installing is clearly a fool of epic proportions when it comes to computers.

http://news.com.com/iTunes+upgrade+has+users+griping/2100-1046_3-5863637.html?tag=nefd.top

iTunes upgrade has users griping
Published: September 13, 2005, 6:30 PM PDT
Last modified: September 13, 2005, 9:01 PM PDT
By Alorie Gilbert
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
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update A new version of Apple Computer's iTunes software released last week appears to be giving many iPod owners headaches, according to reports from across the Web.

Complaints about the new iTunes 5 surfaced over the past few day on numerous blogs and discussion boards, including the company's own discussion board at Apple.com.

Apple acknowledged the problem and said it's working on an update.

"Apple is aware that a limited number of customers are experiencing issues with installing iTunes 5," the company said in a statement. "We're working to resolve this and expect to have a software update early next week."

iTunes is a desktop computer program that comes with the iPod music player and allows people to transfer music to the device. It also represents Apple's first big foray into designing software that works with Microsoft Windows.

People have reported a range of problems with the updated program, while others said the software works fine. Among those reporting problems, many say that trying to install the program causes their computers to crash. Others report that once they install the program, it won't transfer music purchased at the iTunes Music Store to their iPod, deletes playlists, interferes with other programs or generally wreaks havoc on their computers.

"What's worse, rolling back (to a previous version) can be difficult or impossible, and Apple's lack of official recognition or public response regarding these problems is driving many users up the wall," Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, wrote in a letter posted online.

Several contributors to the Apple Discussions forum claim Apple customer service representatives have acknowledged the problem. "I called Apple re: iTunes 5 upgrade and was told they're working on a fix for it," James Robinson, Jr. wrote in a Tuesday post. "They said iTunes 5 definitely had a bug in it."
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Yet it's unclear how widespread the problems are or what's causing them. Also clouding the issue is the fact that new versions of software will always bewilder a certain number of customers because software in general has grown so complex and everyone's computer is different, one analyst said.

"In the age of blogging and newsgroups and product support pages, where more people have the opportunity to vent the issues that they're having, it's hard to say whether you're looking at something that's a systematic problem with the application or whether they're isolated incidents that appear to be more than they are," Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg said.

In any case, the call for help on Apple Discussions highlights how attached people have become to their iPods. Subject lines on the board include: I feel like screaming!!; i Tunes v5...causing severe stress!!!; Help! Need to find my music!; and HELP i miss my ipod/itunes!!!.

You can apologize at any time, Aggie. The problem is Apple does a laughably pathetic job at testing before release. Which version of iTunes was it that annihilated your harddrive if you had more than one partition?

[Q Classic]

Right, I did forget to mention this: the first reboot after installing iTunes 5 yielded a blue screen for me--I had to open up the booting menu and choose "Last known good settings" or some such... and then uninstall iTunes 5, while keeping QuickTime 7--which was the only thing I wanted.

Frankly, I just wish they'd release QuickTime without bundling it with iTunes--and at the current moment, the only reason for using QuickTime is to get the codecs (I'm quite tempted to go back to QuickTime Alternative~)--there's no other widely-used player in the world that prohibits full-screen viewing on your basic, free version.

[Verto]

At least Apple bothers to update software for other OS.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Verto
At least Apple bothers to update software for other OS.

MacOS X got a new version of Microsoft Office in 2004.

Windows got a new version of Microsoft Office in 2003.

Your point is what?

[Asher]

As a sidenote, Microsoft Office 12 has a fundamentally redesigned UI (by default) that has gone through over 2 years of usability studies and trial models.

On Tuesday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled Office 12 publicly for the first time. The surprisingly innovative office productivity suite will move away from the commands-based interface that all Office products have used and will feature a task-based interface that bubbles relevant functionality to the user as needed. Microsoft officials I spoke with at Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2005 in Los Angeles say this new Office interface will make users more productive and make it easier to accomplish complicated tasks.

"This new user interface is designed around the ways people actually think and work," Group Product Manager Dan Leach told me in a post-PDC 2005 keynote briefing. In the Office 12 products, which will ship alongside Windows Vista in late 2006, the familiar menu and toolbars have been replaced with tabs and user interface elements called galleries, which bundled related functionality together. For example, in Microsoft Word 12, tabs such as Write, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, and Review are arrayed along the top of the window. When you perform certain tasks, such as inserting an image, new tabs appear as needed. And each tab exposes a range of galleries.

In his keynote address, Gates noted that the change was needed because Office has become so feature-packed. A menu-and-toolbar UI worked fine when Office products like Word utilized only 100 commands, as the first version did 20 years ago. But Word 2003 features over 1500 commands and includes a whopping 35 toolbars as a result. Clearly, the old way of doing things is outdated.

Office 12 will run on both Windows XP and Windows Vista, Microsoft says, and it does not utilize any of the newer Vista-era technologies such as Avalon (Windows Presentation Foundation) or the WinFX programming libraries. That's because it was co-developed with Avalon, Leach told me, and the Office team began working on the new UI so long ago. A first beta version of Office 12 is due before the end of the year.

It also supports auxilliary displays (will be on upcoming PC laptops...its usually a small OLED display on the outside):

[Immortal Wombat]

After the Office "it looks you're writing a letter" Assistant, I am sceptical of any software which claims to know how I think. I am sure an Office 12 thread would be fascinating though.

My desktop is now this.

[Addled Platypus]

Mighty Platypi attached this

[Agathon]

How can you guys look at that all day?

[Asher]

This may seem like a foreign concept to you, but in the Windows world we have what is called software that runs on Windows.

During this process, the desktop is usually not visible, as we actually use our computers.

Not all of us buy the computer because it goes well with the room decor, with matching wallpaper...

[Agathon]

Did someone fart?

[Saras]

Kutluay did

[DRoseDARs]

In your general direction, too!

[Addled Platypus]

I am at the computer for about 2-3 hours tops per day

and most of it in documents (or civ)

[Asher]

My latest laptop...

[Provost Harrison]

Why, how many laptops have you had?