User-Friendly Software

There's no doubt that computers are easier to use today than they've ever been, but there is still room for improvement.

My Yahoo Messenger window recently started taking up the full screen when I got a message...and then some. So each time I would get a message, I'd have to resize the window to make the close button visible. After some google searching, I found that I needed to set my desktop resolution to smaller numbers and then back to the current resolution to fix the problem. That's intuitive!

Another unintuitive procedure happened to me a few months back when I upgraded iTunes, and it wouldn't play any of the music I had purchased prior to the upgrade. I actually had to create a dummy user account, open iTunes with it, sync my iPod to that account, and then finally log back into my original account and re-sync the iPod with it.

iTunes 7 + iPod 1.2 Firmware

The problem I reported earlier about not being able to get a game working on my iPod is worse than I thought. Apparently, since I've upgraded the firmware to 1.2, I cannot play ANY content that is DRM'd. Thanks, Apple. You guys are doing a bang-up job on these firmware updates.

I've even tried something Apple refers to as the Five R's, which includes restoring the firmware. I managed to restore the firmware to 1.1, but I still cannot play anything that is DRM'd.

This is really a problem, as I have a lot of songs I've purchased from the iTunes Music Store that are now unplayable on my iPod. This is pretty ironic, as I was starting to believe that DRM isn't as evil as previously thought. I can still play the DRM'd songs on my computer, so it's not a total loss.

*Sigh*

Apple Customer Service

On Tuesday, Apple announced a bunch of new products. One of those was games for your iPod. I purchased and downloaded Zuma, but I couldn't get it to work, even after updating the firmware on my iPod. So I contacted Apple via their online support form, and last evening, I received an apologetic letter back from them saying they had credited the money back to my account. They also said I could try to buy the game again in a couple of weeks. By then any issues I am having should be resolved. I was upset at first, but now I'm pretty pleased with Apple's customer support.