FUV — Fear, Uncertainty, and Vista
Apple just released iTunes 7.1, which it says “addresses a number of known compatibility issues with Windows Vista.” It still leaves the following problems:
Ejecting an iPod from Windows Explorer or the Windows notification area (system tray) using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature may corrupt your iPod. To always safely eject an iPod, choose Eject iPod from the Controls menu within iTunes. If your iPod becomes corrupt, selecting your iPod in iTunes and clicking Restore in the iPod’s Summary panel should return your iPod to a working condition.
You know, I’ve been having this problem for a long time when I try to use non-Microsoft products with Windows. For example, when I would plug an Epson printer into a Win2000 PC, Windows would announce that new hardware had appeared, and did I want to install the software drivers? Woe unto me if I answered Yes! The correct procedure was to answer No, then use Epson’s website, or the CD that came with the printer, to install the drivers.
iTunes may display text or graphics incorrectly on your screen. Resizing the iTunes window should correct this issue.
I don’t know what this is all about. Sounds minor.
Contacts from Windows Address Book may not sync with iPod.
Smells like a format change in the way Microsoft stores contact information. Did MS not inform third-party application developers?
iTunes remains unsupported on 64 bit editions of Windows, including Windows Vista and Windows XP x64.
Translation: 64-bit Windows does not seamlessly run applications written for 32-bit Windows, even in Vista. Strange — didn’t Scott Forstall make a special point of telling us at the last WWDC that Leopard will run 64 and 32 bit apps at the same time, all at full (native processor) speed? I’ve become accustomed to Microsoft not being able to successfully mimic Apple’s design esthetic, but getting a new version of your OS to run older apps is a purely technical task that involves no artistic sensibilities whatsoever.
In my blog-launching article, FUZ, I theorized that since the new, return-of-Jobs Apple is willing to be compatible with de facto standards — meaning that Microsoft cannot count on a Windows-leverage victory propped up by Apple’s stubborn purism — Microsoft must now resort to the tactic of creating compatibility problems for Apple users, whenever and wherever they can. But, I wrote, they must do so in a way that doesn’t look like intentional sabotage, so they won’t get in more trouble with the monopoly-abuse hawks.
Is my prediction already coming true after just two months? iTunes For Windows has been out for years, and is one of the most popular third-party apps for that platform. Certainly MS could have ensured iTunes compatibility before releasing Vista. I have to suspect that they intentionally didn’t, and maybe even made some choices in developing Vista with the knowledge that those decisions would hurt iTunes. If they did, it would be awfully hard to prove that it wasn’t an honest mistake. Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe Vista is such a complicated kludge of legacy junk, and/or MS is such a bureaucratic snarl, that problems like this were inevitable.
I wonder, though... How many other, major, third-party apps are having this level of compatibility issues with Vista?
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