Vista may Corrupt iPods...

[The Fish 11127]

From Times Online

February 05, 2007

Vista may corrupt iPods, says Apple

Jonathan Richards

 

Apple has warned iPod owners that they risk corrupting their music player if they connect it to a computer with Windows Vista, and has told them to hold off upgrading to Microsoft’s new operating system until the compatibility issues are resolved.

 

Apple said that iTunes may work with some Vista computers, but that the problem would not be fully resolved until it issued an updated version of iTunes in a couple of weeks.

 

In the meantime users should not upgrade their computer to the new system, the company said.

 

According to a note on Apple’s website, the compatibility problems include the inability to play music or video purchased from the online iTunes music store, difficulties synchronising contacts and calendars, as well as possible corruption when an iPod is disconnected from a computer running Vista.

 

The most recent version of iTunes - 7.0.2 - “may work with Windows Vista on many typical PCs”, Apple said, but “a number of iTunes compatibility issues” were being addressed in the next release of the software.

 

A spokesperson for Microsoft said that it did not believe iTunes users “should stop using Vista for these reasons”, and that it had worked with a range of partners, including Apple, to make sure their software was compatible with Vista.

 

The company had a dedicated team working with Apple to ensure that iTunes ran smoothly on Vista, the spokesperson said, adding that they would keep at it “until they have a program running to the quality level they’re shooting for.”

 

Any teething problems with Vista will serve only to fuel the rivalry between the companies, which co-operate to make their products compatible despite competing fiercely in both the computer and music player markets.

 

Following the release of the consumer version of Vista last week, Apple immediately ramped up its advertising campaign against Microsoft, using the characters from a popular television show to suggest that PC users were ‘geeks’ while Mac users were ‘cool’.

 

CONSPIRACY!!!!

[Sima 0]

I hate Macs

 

 

Charlie Brooker

Monday February 5, 2007

The Guardian

 

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

 

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

 

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

 

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

 

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

 

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

 

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

 

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

 

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

 

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

 

Charlie Brooker is a king tbh

[The Fish 11127]

is he the same guy who does the football on saturdays for the Beeb online site?

 

 

p.s. I'm not sure "everyone likes" Mitchell and Webb... I find a little goes a long way.

[ChezGiven 0]

As a regular reader of Brooker i find him a readable but contrary twat. He is right about Games on PC's but only children play games.

 

I find the 'define yourself through technology' line retarded since billions of drivers all over the world either do that or would love to do that every day.

 

He talks shit for the most part.

 

I recently went back to PC too.

[Park Life 71]

Basically PC's are rubbish.

 

 

Oh lah dee dah..Chez.

Edited February 7, 2007 by Parky

[Guest alex]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

[Park Life 71]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

[Guest alex]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

I think he's canny funny. You're right though, it is easy to criticise. It's got now t on Harry Hill's TV Burp though tbf.

[Magma 0]

Thank God I've still got Window's XP then

[Park Life 71]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

I think he's canny funny. You're right though, it is easy to criticise. It's got now t on Harry Hill's TV Burp though tbf.

 

That's the baby. I was trying to think of it earlier.

[Happy Face 29]

I haven't seen the advert and I haven't been walking around with my eyes closed, and my head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark.

 

That makes him a liar.

[Happy Face 29]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

I think he's canny funny. You're right though, it is easy to criticise. It's got now t on Harry Hill's TV Burp though tbf.

 

 

Harry Hill has even managed to make You've Been Framed watchable. When a video of a fat lass came on and he said "Look! Lisa Riley's back!" I snorted a bit of snot out.

[Guest alex]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

I think he's canny funny. You're right though, it is easy to criticise. It's got now t on Harry Hill's TV Burp though tbf.

 

 

Harry Hill has even managed to make You've Been Framed watchable. When a video of a fat lass came on and he said "Look! Lisa Riley's back!" I snorted a bit of snot out.

Aye, wor lass said the same, I was sceptical but it's true, the bloke is quality.

[Jusoda Kid 1]

Brooker's Screen Wipe is good on BBC4.

 

 

I've seen some clips from that...Not very funny though. TV is the easiest thing to criticise.

I think he's canny funny. You're right though, it is easy to criticise. It's got now t on Harry Hill's TV Burp though tbf.

 

 

Harry Hill has even managed to make You've Been Framed watchable. When a video of a fat lass came on and he said "Look! Lisa Riley's back!" I snorted a bit of snot out.

 

You know it's funny when you start snorting snot out

[WubbleUC 0]

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

 

[Super_Steve_Howey 0]

Apple admitted it themselves with their recent advert. Basically said, if you want to get something done, use a PC, if you want to piss around on msn, easily make photos and videos and have a laugh, get a Mac

[The Fish 11127]

I said somewhere else that if I had the disposable cash I'd get a mac to hold my music, watch videos etc...

 

Mac is more like a media center than aproper work station

[Park Life 71]

I said somewhere else that if I had the disposable cash I'd get a mac to hold my music, watch videos etc...

 

Mac is more like a media center than aproper work station

 

I own both and basically the Mac is more stable and more reliable and faster at most things.

[Monroe Transfer 0]

I can not stand those adverts. I've never been a big Mac fan but I've learnt to appreciate them recently. However watching those ads just obliterates any liking I had for Apple. Unfunny, untrue, very slightly offensive (I'm a PC user and I don't like to be painted as a geek), pretentious (no surprise there), irritating and arrogant. Just cringe-worthy.

 

Fuck Apple. Fuck Macs. Fuck iPods. And most of all, fuck iTunes.

 

 

He is right about Games on PC's but only children play games.

 

A surprisingly ignorant and uneducated point.

[nufc4ever 0]

Still love this:

[Jimbo 175]

Bugger,I've not tried my iPod on Vista yet, although I don't use iTunes.

[Steve 0]

I've been using my iPod on Vista since Vista's release and haven't had any troubles at all. I'm not going to stop using it either based on this one article. I've been updating stuff for the last 90 minutes tonight in fact since reading this and well, nothing's gone wrong.

[Gemmill 47706]

PC nerd BACKLASH!

[Park Life 71]

MS have made a mistake saying Vista is virtually attack proof.....I imagine the virus writers will try that little harder now.

[The Fish 11127]

tbf I don't think the hackers would need that much encouragement to up the efforts.

 

it's a microsoft product and it's new... I think the package meets all criteria hackers look for when choosing a way to spend their time.

 

I think the whole "Attack Proof" is clearly beckoning the less computer literate towards a new product that the majority will never get full use out of.

 

the brouhaha about paedophiles and internet theft means that to launch anything without security as it's focal point would be idiocy and one thing we can agree on, Bill Gates and his advisors are not idiots.