Apple released a social network on iTunes last week, called Ping, only available after an iTunes 10 update. Finally, I had a big iTunes event for which to channel my frustration with the application.
With David Fincher’s “generation defining” Facebook movie still a month away, I was hoping for this Social Network parody to be received as a relevant continuation of the meme BWE started, instead of as another hacky take on the film’s trailer. I was lucky enough to get the former reaction.
While I worried about tone and screen capturing, maybe I should have worried about fanboys. Right after I released the video, it was picked up by Tech Crunch then 9 to 5 Mac, which sent a slew of iTune Defenders my way. My biggest misstep? iTunes does not require a restart to update. But riddle me this Macmen, every time I have ever been prompted to update iTunes, a security update was waiting in the wings. When update asks you to restart, it doesn’t specify which program is making you restart.
To see what the process was like without the restart, I updated to iTunes 10 on my work computer. Needless to say, it was just as bad, if not worse. I had to deselect the security update on deck, press update, then ran into this error.
I wasn’t about to contact the software manufacturer, so I ran it again and it worked fine. Besides that, there was the issue of the long wait time for the thing to update to search/find/download/install. If I included that in the video, it would be a great deal longer than it is right now. If Facebook required all this of you with each incarnation, we would all revolt. If they required you to do it on each individual computer you use, we’d all be on MySpace right now.
Another criticism was about password entry. I have a big problem with it indeed. Each and every time iTunes asks for my password, I enter what I am 99% sure it is and it denies me access. I’ll try every variation and eventually give up. Then I’ll click cancel, and it’ll sign me in. I have no idea what my password is anymore and the only way to retrieve is to call AOL over the phone. Then I’ll go to AOL.com and sign in fine with the same password. Somewhere there is a disconnect. Forget Apple ID, forget AOL, give me an iTunes login and password.
In the end, I wanted to show four things and I think I succeeded in doing so. One was to give a just-born social network The Social Network treatment, to pull comedy out of something brand new. Another was to express that I don’t want to have to go through the long process of manually upgrading my social network once a month. I hate the log-in system and want to use Facebook connect, Gmail, ANYTHING but apple ID and AOL. And the artist suggestions were hilariously wrong for my music tastes.
Oh and if Apple is reading, if you’re going to integrate chatter about Concert tickets into this system, please please consider selling tickets through iTunes. I would love for you guys to take a bite out of Ticketmaster’s stranglehold on music and knock those ticket prices down to a reasonable cost.
Just wanted to say thank you. I thought the parody was spot on, and ridiculed iTunes in a much deserved way. This is an era of web apps and the Google Chrome browser which updates automatically in the background. Get with the times, Apple.