4 ms·

No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask

by pjsg 10y ago

No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want. I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is intuitive. For anybody from Apple reading this -- iTunes is not intuitive. It is horrible.

mtreis86 10y ago
Itunes is the worst. It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders, reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags. The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems pervasive throughout apple's products.
- delinka 10y ago
  "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" Oh, it's worse than that: "we know better than you regardless of your intelligence. trust us: this new UI is better for you; this new media file manager is better for you; this new gesture is better for you" - forget all the work you've done, forget all that time acclimatizing to the last set of UI and gesture changes ...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  And it is a mentality that is spreading. The whole "user is stupid" attitude was basically stated to me by a big name Gnome developer a year or so ago. And his like seem to have their fingers in more and more of what lives above the Linux kernel (and are likely chomping at the bit to do the same to the kernel itself once Linus is out of the way).
- gglitch 10y ago
  I only just started using a mac/iphone after many years of only using Linux and Android, and my impression is that although they'd object to the language, yes, that's pretty precisely their business model, and its an insane success. I'm not saying most people actually are stupid, but I'm saying that probably the set of people who either (a) are not stupid and want their computer to do something different than what iTunes automatically does, or (b) somehow, whether by ignorance or villainy, get screwed by a situation like the one in the post, barely register in Apple's statistics. I'm (a). The author is (b). We're edge cases. The moral flavor of Apple's business model will continue to not matter while people keep shoveling over the dollars.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Although (b) is small, it does tend to produce truly vocal enemies enemies of the company. I had the joy of buying a product that Apple swears doesn't exist ("Our records say we never made a machine with that serial number, so I'm not allowed to put you into the support system.") Three dead logic boards later, I'm done with the company altogether. I'd like to think that with market penetration nearly complete, Apple will start to face consequences for this. They're depending on beating competitors and pushing upgrades now (instead of selling to new buyers), so lost customers are a bigger threat. I'm not holding my breath, though, it's just too rare.
- m_fayer 10y ago
  That's because at a conceptual level, a "general purpose computer" is far from an ideal device for rent extraction. If your user is stupid, they won't be able to manage a general purpose computer but will instead require a well-controlled computing appliance that will dutifully collect all the rents its creators can get away with.
kame3d 10y ago
Talk about scary! I managed to unintentionally delete all photos in my aunt's iPad. All I wanted to do was disable iCloud backups. And I am a postdoc in a CS department.
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
"You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want." This! One is something like "delete all the music from my iPod" and the other is "delete all the music from my hard drive". How on earth has this situation been allowed to develop?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I'd forgotten all about that question! It's like Apple never considered the possibility that you might connect an iPod and a hard drive with different files and want to keep the union of them. Similarly, the default setting where Apply tries to copy all of your content to a new iPod when you plug it in, in alphabetical order. I have 300Gb of music, you should know that won't succeed.
  - rhodysurf 10y ago
    Thats just it, they done want to let you keep both files as a way to try and combat piracy (Multiple people syncing all the files theyve bought separately). Its really frustrating, and they will never allow it to happen.
Shivetya 10y ago
is this related to Apple Music use? I have never encountered this problem with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. I have music on each and separate settings for all four devices and never once has it asked to delete, let alone with a popup.

by pjsg 10y ago

mtreis86 10y ago

Itunes is the worst. It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders, reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags. The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems pervasive throughout apple's products.

delinka 10y ago
"our users are stupid, just do everything for them" Oh, it's worse than that: "we know better than you regardless of your intelligence. trust us: this new UI is better for you; this new media file manager is better for you; this new gesture is better for you" - forget all the work you've done, forget all that time acclimatizing to the last set of UI and gesture changes ...
digi_owl 10y ago
And it is a mentality that is spreading. The whole "user is stupid" attitude was basically stated to me by a big name Gnome developer a year or so ago. And his like seem to have their fingers in more and more of what lives above the Linux kernel (and are likely chomping at the bit to do the same to the kernel itself once Linus is out of the way).
gglitch 10y ago
I only just started using a mac/iphone after many years of only using Linux and Android, and my impression is that although they'd object to the language, yes, that's pretty precisely their business model, and its an insane success. I'm not saying most people actually are stupid, but I'm saying that probably the set of people who either (a) are not stupid and want their computer to do something different than what iTunes automatically does, or (b) somehow, whether by ignorance or villainy, get screwed by a situation like the one in the post, barely register in Apple's statistics. I'm (a). The author is (b). We're edge cases. The moral flavor of Apple's business model will continue to not matter while people keep shoveling over the dollars.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Although (b) is small, it does tend to produce truly vocal enemies enemies of the company. I had the joy of buying a product that Apple swears doesn't exist ("Our records say we never made a machine with that serial number, so I'm not allowed to put you into the support system.") Three dead logic boards later, I'm done with the company altogether. I'd like to think that with market penetration nearly complete, Apple will start to face consequences for this. They're depending on beating competitors and pushing upgrades now (instead of selling to new buyers), so lost customers are a bigger threat. I'm not holding my breath, though, it's just too rare.
m_fayer 10y ago
That's because at a conceptual level, a "general purpose computer" is far from an ideal device for rent extraction. If your user is stupid, they won't be able to manage a general purpose computer but will instead require a well-controlled computing appliance that will dutifully collect all the rents its creators can get away with.

kame3d 10y ago

Talk about scary! I managed to unintentionally delete all photos in my aunt's iPad. All I wanted to do was disable iCloud backups. And I am a postdoc in a CS department.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

"You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want." This! One is something like "delete all the music from my iPod" and the other is "delete all the music from my hard drive". How on earth has this situation been allowed to develop?

Bartweiss 10y ago
I'd forgotten all about that question! It's like Apple never considered the possibility that you might connect an iPod and a hard drive with different files and want to keep the union of them. Similarly, the default setting where Apply tries to copy all of your content to a new iPod when you plug it in, in alphabetical order. I have 300Gb of music, you should know that won't succeed.
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  Thats just it, they done want to let you keep both files as a way to try and combat piracy (Multiple people syncing all the files theyve bought separately). Its really frustrating, and they will never allow it to happen.

Shivetya 10y ago

is this related to Apple Music use? I have never encountered this problem with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. I have music on each and separate settings for all four devices and never once has it asked to delete, let alone with a popup.