Mark Kermode does not possess a single Apple device, as he reminded us a couple of times during the discussion of the new Steve Jobs film in the Kermode and Mayo Film Review programme. The Systems Administrator and I both have iPods, but no other objects from the great temple of Apple, and the only reason we have iPods is that there isn't anything else on the market that's as handy for storing and playing digital music. But ye gods, iTunes is annoying.
My iPod is very old, so ancient that by now it probably qualifies as a piece of retro chic and I ought to flog it on eBay. The reason it still works, apart perhaps from luck, is the fact that as I loathe wearing earphones it lives in a docking station in the kitchen, and I only use it when I'm doing anything in the kitchen that would benefit from some musical accompaniment. Cooking, or cleaning as I was today, but not using the kitchen table as an office space when the study is too cold or my actual desk buried under a layer of mess. My old laptop was very ancient as well, and updating the iPod was a hit and miss affair, so I hadn't bothered for about two years, but today as I cleaned the kitchen I decided it would be nice to have some new stuff on the iPod.
I explained to the Systems Administrator that I wanted to tackle the iPod question and would need help, which would count as the last part of my birthday present, and the SA bravely rallied to the cause. It was not Steve Jobs' fault that it was so long since I'd synched my iPod with my music library that I couldn't find the connection cable, or that the first cable I managed to find in my very untidy cupboard did not have a USB connector at the non-iPod end, but something else so vintage it was not compatible with any computer still being made. But apart from those aggravations, everything about iTunes is designed for digital natives and not to be obvious to a middle aged non Apple fan who hasn't attempted to update their digital music library for over two years.
I don't even buy music as digital downloads, being a complete dinosaur. I like CDs. I like having a physical thing that I own, can lend to people or bequeath to my heirs, that will play when put in any stereo system, without my having to remember a password or work out how to transfer my rights to it from a practically dead laptop to a new one. Since CDs first came out there have been dark mutterings that they would physically degrade with time, but all of mine are still working so far. There's the odd technical mishap, generally when you open the case and discover that the CD isn't actually in it, but it's a pretty foolproof system. Meanwhile the Systems Administrator's computer has lost part of the SA's digital music library, or rather hidden it.
We soon gave up on the idea of transferring the iTunes library from my old computer to the new one. The old computer was so slow to start up, goodness knows how long it would have taken to copy the data over or how corrupted it would have become in the process. It was getting fairly garbled anyway, and it seemed better to start with a clean sheet and copy CDs I want to listen to now on to the new laptop, wipe the iPod clean and synch it to the rebuilt library. iTunes do not make it easy to do any of this. It did not want to download CDs. Why would it, when I could be buying music from iTunes at 79 pence per track? Through a combination of trial and error and checking on internet forums the SA established that I needed to open file manager after inserting each disc to prompt iTunes to recognise its existence, then must use the eject function in iTunes to remove the disc after copying, not press the release button on the end of the laptop, otherwise it wouldn't know the disc had gone or have anything to do with the next one. As to how you synch your iPod with iTunes, you just synch it. There is no help button, no explanatory phrase that comes up as you hover your cursor over the right icon on the screen, nothing. Younger people have grown up knowing this stuff, and middle aged women who want to listen to the Talking Heads while cleaning the Aga have no business trying to operate a last model but thirteen iPod.
No comments:
Post a Comment