I’m convinced that Steve Jobs hates me.
There’s something embedded in every piece of Apple hardware and software that checks who is using it and if it’s me then it does everything in it’s power to make my life as painful as possible.
It’s the only possible explaination. Everyone else seems to think that Apple products are wonderful. Within five minutes of me being near an Apple product I want to throw it across the room.
The latest example is my stepdaughter’s new iPod.
Now I knew that the official Apple software only works on Windows 2000 and Windows XP and she runs Windows 98SE so I knew we were in for fun and games. I had no idea how much fun it would be though.
Firstly I found out that there were a number of alternatives to iTunes that would run on older versions of Windows. We decided to give Anapod a try so we downloaded and installed it.
Then when we attached the iPod via the USB port, it was recognised but it couldn’t be used as there was no device driver installed. I assumed that a device driver would be on the CD that came with the iPod so I looked on there[1]. But I couldn’t find anything useful on the CD. Everything on there was only for modern versions of Windows.
So, off to Google and we came up with this. It’s a Win 98 device driver for an iPod which some random person has hacked together. We install it and it all seems to work properly.
Well, almost. The iPod is now recognised when we plug it in and Windows sees it as a removeable drive. But double-clicking it gives an error saying that the drive is unformatted. Reading the small-print on the device driver page gives this clue:
If your iPod was never used before you can get “Drive not formatted” message. Don’t try formatting iPod with Windows tools! To format iPod correctly you have to use Apple iPod Updater software. This software works only under Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
So you’ll have to find some Windows 2000/XP machine, install software from CD you got with your iPod and Update (or Restore) your iPod.
After that you can uninstall software and enjoy iPod under Windows 98.
So after all that there is still some part of the process that has to use a Windows 2000/XP machine. For some reason an iPod that is going to be used with Windows needs to be reformatted from the default (Mac) format. Now that all sounded pretty bizarre to me, but who am I to argue? Luckily I have a Windows 2000 machine in the office so yesterday I brought the iPod, the CD and the USB cable in. At lunchtime I started the process running. At 6:30pm when I wanted to leave the process was still running so I had to disconnect the iPod and bring it home (probably in a completely unstable state).
This morning I brought it in and started the process again at 9:45am. And it took about 30 seconds. So I think it should all be ready to use on my stepdaughter’s PC. We’ll see what happens when I get home tonight.
But it really shouldn’t have been this difficult.
[1] I’m skipping the part of the story where the CD-ROM drive didn’t work and I wasted three days trying to transfer the files from another PC across the wireless network. After three days of the wireless network crashing as I was transfering data I finally cracked and opened up the PC. Only to find that the CD-ROM IDE cable had become unplugged. Plugging it in again solved that problem. Try as I might, I can’t find any way to blame that on Apple.
I think I’ve figured it out: if you actually know what you’re doing, stuff that’s supposed to be easy to use becomes hard to use, because it doesn’t work like you expect it to.And you’re not alone in thinking that Apple products are below par. In the business school today we were talking about the iPod, and somebody had a big rant about how he’d bought one and found it was just overpriced and under-specified junk. (He recommended the Dell Jukebox instead.) I personally haven’t used one, but I can’t see what all the hype is about. All this guff about “great design” – it’s shiny white plastic. So are false teeth! Get over it, losers!
Hey,I got a 20gb ipod for my gf. It was formatted for a mac previously. I put the install cd into her windows xp computer, and then it says “drive not formatted” so I told the computer to format it.It’s been “formatting” for 40 hours now and hasn’t finished. Should I too just unplug it and try it again?How large is your ipod’s hard drive?Thanks!George
Go here to download the windows98 driver without having to pay mandatory 5$ fee (i paid and it didn’t work so here ya go):[ url removed – we don’t encourage piracy round here]