I just heard from my learned friend Mike that Apple have released a version of Safari that can be installed on a PC. This makes cross browser / platform testing for web development soooo much nicer. Yay. Cough. Hurrah.
Archive for the apple tag
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Safari on PC
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Bad Apple
I succumbed to sexy looking hardware and bought a Shuffle a little while back for portable music. I’ll try to avoid too much detail in this rant, but I’m shocked and appalled by how bad their Windows software is.
The actual hardware device is very well designed, extremely simple and useable. It charges from usb, so doesn’t require battery changes, and seems to be very good value.
However, the integration with iTunes on Windows is extremely buggy. I’ve had problems all along getting the device to be detected (although it shows up as a removable drive in windows with no problems). The latest version of the software and another doomed attempt to get it working resulted in the device being detected, but reported as corrupted.
The integrated firmware update / device restore then failed to provide any feedback on activity, and sat there for a couple of hours. I tried this a few times, then finally got into a state where it would not even attempt to restore the device, as it couldn’t determine the appropriate firmware.
I finally found a workable solution. Completely bypass iTunes, manually copy music onto the drive, then run a python script to rebuild the database file. I had assumed the device was dead, and was about to chuck it in the bin before finding this download. I’m now really happy using the device.
I’m totally at a loss about why Apple’s software is inferior to a python script written by a frustrated or bored user. I generally quite like supporting the underdog, but this time the dog is bad and sloppy and needs a kick.
