Jeff's Lunchbreak: Frustrated with the iPhone

No Apple Argh. I'm frustrated. My boss just got an iPhone. Since I'm the resident tech geek, he gave it to me to figure out how to do a few things with it. And guess what. I can't even transfer files to it from my computer. Apple doesn't support XP Pro 64. What the hell? I realize that Microsoft has pretty much abandoned the OS in favor of Vista and Windows 7, but it still has a pretty substantial user base. In fact, the companies that make the CAD and FEA software that we use actually recommend it, so we just bought 4 brand new workstations with XP Pro 64. The OS is going to be in use for a few more years, at least.

I've managed to at least get iTunes 8 to run on my 64 bit machine (which took too much work to begin with), but since I never had to hook up an iPhone before this, I didn't bother making sure those drivers got installed. Now, with iTunes 9, it looks like nobody's been able to get it to work on XP Pro 64. I could probably spend some time and figure out how to get iTunes 8 to work with the iPhone, but why didn't Apple just provide a decent distributable to begin with? (And why do you even have to go through iTunes to add files to an iPhone? My old Tilt does just fine acting like any other drive on the computer.)

I had been considering the iPhone before (my current contract's up in a couple months), but going through so much effort just to hook it up at the office, with an outdated version of iTunes, is a major drawback. And now that I've found out you can't do PowerPoint on it, either, and learned of a few other limitations, I'm even more hesitant (though the web browser may be enough to make up for it all).

I know Mac fanboys always talks about how great Apple's supposed to be, and how crappy Micro$oft is supposed to be, but this is simply terrible customer service on Apple's part. It's just so damned frustrating.

Comments

I remember when Apple dropped FireWire support from the iPod in favor of USB. I also remember them dropping the PowerPC in favor of x86.

I was quite frustrated over both of these decisions. They could easily support FireWire and USB along with PowerPC and x86.

In short, Apple is a business and attempts to maximize profits while minimizing costs. Supporting two sets of standards makes no sense from a pure economic viewpoint. By the same token, supporting XP Pro 64 makes very little sense given its small user base. Besides, support for XP is ending soon. Windows 7 is clearly where Microsoft is headed.

Posted by: Jeff Harris | October 10, 2009 5:28 AM

I guess most of your points are pretty good. Apple is a business driven solely by profit. Good customer service is important only in so far as it maintains customers, but not for any other reason (like human decency).

I do have an issue with this statement, though:

Besides, support for XP is ending soon. Windows 7 is clearly where Microsoft is headed.

Keep in mind that Dell is still shipping brand new PCs with XP and XP 64 (as well as other vendors, I'm sure). XP 64 is not an obsolete product. It will still be in use for years to come.

I guess I'm a little biased by my profession, too. XP 64 is the standard OS for design engineers doing FEA and CFD, but I don't suppose that we really make up that much of the nation's workforce. </bitter>

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