One thing that always seems to rain on my iPod Touch’s parade is iTunes. Not only it backs up the software for ages every time I sync with my desktop computer, it also plays its mind games with me when it comes to applications. It sticks already uninstalled apps back, messes your updates, anything to make your life easier. Fortunately the upgrades can be installed from iPod as well.
Still, I can’t remember how many times I’ve actually managed to update apps succesfully with iTunes, but I bet it’s not a very large number.
Usually it pulls the good ‘ol 5 step jedi mind trick:
- App Store on iPod informs that updates for few apps available
- I need to sync anyway, so let’s update them on iTunes
- There are no updates for you. You do not need to update anything.
- Oh… If you say so, ok…
- Open App Store on iPod after sync and what do you know: missing updates staring right back at you.
Besides this, there’s also the “gotcha”-game: let the user think everything is in order after he or she presses the “update everything”-button. Bonus points if the user finds out that nothing’s been done only much later. Scored big yesterday.
In all seriousness, my wishlist for year 2009 includes reliable app update and uninstall process on iTunes and I hope I don’t need to pay for another firmware upgrade just to see it…
I’m glad the App Store software on iPhone/iPod supports installing all updates on single click instead of the tedious separate click for each update-scheme it had going early on. Saves me from iTunes. Oh, and I’m also glad they added a setting for turning off the text prediction feature. Yay, no more me sounding like a Swedish chef (although I admit that writing sometimes in both english and finnish might be too much for it to handle reasonably)!
