Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Windows 7 decided to rebuild the font cache, leading to a brief moment of confusion when all the icons looked the same:

This should be considered huge progress–many years ago when installing iTunes and quicktime you would be required to reboot your computer. Welcome to 2010; iTunes is up and running again without a reboot. I remember fondly multi-disk software installations (say, a series of 10 floppies) and multi-reboot installations on older versions of windows.

Maybe someday soon Apple will make a version of iTunes for windows that feels snappy and native, and then all will be well with the world.

I am disappointed in Apple’s registration process, which forces you to disclose unwarranted demographic data about yourself in order to register your new iPod and connect it with iTunes. Some people prefer to keep their privacy intact; they should be able to use Apple products without disclosing unnecessary personal information. For example, when plugging in my email address, name, address, etc, I was also asked the following personal questions:

• What do you do for a living?
• What is the age of the primary user of this iPod?
• Which of the following statements best represents this iPod?

Either it’s quiz night and Apple is playing questions, or they are making me tell them more than I want to just to sync music to my new iPod nano. Here are the options in the dropdowns you can choose from (I put Other/65+/In addition):

Apple wants to violate your privacy

Apple wants to know your age

Apple wants to know if you’re quitting another brand

It’s worse that you cannot decline to provide this information. If you leave the form blank, you are forced to fill it in:

Apple needs to take its users’ privacy more seriously. If they want demographic brand / market research done, they should pay a PR/research firm to go out and get the data that they need, from willing volunteers.

Other people have complained about the amount of data Apple requires to get an iTunes account opened for their Apple iPads.

If you go to apple/iTunes you can checkout their new font/styling for iTunes 10, a sort of chromed gradient that looks like it was produced in Microsoft Word. Here’s the logo and type on Apple’s website:

And here’s a 30s mockup in Microsoft Word using their famous “Word Art” tool:

You would think they would spend a little more time on this, but perhaps the iTunes 10 team was too busy making iTunes suck more on Windows, and this is subtle Microsoft jab, or else building the useless social network Pring. People have also complained that the icon is horrible and suggested alternatives. Oh well, Apple.