The Waiting Man

A little techno-rant...

So I have a new iPhone 12... you know, from Apple - the company that's supposed to make things so easy, because they 'just work'... except they don't!!

I want to do something relatively simple - transfer all the music from my old, close-to-death iPod onto the new phone (which has 128gig of memory - same as the old iPod) & can I do that?? No... I can't

The trouble I had just getting the music off the old iPod & onto my iTunes was fun enough - the iPod has heaps of stuff on it that's not on my iTunes & I had to Google a way to go 'backwards' - from iPod to iTunes. I found a way, but it renamed all the tracks & grouped them into parcels. I then had to go through & enter the song & artist info, then once I put it into iTunes, go through ALL the songs on there to eliminate duplicates. There's roughly 70gig of music on there, which translates to THOUSANDS of songs, some of which iTunes called duplicates, but aren't, some of which iTunes thought weren't duplicates, but are

Then, once all that was done, it was time to download iTunes onto the new phone... except you can't any more. Okay, maybe Apple Music will work. It does have a lot of the songs I purchased through iTunes in there, but NONE of the countless CDs I've imported, let alone music from other sources, like all of the stuff I've played on, both for myself & others, that I only have wav. files of... So - let's see if I can get all of that onto Apple Music on the phone, from iTunes on the computer...

Nope, my PC doesn't recognise that there's an iPhone plugged into it & iTunes doesn't either. Re-starting, re-booting, then finally re-installing iTunes didn't fix anything, but it DID get rid of all my playlist information, which I'll now have to re-do... A quick Google reveals that it seems the iPhone 12 will only talk to other things via USB-C cable. My PC doesn't have any C ports &, according to Google, using a C to A adaptor doesn't necessarily work either

All of which leaves me... where??!!? This town's in lockdown, otherwise I'd march into the not-so-nearest Apple Store & loudly proclaim they'd better have a solution for me that doesn't involve replacing my PC with a newer one with USB-C ports on it & doesn't involve spending any more large sums of money

The death of Steve Jobs was obviously also the death of Apple as a user-friendly company

A quick update, while I can use the computer at work

We have returned from our internet & phone free cruise in the South Pacific, but I am still relatively tech-free... as my phone has died - taking with it lots of photos I hadn't backed up yet, as well as various SMS & contact information... & my PC at home is still at the Doctor's, having its regular attacks of BSOD investigated & hopefully diagnosed & repaired. With any luck, I may get it back tonight & have a new phone next week

I have lots of photos from a Canon Collective bird-watching day, as well as the inevitable shots of crystal-clear blue tropical waters, white sandy beaches (but not of the hordes that covered them), but as I write, they are still on the SLR's & P&S's memory cards, awaiting download, PShop processing & posting

Watch this space...

Today being my Saturday, I thought I'd download the photos from last week's 2 day roadtrip around the New South Wales south coast & Illawarra regions

So, plugged the camera in via USB as I've done for years &... nothing. The new PC doesn't recognise that anything is plugged in. A web search led me to get a downloadable upgrade package from Canon that should fix the problem. This downloaded as a .fir file, which my PC couldn't/wouldn't open. Another web search led me to about 7 useless sites that said I could use their product to open the file, but after many downloads, installations & attempts, none of them did. Tried WinZip... no joy. Yet another web search turned up no way of getting the files in an unzipped or different file format. FFS!! not another web search, yielded another possible product but my anti-virus software blocked it. Then another product that took 30 minutes to download to 99%, sat at that level for another 30 minutes before I uninstalled & tried again

In the meantime, I've washed up, cleaned the kitchen, dry-shampooed the living room carpet (don't ask!!), done a load of washing & hung it outside, swept the floors, taken out the rubbish & recycling... the usual domesticities

If I have to do another f@#king websearch...!!, found another site that looked promising. Download again took quite a while & once installed, it transpires that I need to register with the company in order to get a code for a trial version. By this stage, I'd give my hypothetical first-born to the first god that demanded it, so I'm now waiting for the code to arrive by e-mail

All this began at about 8am. It's now 4.30 in the afternoon & ask me how many photos I've downloaded today... Go on... ask!

How do I feel right now?