The dangers of the walled garden: when things go wrong

I have written before about my love for my trusty Macbook. I vividly recall my first wireless network experience with a freebie from a Windows-using friend. Hours of frustrating tweaking later, no network. A techie finally told me to just get Airport since I had a mac. I plugged it in and five minutes later, it worked.

Yes, everything is wonderful and easy and simple in Macland—until things go wrong, and you get a first-hand lesson in the perils of the walled garden.

PART 1: THE CRASH

So, the hard drive died last night. I’ll spare you the gory details, but the bottom line was, I either needed to replace the hard drive on my aging Macbook, or replace the computer altogether, and given its age (almost 4 years) and and the sad reality that either option would involve a total re-install of all my stuff, there were some mitigating financial factors (an unused gift card, education discount and free ipod promotion) that pushed me to option B, a new machine. Great! Right?

ISSUE 1: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOUR FILES—IF HE THINKS YOU SHOULD HAVE THEM THERE

Well…sort of great. I got it home, ran the system migration off my Apple-sanctioned hard drive and time machine software, and only some of my stuff turned up on the new computer. Walled garden peril number one: if you have files in places Big Brother does not think you should have them, Big Brother isn’t going to back them up. Thank goodness for Dropobox! Calibre took one minute to set up and I was able to get back my music files, but had to re-do ALL the cover art and playlists. Thank goodness too that I am not a huge music person and this did not involve a ton of files.

ISSUE 2: DEAUTHORIZING, AND OTHER FUN THINGS TO WASTE NEEDLESS TIME NEEDING TECH SUPPORT TO DO FOR YOU

Problem 2 came up when I tried to install the Sony reader software. It suggested that I deauthorize my old computer before proceeding. Simple, right? You just log onto your old computer, open up the software, and…whoops. Can’t access the old computer? If you can’t access the old computer, you can no longer manage your ‘authorizations’ yourself and you have to call tech support to help you.

I spent a lovely half hour with Sony support trying to make someone understand the problem, and I got transferred three times before somebody got a clue. The first agent was confused by what computer I had—a mac was not among the choices in this mandatory gatekeeper field, so I just put in anything to get to the conversation, and I could not make her grasp this. She finally said, after ignoring everything I told her, that Vaio computers had their own tech support department and she would transfer me. The second guy was able to grasp that I did not actually have a Vaio, but said that if I was having a technical issue with my computer, I should contact its manufacturer and he could not help me unless my computer was made in the USA. Finally I got one last guy who fixed the issue in about a minute.

iTunes also has this ‘authorization’ deal, but it has decided on my behalf that I don’t need to worry about it yet. If I no longer can access a computer to remove it from my account, I can reset my whole deal and get a clean slate by pressing the ‘deauthorize all computers’ button, but this button will not appear until I have five devices registered.

ISSUE 3: YOUR FILES ARE ONLY YOUR FILES IF YOU HAVE STORED THEM ON CERTAIN DEVICES INSTEAD OF OTHER ONES

I have some purchased and self-created content on the iPad that I wanted to move to the new computer. This is not allowed. Apple has banned me from moving my own stuff around my own (not cheaply) paid for devices in order to prevent me from being a copyright pirate. So the first thing iTunes did when I plugged in my device was offer to erase it.

Some frantic googling uncovered the trick that I could ‘transfer purchases’ to my computer from the device, and save myself having to go through the app store to download them again, one by one. But this is a one-way deal. Once I got them onto the computer (hooray!) there was no way to sync them (or to syn anything else, for that matter) onto the iPad unless I handed over the iPad and let it be erased. With that done, I would be free to ‘sync’ again.

This is unacceptable. I can see why people jailbreak now. First of all, all of this is content I paid for—there is no way to get content you haven’t paid for onto the device in the first place if you are using it straight out of the box. It is hardware I have paid for too. And there is time I have spent arranging the app screens in my preferred order, setting preferences and even creating documents. Why should I lose all that time and all that work? If they are truly positioning the iPad as a laptop replacement, it is unacceptable that they should expect people to do work on it, and then re-do it again later just because they are having computer issues with a completely different machine.

What about Bento, and the databases I created with it? The desktop app would not let me sync unless I had it installed on the iPad, and it would not recognize that it was installed unless I let it re-sync and thereby wipe all my data. And this is one app without file converters or email-to-self or any conversion tool. You want to get content off of it? The first response will be why would you since it is is so perfectly designed to meet your needs. The second response will be just syc with the desktop app. In which case, see above.

What made me especially angry about this one was that until this point, I had gotten off pretty easy. My 900 ebooks were all safe in Dropbox, and Calibre found them in two seconds once I pointed it to the right folder. It was a pain to re-do all my music art, but at least I had the files to work with. It had been a stressful night, but things were progressing. And then, the recipe collection I had compiled from my own notes and books—the workout log I had been keeping—session notes from one of my tutoring customers—all the pen-and-paper note type things Apple promised me Bento would replace—gone. Unfairly. And for no good reason. The only thing that stopped me from total nervous breakdown here at the thought of how much work this would be to fix was the knowledge that without my Dropbox backups of all my other stuff, it would have been much, much worse.

BOTTOM LINE: A NIGHT OF STRESS AND NEEDLESS FIDDLING FOR NO GOOD REASON EQUALS ONE UNHAPPY CUSTOMER

I stayed up half the night getting all my files put back and iTunes straightened out because I felt sick about calling it a day with so very, very much still left to to tomorrow. I had spent months procrastinating on getting my computer act together, and painstakingly scanning and filing and sorting. I was not going to put myself through that again and I knew I would not be able to sleep if I thought I was going to have to. And too, I have some work stuff going on where I need the iPad working and I need my files with me. I had to get things working again.

I can’t believe I am the first person who has ever had a system failure like this and had to move to a new computer. It boggles my mind that they make something like moving an iPod or iPad over to a new machine so difficult. Why should I have to re-do all my preferences and re-create all my content every time I get a new laptop? Why isn’t there some way to just sync everything over and go? Why can’t I move files back and forth off of devices I have paid a fair chunk of cash to purchase and use legitimately?

It could have been much, much worse. And taken my much, much longer. And it is only a computer after all. But watching my files go up in smoke because they were there but Apple wouldn’t let me touch them, I honestly wanted to cry a little. So much money spent to waste so much time re-doing things I’ve done already. It should be easier by this point in the tech revolution. It really should.