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New Nothing about it is "intuitive". It's a learned skill.
J almost tears her hair out whenever she gets a new iPod due to issues like this. I feel for you.

Does this help? http://smallbusiness...-touch-43499.html

Good luck.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Finally got it.
I've only been designing software for 35 years or so, but I can't help the feeling that this is a really poorly designed product. Settings are set to default values so the wretched thing does NOT work as expected. It's been a waste of half a weekend, but I don't have to look at the fucker again until my wife screws it up again. meh.
New You said it.
You've been designing software for 35 years.

Software design and user interface design are two completely different disciplines.

Unless you mean you're an interface designer, in which case carry on.

It's like the difference/overlap between a civil engineer and an architect. The two fields are complementary, but the intersection is smaller than you may think.

Apple kit is as successful as it is because it's well designed - from the box to the first run to the integration with your Mac. Your experience is unfortunate, but it's an outlier.
New It's been a mix.
I've done user interface, machine level embedded, protocol stacks, and GUI stuff. I think I have pretty fair expectations of how things should work. Just my opinion of course...
New "iTunes sync Playlists" has 274,000 hits on Google.
It's not just you. If it worked as easily as Apple thinks it does, it wouldn't be as popular a topic - it would "just work".

Oh, and you're being entirely too reasonable in this forum. ;-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New There are 700M iDevice users
Come on. Let's be pragmatic here. 274K hits on Google is statistical noise.

It does work as easily as Apple thinks it does, but nothing's perfect.

"It Just Works" is a slogan. It's like "Coke Adds Life" or "The Ultimate Driving Machine".

Pretending that iTunes/iDevice is some horribly flawed monstrosity that only ever works by accident is not far from "This will be the year of Linux on the Desktop!".

For the vast, vast majority of their users, Apple kit works exactly as advertised, and they've got the ~$140B to prove it.
New They're getting worse
I had an older Ipod classic which was fairly intuitive to use and had a real hard disk in it. Construction was shit. The battery went bad. When I went to replace it, the case was difficult to open, the battery was glued to the back of the case, OVER the cheesy bands that they use for control wiring and prying the battery off the case broke the wiring. But while it was alive it worked fairly intuitively, and the documentation was both available and readable.

This piece of shit appears to skip songs in the playlist for no apparent reason, there is little rhyme or reason to getting around in the menus, the (online) "manual" keeps veering off to iPhones rather than Ipods. Getting it to do anything at all is a major victory. We've only got about $600 in a sound system for her Zumba class. Bose was nice enough to include a printed manual. Apple? You joke. They couldn't be bothered to fall at 9.8 m/sec2 in a standard gravitational field.

New Physical design was on purpose
You weren't supposed to open the case.
You weren't supposed to replace the battery.
Any internal wiring hacks were never to be exposed to the end user.
When it failed, you were supposed to replace the entire unit for additional Apple profit. Any observations based on doing exactly opposite what the designers intended are meaningless. Sorry.

BTW: I've despised all Apple interface choices from day 1, the original MAC, the iPod, and the iPhone. I spent quite a while trying, resetting my brain, making them my sole devices, etc. But I'm an outlier. I don't count. They work well for their target market.
New Heh. Only 50k hits for "TwbtyoLotD". ;-)
New I've had LotD for many years.
But as PW likes to point out... I'm not the target audience for that shit.
--
greg@gregfolkert.net
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." --Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
New They don't have a 100% hit-rate, though.
It's an extreme example, but the "puck" mouse from a number of years ago was a piece of horrible interface design. The thing was *round*. Yes, I've used one, when there was no alternative.

Wade.
Just Add Story http://justaddstory.wordpress.com/
     Apple Ipod sucks. - (hnick) - (17)
         Nothing about it is "intuitive". It's a learned skill. - (Another Scott) - (10)
             Finally got it. - (hnick) - (9)
                 You said it. - (pwhysall) - (8)
                     It's been a mix. - (hnick) - (6)
                         "iTunes sync Playlists" has 274,000 hits on Google. - (Another Scott) - (5)
                             There are 700M iDevice users - (pwhysall) - (4)
                                 They're getting worse - (hnick) - (1)
                                     Physical design was on purpose - (crazy)
                                 Heh. Only 50k hits for "TwbtyoLotD". ;-) -NT - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                     I've had LotD for many years. - (folkert)
                     They don't have a 100% hit-rate, though. - (static)
         So you want to RTFM? :) - (a6l6e6x)
         Bluetooth. - (static)
         Are they different than iPhones now? - (malraux) - (3)
             I've seen people fail to see that icon... -NT - (static) - (2)
                 Not just in computers... - (pwhysall) - (1)
                     Hand out badges. - (static)

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
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