What the hell are people thinking?!
The engineers that have been involved with Installation these days should be submitted for testicular shock therapy.
First it was Urge. Now it’s iTunes. And by association, QuickTime.
Both installations put Groups in my Start Menu and ask me if I want a shortcut placed on my Desktop. Not an unreasonable question.
Just yesterday, someone saw my Start Menu on my notebook and said “whoa… that’s SO organized.” Well, that’s because it is. I keep Windows Explorer and Command Prompt just off the All Programs menu. Everything else is in a folder. All Development apps go into “Development”. Internet related apps? Into “Internet”. Utilities that don’t fit anywhere? “Useful Tools”. All non-Dev, non-Internet Microsoft apps – mostly Office – go into “Microsoft”.
Simple. Elegant. Useful.
My desktop is empty. Nothing on it. If there is something on it, then it needs immediate attention. Becomes a “to do” list, just like a post-it note on a physical desktop. Important applications go into toolbars into the Taskbar. So when an application like iTunes puts an icon on the Desktop, I copy it over to the Taskbar toolbars, so that’s useful to let an application put it there. The other icons and groups that an install adds to the Start Menu, I just move them to where I want them. iTunes, QuickTime, and URGE all give me Start Menu groups; I move them to Entertainment.
So why is it that whenever I run URGE or iTunes or QuickTime does the Installation program kick in and FORCE ME TO HAVE GROUPS AND ICONS WHERE THEY WANT THEM?! ALL OVER MY DESKTOP AND MY START MENU! WHY IS REPAIR MODE KICKING IN?!?!?! FOR MOVED ICONS??????
I uninstalled URGE already. There’s no way I’m dealing with this.
The problem now is iTunes. And QuickTime. I was hoping to replace WinAMP with iTunes for my player at work, now that they have auto-retrieving album art, the neat disc browser and Shuffle-By-Album that can be seeded to be totally random… but now I have two choices… either have to give control of my Start Menu and Desktop to iTunes, which really pisses me off. Or if I want to run iTunes or QuickTime I have to wait for the Install application to spin up, shove unwanted Groups and shortcuts all over the place, re-delete those items all just for the app to open.
Un-fuckin’-acceptable.
Anyone have a workaround for this kind of lame ass installation crap?
Now I know you HATE it when I talk about linux, but I gotta say the coolest music app ever is Amarok. I wish I could use it at work, but they are stuborn and its Linux only. But this app kinda looks like iTunes, in the way it shows playlists. But the other stuff blows everything outta the water. While you are playing the song, you can cycle thru tabs to show, your playlist, the songs lyrics, and a wikipedia entry on the artist. And it downloads all that stuff on its own as well as the album art that it shows off to the side. I know its off topic.But that program is cool.
And here is a screenshot of it.
http://amarok.kde.org/images/stories/albums/1-4-Series/lfm_001.jpg And it being Linux it never forces you to put icons or folders anywhere. But I know your frustration, I have iTunes at work.
Don’t use your start menu. :) As Scott Hanselman says (I can’t find the quotation right now, though): every second you use your Start Menu is a wasted second.
I use an application launcher and never look in my start menu. I install an app, and if it’s useful, then I create a SlickRun “Magic Word” for it right then.
But as far as the behavior of the apps: that is broken. They’ve got some sort of self-repair built in, which is a good idea. Unfortunately, they extended it to the desktop and start menu shortcuts, which is not a good idea.
@Obed – The Rant isn’t about my music player… it’s about a broken installer and how it got through testing. Or worse, that it’s supposed to be like that on purpose! Besides, I ain’t changing an OS for a music player. Especially when a gripe of mine is that media players attempt to do too much already… that screen shot is more complicated than my word processor :)
@Tommy – the Start Menu IS my launcher ;)
I know I know, but its such a cool music I had to mention it xD
You could write a little .bat to launch iTunes and then delete the icons after it starts.
But then it’s still slow to start, b/c the installer still auto launches.
I actually already worked up a workaround, but I’m not sharing it. Fuck that. This needs to be fixed by iTunes, QuickTime, and URGE rather than me having to workaround it.
just make the files hidden. right click, and properties :)
Exactly what my workaround was. At least for the Start Menu. It also seems that the Desktop icon is only replaced if the Start Menu groups are moved.
But that’s still SO not the point! I remember that IBM and now Lenovo does the same things with their Start Menu group, but it doesn’t flash an installation, so there’s no delay when you run it.
I can’t believe there are people out there that expect you to never move or remove their icons in an attempt to customize their OWN desktop!
use a mac
If I’m not mistaken, the company that botched the install is the company that you’re suggesting I buy hardware from? That would be ironic :)
I just updated QuickTime and iTunes to see what was going on. It’s all in the shortcuts. The installers aren’t creating normal shortcuts – I believe it’s some “special” shortcuts using CLSID info. Go look at the properties – Notice the missing info?
Simply delete the shortcut and create a new one directly to the executables. iTunes and QuickTime will then start directly, without going through the configuration program.
You can then delete / move the start menu items wherever you please.
they’ve been doing that – the CLSID stuff – for a while now… when upgrading between versions the old shortcut would never work – always had to copy the new one over to where I wanted it. A few apps (mine included) do this.
I’ll have to try making my own shortcuts for it tho… better than going hidden.
Interesting about the clsid shortcuts. Not very intuitive problem to figure out, so i’m glad somebody posted about it here. Worked great, thanks DD.
This intrusive management in software is a real pain in the ass; I wonder if 20 years from now when 99% of the world is computer literate, will people put up with software providers doing this crap?
Many thanks from me too. I just deleted the shortcuts and made a new one directly from the .exe file. Now the stupped thing is nicely organized in the start menu and not available on my desktop.
When will these companies figure out that being intrusive like that hurts their market share rather than helping it. Apple’s going to go the way of Microsoft if they keep doing things like this (by “going the way of Microsoft” I mean people will get an anti-Apple sentiment for forcing X and Y upon them. Such a sentiment would hurt Apple more than Microsoft because it doesn’t own 90% of the computing business).
Omg, I thought I was the only one with this fucked up problem, What the hell is Steve Jobs thinking, the arrogant son of a ***. He fucked up my pc… :P
But I now know what the sollution for itunes is, I just installed the new 7.0.1, and they solved it. But quicktime hasnt been upgraded, but they will solv it next time I hope.
Yeah, I just downloaded 7.0.1 – I noticed that iTunes didn’t prompt me but QT still did… guess it’ll be addressed over the next couple of weeks. :)
does anyyone know how i can get someting of my desk top even when it say it being used by other users
It’s worse than Winamp + AOL desktop icons. At least I could choose not to install those. This friggin crap just keeps coming back, over and over again.
The *real* kicker? It somehow is able to do this as an administrator account – because my user account isn’t priv’d enough to install a GLOBAL desktop icon! WTH!?
It might not be global – there should be a Desktop set up on a per user basis, actually. But still, I agree: it’s heavily annoying :)
ha – the CLSID thing works great. i thought it was just Apple trying to take over my Windows desktop (har har).