My Latest Challenge
My younger brother wanted to have the ability to establish video conferencing with me, so he bought me an iPad [a 4th generation Retina if you are an Apple person]. It includes a program [app] called ‘Face Time’ that accomplishes this task.
This has to be the most frustrating computer I have ever dealt with because of the huge barrier of assumed knowledge that they impose on the user. They don’t give you anything in the box but a card identifying the four switches and a reference to a website in small print on the other side of the card.
They don’t tell you that you need to have another computer up and running its e-mail software before you turn the device on, nor do they provide a glossary of the common terms that they identify with Apple specific names.
I found a book and will eventually figure this thing out, but it is totally annoying at the moment. With the money they charge for their equipment, they should at least include a DVD to provide the information to get the damn thing up and running to the point you can get all of the information you need to reach a web site to find out what’s going on.
19 comments
Ahhh yes! But m8… Apple products just “work out of the box”(tm) and read your mind and just do whatever you want to do! At least… according to the apple mktg dep’t! LOL As ex svc mgr… probably half of service call’s were because people who moved from Win to Mac had no clue! Most svc mgrs I knew @ Apple were extremely frustrated by the waste of time that could have been solved easily by the sales/marketing fools & product idiots. In my svc centre, we hired a PC/Win guy, gave him apple product training, gave him a Mac etc, and he handled all those calls, because he definitely knew how frustrating it was and empathized very well! I wanted to hire a 2nd PC guy, but the powers that be @ Apple said no! Apparently, it sent the wrong message! So, I emailed my resignation and told them I agreed. I stated “It sends the message that Apple gives a f*ck about it’s customers that have moved from PC to Mac because they believed the lying ad’s!” I also said I would make sure everyone heard about it & would file a formal complaint with the appropriate authorities. They of course threatened me, but i know my rights in Aus! LOL Apple actually had to remove the current TV ad at the time because the ACCC said it was deliberately misleading (after I gave my evidence, and others also). In the USA, they get away with that crap. Not here.
Speaking of Apple… see this? LOL
Apple’s Beats Deal Is Tech’s Worst Acquisition, Except For All The Others
Still, if Apple are smart, and don’t totally tick off beats largest customer base, Android & PC users, (yeah, right) they may make a profit out of it, eventually. *shrug* I don’t think it’s actually a bad deal… I simply am not at all sure that Apple, given it’s internal politics, can make it work. Especially without Job’s. *shrug*
I’ve located the 140 page PDF manual that should have been in the box, not on the Apple website, and another book that covers what is going on. I’m going to scan on post the only information included with the device so people can see what I’m talking about, and why I missed it.
I accidentally got ‘Face Time’ to work tonight while my ‘iPad guru’ was having problems with it, because she always starts with her iPhone. She uses the iPad/iPhone combination constantly and was annoyed to discover that the iPad works slightly differently.
I’m a text-based person, so GUIs without keyboard shortcuts is a big jump for me.
Enjoy your new iCrack. One thing you’ll find out is that everything you learn today is in vain, because next iOS release will change everything about how the iPad works. For example, used to be you swiped to the right from the home screen to get a search screen to search for a program or email or whatever. So I upgraded my iOS because one of the mapping programs that I use required the new version of iOS before it’d allow me to upgrade it, and required me to upgrade it in order to continue downloading maps, and suddenly I can’t search anymore. I had to actually go Google to find out that I now search by putting one finger somewhere between the icons and swiping *down* rather than *right*. WTF?!
As for why I have to search, I can never find the little icon for whatever program I’m trying to run, so I have to search for it by name instead. Sigh….
The size isn’t an issue for me, but trying to associate the icons with what they are used for isn’t not always clear to me, and why I keep going to iTunes. Things like that are probably second nature to regular Apple users.
Well, lately all equipment needs to have the software updated as soon as you turn it on, so I expected that, and that is probably another reason my ‘guru’ was having problems, because she had just updated her iPad. Thanks for the warning.
The default text size is something I’m going to have to address, if possible, because I really don’t like sans serif fonts, especially small sans fonts.
We invented alphabets for a reason, but the iPad wants us to back to Egyptian hieroglyphics to figure out which program is what. Sigh. “Progress”.
I’m still trying to find the users manual with the iBooks ‘app’. It didn’t seem to show up after I thought I downloaded it. I’m using a book I downloaded to my Kindle, so I’m not a total neophyte to tablets. The Kindle does what I want in a predictable fashion. I get to control text size and the symbols are the same symbols used on PCs and remotes, so there was a minimal learning curve.
In addition to having to learn Cupertino hieroglyphics you are back to the days of hand slates and chalk for writing. As you say “Progress”.
You have to use iTunes on your desktop to put books into iBooks. Wut?
You should introduce your family to Skype. Much less frustrating than FaceTime. For one thing, FaceTime gets *extremely* confused if there are two FaceTime users behind the same consumer-grade firewall…
I got the manual downloaded, but I didn’t know it until tonight because I didn’t realize that it was put in the ‘library’ instead of the ‘desktop’, and library is not exactly indicated in an obvious fashion in iBooks.
The procedure was a real pain compared to the copy via USB of a PDF to the Kindle.
I’m dealing with an Apple kool-aid drinker, so I won’t bring it up, but I have to get a stand for the thing to stop it from ‘looking up my nose’.
Bryan, Stella’s employer is providing her with an iPad (Mini? not sure which model) next week.
I read her aloud an excerpt from your post (“They don’t tell you that you need to have another computer up and running its e-mail software before you turn the device on, …”) and she promptly and peevishly replied “Why does he say to do that? I don’t see any reason I should have to do that!”
It’s going to be a loooong week, I can tell. Maybe I’ll spend some evenings at the public library…
Oh, I did ask her why she didn’t think that was necessary or at least important. She said she didn’t intend to use the iPad for email. I have known Stella for long enough to know that it was best for me to refrain from saying, “Did it occur to you that maybe your boss expects that you will be using it for email?
Crossing bridges when I come to them is difficult for me, but over 17 years with Stella I have learned to do exactly that. And besides, I truly know nothing at all about Apple products, and don’t plan to learn…
You have to do that because Apple is going to start e-mailing instructions you will need to set up the beast. I don’t use it for e-mail, but they want a valid e-mail address which will become your Apple ID, and they want it connected to a Wi-Fi network from the start.
On the other side of the card, the only documentation in the box, they have the URLs of the location where you can find as much of a manual as you are going to get.
You need to have a password and PIN ready to go, because they are going to ask for them as you set things up. It is a real trip, Steve, and if she doesn’t have and use an iPhone regularly, she will get extremely annoyed at the process.
The charging cable is only one meter long, and you have to use the Apple charger, even though it looks like you should be able to plug it into a USB port. It’s a trip.
Oooh! I do feel sorry for you Steve. Best of luck. 🙂
I just spent a day (Monday) helping a friend who’s in her 60’s and was an Art teacher. She couldn’t get her emails from her ISP provided email account. The ISP was useless and couldn’t help, just said it must be a problem at her end. She uses Outlook for email. The company is ACN (A big US/Multinational company that is growing here) because her son is a manager of their pyramid (sorry “MLM”) marketing system. So, I checked it out. It seems that the cheap bastards use Gmail (the POP/SMTP servers are both gmail) and whenever I tried to set them up, I got an “Access denied” message. It turns out that the sales dep’t has decided that it’s ISP customers (who pay a lot just BTW) now have to pay $5/mth to get emails! So, I set her up a free Gmail acc’t, told her to pay the $5 for 1 mth then cancel it to get all her email & transfer it to her new Gmail acc’t, then send out a notice to everyone on her contact list about her new address. She suddenly became angry and said she didn’t want a new email address, she wanted the old one fixed and wasn’t going to pay a cent!
Well… you can imagine how I spent the next few hours. In the end, I just said “you have 2 options. You choose, and good luck.” She still didn’t get it. Yesterday, I had 3 SMS’s from her saying she still couldn’t get her email and it was urgent! Seriously… you simply cannot help some people! I called her stupid son and told him to sort it out as it was his fault for signing her up! The fact that they are not on speaking terms is not my problem!
People! *SIGH*
BTW, the whole AppleID eMail thing isn’t new. I have an email acc’t that I never use just to keep my Apple ID active that I got in 2005. It’s with a free Russian email service! I thought it was funny… LOL
Geez, Kryten, normally you get 5 to 10 free e-mail accounts from your ISP – that’s SOP in the US. They probably sell their client lists, so there is a cost to users.
No one wants to admit they are being ripped off, no matter how much proof you give them. The son should pay the $5 because he created the problem.
Apple intends to control your existence, to capture you for life.
The problem is that as annoying as the iPad is, Android is even worse. Apple lets you sign up with any email address. With Android, it *must* be a Gmail address. Period. Or the device won’t activate. And Android’s user interface is worse than Windows 8.
Think about that for a moment.
Android user interface.
Worse than.
Windows 8.
The mind boggles, eh?
– Badtux the Droid Penguin
Yep! The standard android UI is crap! But, like linux, it has a very robust community of hackers that have dealt with that nicely (after all, Android is based on linux). 😉 😀 Heck, I was even able to get my smart TV rooted, and now have a console and a UI that suits me well (including my fave file/dir manager, Total Commander). 🙂 GooglePlay and other Android sites/shops think my PC is my phone & TV thanks to a nice win hack, which makes it easy to d/l what I need and share with both over my WiFi net, instead of having to d/l for each device! 😉 🙂
There are ways around pretty much all IT annoyances and nuisances… Just have to know about them and find them. Something I am good at! 😉 LOL
Stella got her iPad today and charged it up while we went out to vote (a Dem primary runoff with exactly one essential race, but it couldn’t be skipped in good conscience as I sometimes do with runoffs… does the phrase “Larouche follower” help you to understand?). When we came home, Stella began tinkering with the device (as you noted, Bryan, there was effectively NO documentation).
Stella, after a bit of cussing and a couple of mistypes of my wireless router password (I make it hard to type as well as unlikely to guess), she got in. Within a half hour and no more than three more cussing sessions, she had an astonishing number of things working. And along the way I had given her almost no assistance. (I know better than to give help unasked for…)
What I learned from the whole experience about learning Apple technology quickly: first of all, DO NOT bring the pollution of a lifetime of IT work to the process!
Badtux, I’m having a hard time imagining anything worse than Windows 8, but, as Kryten notes, it can be ‘improved’ with a little effort, while the iPad gets changed randomly by software updates.
I’m happy for Stella, Steve. I assume she has a smartphone or other exposure to the touchscreen interface. I just received a keyboard/cover for the beast, so maybe it will be easier to deal with. If Stella already has an Apple account for her phone the process is probably more familiar. I had to ‘prove I was worthy’ of an Apple device.
“I assume she has a smartphone or other exposure to the touchscreen interface.”
Nope. Her recently defunct dumb-phone (identical to mine), when it crashed, was replaced with an even older, dumber phone while we think about what we really want to do. Stella had iTunes for an iPod a couple years ago; the account was still out there but was uncooperative when she tried to update her new iPad with her song library. I don’t think she got that working. But she did figure out a lot of day-to-day stuff… WiFi net connection, email, the camera, etc.
I do NOT look forward to the day I have to switch to a smartphone. My fingers are pretty uncooperative on a touchscreen; my medical status guarantees that disability.
OK, if she already had an iTunes account, the iPad would get a lot of the information that I had to provide from there, and she would be familiar with the structure of the Apple ‘language’ and command structure.
I switched to my current Samsung with a keyboard from an LG touchscreen because of the outrageous error rate of the touchscreen in determining what I was touching. The iPad is better, because it is much bigger, but making weird hand gestures does not come naturally to me.