The Squeaky Wheel – Revisited

ByHeather

The other day I posted how the squeaky wheel doesn’t always get the grease. Sometimes, it gets replaced. I found another variation to this delightful adage on the DesignAday web site.

“Broken gets fixed. Shoddy lasts forever” . . . When deadlines are tight, and there is more work to get done than there are developers or hours in the schedule, it’s not the squeaky wheel, but the jammed one that gets the grease.”

— Jack Moffett

So true. This is my frustration with Apple’s iPods. I have a 3rd generation Nano that has a couple of annoying bugs in the software. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I convert many of them to audiobooks so I can listen in the “faster” mode. Unfortunately, the fat Nano has a hard time remembering that it is set on the “faster” setting. I have to hit menu four times to back out of the current podcast and drill forward two settings menus to remind the Nano that it is still set on “faster.” Then back out two menu settings and drill back into the podcast. I have submitted bug reports to Apple at least a half-dozen times but I am afraid that my little bug isn’t broken enough to warrant a fix.

On the iPhone there is a bug in the iPod software regarding playlists. All of my podcasts playlist have a setting where playcount = 0. This means that as soon as a podcast is finished (and the playcount increments to 1) the playlist should update and the podcast should drop from the playlist. Not so on the iPhone. Sometimes the playlist updates, most of the time it doesn’t. It seems to work better in the video playlists but not 100% of the time. I have submitted this bug to Apple at least twice.

I can’t help but wonder if Apple isn’t spreading itself to thin. I mean, the iPod software on the iPhone has an annoying bug in it that has lingered through several updates. This is a foundational application on their flagship product. Shoddy software was never part of Apple’s image. I hope they fix it soon but I am not holding my breath.

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