It’s been a day of software woes in this household.
It started with my partner handing me their cell phone which was clearly in a loop. Every 15 seconds a message was displayed that said Genius has stopped responding press OK to close the application.
So you’d press the helpful OK button and the message would disappear then come back 15 seconds later. After fiddling about I managed to get deep enough into the layer upon layer of menus till I finally could clear the cache for the application that was misbehaving.
Problem Solved.
Mind you this was before my first cup of coffee. It’s nice to know that my digital interfaces appear to come online before the rest of my brain.
On the other hand it’s kind of scary that my computer related information is at that low a level in my brain. I mean what happens if someone asks me a question while I’m sleeping? Do I start spouting free technical support information?
Humm gotta change the programming so that tech support information is only available after sex… I’d get laid a lot more often!
Then my partner said they’d been trying to fix it on their own for 3 days. So I felt guilty for making it look so damn easy.
You’d have thought that someone would have encountered this in testing and had the programming folks build in an automatic clear of the cache.
I’ve been dealing with software issues of various types for the past couple of days but all those issues came to a head today.
In general dealing with musicians, composition software, mixing software, or simple recording software, is absolutely nothing like dealing with normal software.
Imagine if you will the annoyance factor of someone like myself who sits down at a piece of software and is presented with a button that looks like a waveform.
When I press that button instead of a nice waveform graph that I can edit, the volume goes up.
But that makes no sense because right next to the waveform button is the master volume slider but moving that does nothing.
Because by “volume” the creators of the software actually meant Input level.
And so on until I’m pulling my hair out because absolute nothing is intuitive except that what I would intuit is completely incorrect every single time.
So I decide this software is not for me…
I download another manufacturers demo version. Before they allow me to download their software they want me to create an account. Then they allow me to download the DEMO.
I could understand it if I’d purchased the software, but it’s a DEMO.
That’s like having to fill out, and have a credit application approved before you go on a test drive.
After jumping through their hoops, I have the software downloaded. I install it. Guess what? It doesn’t install.
It goes through the motions, it modifies the shit out of my computer, but the installer of the main application throws an exception ON INSTALLATION and my system shuts down the extraction of the file.
After fiddling with it for an hour I gave up, then spent another hour painstakingly removing bits of their software and backing out their changes out of my system.
Next manufacturer… Was a completely no way in hell. They wanted 1000.00 for their application and there was no demo available. This manufacturer ended up doubly on my personal shit list because of what was going on in the next room.
My partner had been trying to upgrade a version of composition software. From the same company that wanted a grand for their mixing software. 12 hours later my partner successfully completed the upgrade.
First, their system wouldn’t acknowledge the email address. The serial number was fine but the email address wasn’t in their system. Then phone calls to their offices resulted in conversations like:
“Hi could you give me the number to your sales office? Thanks. Did you know that your web site has the wrong number listed?“
Their answer: “Yes” CLICK!
“Hi I’m trying to upgrade my notation software Sibelius First Note… It’s notation / composition software… Yes I’m sure you sell this… I’m looking at your web site… Well that’s the problem… your web site won’t process the purchase… Hello? Hello?” They hung up.
“Hi I’m calling from California, is this the corporate office of AVID Technologies? Good, could I speak to someone in customer service? Yes, I’m having trouble completing a transaction. Yes I’m trying to upgrade some software I own.
Customer service? Hello I’m having trouble upgrading some software. Yes I know I should be calling your California office that’s part of the problem. They’re not answering their phone. I’ve tried your web site, it’s not processing the transaction.
Look, I’ve been on the phone and on your web site looking for assistance for the past 6 hours, isn’t there some way you could just take the $40 and send me a link to download the software?
No, I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just trying to complete this business so that I can get on with my day. Hello? Hello?” GRRRRRRRRRR!
After spending most of the day talking with these people and getting nowhere my partner tried the website again and this time the serial number and the email address worked.
My recommendation at about the 4 hour mark was to just go to the competition.
The point of all of this is to highlight the ever increasing frustration caused by arrogant attitudes, and frankly shitty software testing.
Android applications that are part of the CORE Android OS and can’t be removed that obviously weren’t tested with corrupted caches.
Installers for DEMO software that don’t work. Really? do you think I’m going to BUY your software after such an obvious failure?
Overpriced software which might work but that I can’t even try before buying. ( I notice today that there are demo downloads available)
Nasty people on the phone who think nothing of hanging up on an existing customer?
I’ve gone back to the irrational piece of software that I’d decided to abandon in the first place.
Maybe it isn’t so bad after all.