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0 pointsjasonkester15y ago0 comments

And when it randomly crashes hard, leaving you looking at the dreaded "Connect to iTunes" screen.

It somehow knows to do this at the moment you're furthest from being able to find a computer with iTunes. My iPod Touch did it when I was on the Pacific coast of Colombia for a month (note the complete absence of roads and towns along said coast).

Getting to a place where I could listen to music again involved an overnight trip on a cargo boat through pirate-infested waters.

But I suspect that was an edge case that Apple didn't have in mind when they designed that feature.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

bruceboughton15y ago· 3 in thread

You take it into the Apple store. You know, the stores with great tech support that don't exist for PCs (yet).

jasonkesterOP15y ago

Did you actually read the comment you're replying to?

In this particular anecdote, the nearest Apple store would have been in San Diego, 3200 miles away. The nearest internet connected computer capable of downloading iTunes was a mere 150 miles away in Buenaventura, a 2 hour motor launch, followed by a (weekly) night boat from the village I was in.

It was meant to illustrate that sometimes you take your mobile devices away from civilization. Suggesting that the solution is to bring them back to civilization sort of misses that point.

Samuel_Michon15y ago

Not to detract from your point, but the nearest Apple Store to Buenaventura, Colombia is in Miami, Florida. That's only a 1,520 mile journey :)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+miami%2C+fl+to...

bruceboughton15y ago

I did. But if something hard crashes, then it's a fair assumption you're going to have to take it to somewhere where they can fix it. My point is that, if you ignore the out-in-the-wilderness scenario, iPad support is probably friendlier than most PC support for normal people.

If you take your dell laptop back to PC World, don't expect much.

dagw15y ago

I imagine that if Apple is seriously planning a future where the iPad is the only computer that 'normal' people need then the iTunes requirement will disappear soon. I imagine that some sort of iTunes in the cloud is currently in the works, where all your music and videos are stored by Apple (for a modest fee) and you can either stream directly or sync a subset of it for offline use.

fierarul15y ago

>But I suspect that was an edge case that Apple didn't have in mind when they designed that feature.

Indeed, if you read the great-great parent comment, we are not talking about a device for Bear Grylls to be used in the wilderness.

Activation is an annoying concept, but except crashes like yours, a device will work just fine without a machine with iTunes nearby.

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