Come On iTunes, Let's Get It Right!

I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of reading or hearing about a great new iPhone / iPad  app, a "must have" the critics and geeks write and talk about that when you go to get it, or at least check it out, the iTunes store says there is no such app. If this has happened to me once, it has happened 100 times. And you know what? I'm sick of it.

Jony Ives hasn't gotten to this yet. It will be "flat" soon 

This really was brought home last night when I deleted an app I use to find out the listings on my Charter Communications cable. Zap2It was acting wonkie, especially after the botched changeover by Charter from what they had, a mix of analog and digital to who knows what. If its all digital now, you couldn't prove it by me. Since Charter has done what I consider one of the worst roll out jobs in changing their lineup and channels, Zap2It has ceased to work. Nor has TV Guide or any of the iPhone TV apps, if you can find them. Use the Charter App you say. Even with my Charter bill in front of me, I couldn't log on. I gave up.

I deleted Zap2It and was going to re-install it only to find, yup, you guessed it, the Apple App store telling me yet again that app didn't exist, though it had a few minutes before. I guess since it didn't work anyway, there was no loss.

What is it with the iTunes store? In fact, what is it with Apple? It seems each upgrade from around iOS 6 for mobile / tablets and 10.9 for computers, each one is worse than the one before. What was easy has become incredibly hard. Example: I am trying to clean out my iPhoto files and transferring them to an external drive and burning a back-up DVD. Before you just dragged them over from iPhoto and whatever description you had went as well. Now, you have to export and make darn sure that you have checked all the correct boxes so the info you spent hours on in iPhoto travels as well. No more drop and drag and if there is, it is so hard to find in preferences I gave up.

In fact every "simple" program that Apple once had and was known for is now more complicated than Windows, almost across the board. I remember a parody by the Microsoft people on how they would design an iPod box in the "Microsoft" style. Apple iPod boxes were Zen like with only a name, a logo and a photo. The MS version was so complicated they even had to add a fold over flyer to include all the information, crap really, they felt you had to have. Less than a year later, when the Zune came out (remember them?) their box looked exactly like the parody. And like the parody, the Zune disappeared from sight.

It seems to me that when an editor, columnist, talk show hosts and talking heads talk about a great app, it should be in the Apple Store. Searchable. In fact, because it was often heard but not seen, variations of the name should be included as well. We shouldn't need a degree in computer science just to find the thing. Better yet, if it isn't yet available, say available only as a beta test, don't give it to anyone to review.

Let this be a word to the wise. There may be great apps out there lurking in iTunes; good luck finding them.

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