Progress

iTunes have an offer running from today. "The 12 Days of Christmas" offers a free download every day for... well... you get the idea. So I thought yeah, why not? It's free - what's to complain about? Even if the first track on offer IS by Snow Patrol.

Having subscribed to the email reminders, I get a handy-dandy link to click on. That takes me to a page saying "hang on, we're just loading up iTunes so you can access the iStore."

Now I don't know about you, but whenever there's mention of iTunes I get that watery feeling in my bowels. Earlier versions of this pile of steaming doos used to hang my machine on a regular basis. It's *always* slow, always cumbersome, and the other thing it does nearly every time I use it is tell me there's a new version available, would I like to download it? And then proceeds to fail to download it.

So anyway I ran it. And it told me there's a new version available (9.0.2 or something). With its track record of total fail I replied Nah I'll Leave It Thanks and proceeded to attempt to download my free track.

Network timeout.

I tried again. "This item requires iTunes 9 to download."

You've got to laugh. Even though, every SINGLE time I use iTunes, I'd much rather cry. But, you know, faced with the inevitable, the Zen thing to do is bend with the wind, like the bamboo. Or something. I bent. I downloaded it. HOW big? Ninety-something MEG? Good grief. But hey, the download time was nothing like the install time, and here (finally, I hear you say) we get to the point of this post.

Status: Computing space requirements (a progress bar)
Status: Validating install (another progress bar)

It's a progress bar Jim, but not as we know it. What progress is it measuring? Who knows. How many more stages will there be? Who knows. How long 'til the entire task will be finished? Who, the f***, knows? That progress bar certainly doesn't tell me anything useful, except how far it is away from the next progress bar starting.

Call me old fashioned, but I remember a time when progress bars gave you an indication of... you know... progress. I know! Mad, wasn't it?! If it was half-way across, the job was halfway done. In some rare and wonderful cases, it was even true - ALMOST true - that if it had taken ten minutes to get half way, then there were ten minutes left. No. Hang on. That's false memory talking. Things were never THAT good. Were they? But they were better than this. How many of these damned things am I going to have to sit through?