Bagel Belly Blog

The little things

So I tried to get a copy of some slides off a colleague, but it turns out they used Keynote '06 to create them, and I only have Keynote '04. It turns out that Keynote '06 has no "Save as Keynote '04" option. Bad Apple. Even Microsoft in all of their duplicitous lock-in practices have worked harder at backwards compatibility.

So I buy a copy of Keynote '06, because I'm a sucker and because despite the lock-in and forced upgrades, Keynote is still the best presentation software out there.

So I go to fire it up, and I discover that it's in a folder called iWork '06. Fine, but hang on, I also have a folder called iWork. What's that about? Ah, I see - it's my copy of iWork '04. Ok, I'm confused. Didn't I just upgrade? What's this old software doing? Ah, taking up 600mb of disk space. Right, I'll delete that, then.

So I fire up Keynote '06, and on first run it asks me for my license number. It's a good job I fired it up at the office this week, and not next week when I'm 3000 miles away. Why not ask for the license number while I'm installing, at which time I'd have all the paperwork with me?

So I fire up Keynote, ready to get on with some work, and it tells me that there's an update available, and would I like to go to Software Update? Sure, I think, as I click on "Take me to Software Update". First releases of new versions of Apple software are well-known these days for being a little, uh, quirky, so having the latest and greatest makes sense. Software Update loads, and does it's thing, downloading version 3.0.2. It then tells me this:

Please quit Keynote before beginning this update. Right. But hang on, Keynote sent me here, so why didn't it quit after starting Software Update?

It's amazing how the litany of tiny little details soon builds up into an overwhelming dislike of a brand. Apple, if you're going to continue making my life progressively more difficult, I may as well use OpenOffice.org for my presentations (I already use it for spreadsheets and word processing). End rant.