Apple Really Hates Vista: Part 76

It seems with all the fanfare around Apple's Let's Rock event yesterday, many people sprang at the opportunity to download the new iTunes 8 and experience all that was cool, new and exciting with the music management software. Reports on the new features (and by reports, I mean watching my boyfriend play with the new software on his Mac last night) are saying that things look pretty spiffy. That is, unless you are running Windows Vista, in which case, the new features you get to experience is a Blue Screen Of Death!

It appears that the new iTunes 8 has been causing massive problems with Vista since it's launch yesterday. Users at the Apple support forum are reporting that once they plug in their iPhone or iPod Touch to sync, the receive BSOD's instead of the now customary 20 minute sync-ing message. After a day of investigation, it appears that the issue could a driver conflict between the USB driver for iTunes/iPod/iPhone and either HP Printers or anything Logitech. People have reported that uninstalling all Logitech drivers (disabling whatever Logitech product you have in the process), unplugging your HP Printer from the USB socket, and/or moving your iPhone/iPod USB cable to a different USB family (front set of USB ports instead of the back set, for example) may all solve the problem.

Here's the deal though: Apple has a long and storied history at this point of not making their software fully compatible with Vista. When Tiny complained that iTunes would not work with his 64-bit Vista, I thought that was just an oversight or that Apple didn't feel the 64-bit market was big enough to worry about at the time. Then, when I had my ginormous cat fight with iTunes 7.7, I thought that maybe they just missed a step in their testing process. Annoying, yes, but I'm a forgiving person. But now that Apple released iTunes 8 and it's causing BSOD's in Vista (p.s., I have yet to have a single BSOD since I've had Vista), I have to simply assume that they just don't care enough to fully test their software when they release it for Vista.

HP Printers are one of the most common printers on the market. Logitech is probably in the top 3 (if not the top) peripheral maker (including keyboards, mice, webcams, etc) for PCs. If, as a software developer, you did not ensure that your software would work with these major players in the market, that's just irresponsible. I would be much more understanding if was an issue with an obscure device, but HP Printers and Logitech Peripherals?! I'm not quite willing to buy into the "Apple purposefully makes their software suck on Vista to increase Mac sales" conspiracy theories just yet, but with every new release, I'm starting to question their Sainthood in the software industry.

Lucky for me, I did not install iTunes 8. I wanted to, the new bells and whistles look fantastic, but I was a bit busy playing Spore last night. I'll be keeping a close eye on this issue, as I'm also dieing to install firmware 2.1 for my iPhone in hopes that it fixes my connection issues and makes the iPhone a worthwhile phone again. Hopefully, I can either get 2.1 without iTunes 8, or iTunes 8 will get fixed.