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We in the Mac commentariat are often quite cavalier in our attitude about Apple's Fairplay DRM, which slows the wild distribution of music bought through iTunes to the rest of the Internet:
After an experience over the weekend, however, I'm ready to start funding efforts to crack it wide open. Because all of a sudden, iTunes decided my computer wasn't good enough to run its music. Since junior high, rarely have I known such rejection.
Read on for the full sob story. We've got Kleenex at the door, so stock up.
Technorati Tags: apple, itunes
It all began on Friday, when my iPod shuffle briefly freaked out, going into hysterics of flashing green, orange, and, most alarmingly, RED LEDs. Over time, its battery ran down, and I was able to save the device without a trip to the Genius Bar. Refreshed and restored, I attempted to move some of my favorite music from the Purchased folder in my iTunes library over to the shuffle.
And for the first time since I got an iTunes Store account in 2003, I was prompted to authorize my own music. Honestly, since I first got my Powerbook, it has been authorized non-stop. I've authorized and deauthorized many peripheral machines, but never my own before. But, not one to be thrown by an irrational request from technology (I wanted have gotten here otherwise) I patiently tapped in my iTunes password and waited for good news.
It never came.
Oh, sure, the machine was more than happy to authorize me. In the initial flurry of activity, I authorized my machine not once, not twice, but thrice. Each time iTunes would up the count of my used authorizations and then...nothing. A ridiculous error:
Um...what? I have plenty of memory to download music and listen to previews. I have plenty of memory to transfer music to my iPods. I have ample bandwidth to actually log in and authorize my computer three times, but I don't have the memory to make it stick? What's going on here? Just to check, I tried again after restarting my computer, launching iTunes as the only application, fixing disk permissions, the works.
Nothing made a difference. Now, I should make it clear that I'm running out of storage on my hard drive. Out of 38 GB available, I have about 2 gigs available. Which I'm aware of and working on – that's some of what the big honking external drive from last week is about. But that shouldn't preclude me from downloading a critical security certificate, right? Unless Apple's started quietly using 3 GB certificates.
My only other conclusion is that Apple is the side of this transaction without enough memory. Which seems appropriate, given the circumstances.
I'm at wit's end and about to call Apple tech support. I sent an e-mail request for assistance, and this morning a very helpful "person" named John K. who is not at all a bot answered my original e-mail, which follows:
Now the helpful response!
This is why people go crazy. They get tech support responses that read like Get Well Soon cards written by second-graders to a teacher whose malady they don't understand. Anyone else suffering through this nonsense? I'm about to call tech support. If they try to charge me, you'll hear about it.
