I’ve spent altogether too many hours today fighting with iTunes, the supposedly user-friendly music jukebox, store and iPod interface software.

I pretty much use iTunes all the time that my computer is switched on, and normally I think of it as a fairly reliable piece of software. However, when I tried to update my iPod today for the first time in a couple of weeks, it said that the interface software wasn’t functioning correctly, and I should reinstall iTunes. I did this, several times (each time necessitating a lengthy system reboot), but it still wouldn’t talk to the iPod. Then I downloaded and installed the iPod Updater, but that told me there was an “iPod Service Error.”

Eventually I found a help page on Apple’s website that told me what I had to do (it seems this is not an isolated problem): Completely uninstall iTunes, delete lots of folders manually, reboot umpteen times and then reinstall everything from scratch. Even this went wrong a few times, and I had to completely uninstall Quicktime too before the installation would successfully complete.

It’s working now finally, but I’ve probably spent a good 4 hours or so on this today. What a complete waste of time.