ITunes won't connect to my iPod, continued...

After a bit of research, I decided that I might need to 'authorize' this laptop.  I've got iTunes installed on the laptop, and it's supposed to be able to connect to my iPod so that I can add or delete songs, because you can't delete them directly from your iPod. >:( Actually, I don't want to delete a song, I want to delete a free scientific lecture that I downloaded as a test.   You can't stop a download in progress either, by the way.  I went through all this already.  So now that this unwanted free download is on my iPod, I want to delete it, and I can't delete it on the iPod itself - I have to delete it on my laptop, in iTunes.

So I find that when I hook up my iPod, it won't connect to the iTunes program.  It connects well enough to recharge its power supply.  It connects well enough that it appears in iTunes's menu on the left side, showing that the iPod is a device connected.  But if you click on that, it disappears and won't come back, unless you shut down iTunes and restart the program.  You can't open it up and look at the contents of the iPod, from within iTunes.

I researched complaints like this on the net, and I had some trouble finding a help file on my own computer, but I did eventually find an offline help file to read.  Somewhere, I got the idea that maybe my laptop wasn't yet authorized to play the songs that I purchased on the iPod.  I purchased them already, but they think that I'm copying them and sharing them or whatever.  You're not allowed to share the files with unauthorized computers, so it won't let you use your laptop to look into the iPod's contents to delete the unwanted download, which you couldn't stop from downloading.  (Yes, other iPod users were making the same complaint.)  And this was a FREE download, so its authors didn't even care if you shared it with everyone!  But you're still not allowed to move it from your iPod to your unauthorized computer.

So I've authorized my laptop now and I'm going to try again to connect it to the iPod and look inside it.  I don't have my iPod with me right now, but I'll report the results later on.

OMG, something else annoyed me.  This laptop is brand new.  You know how I'm always complaining that I hate web pages that can't be viewed properly or operated properly, with buttons that won't push, and that kind of thing, unless you have the LATEST, GREATEST version of Internet Explorer, and no other browser will work, and no browser older than a couple years will work, especially not old Opera on my Windows 98 computer?  Well, guess what.  I'm on my BRAND NEW laptop.  It's so new, that parts of the monitor are still covered in the sticky tape that protects it while it's still in the box.  I have the latest, greatest version of internet explorer and I'm using it right now.

Well, I decided to reset my iTunes password.  I thought I knew what it was, but I got it wrong twice.  So I reset it to something I would remember.  First, I had to wait a long time for the password reset page to load, but that's not unusual for a secure web page.  When it loaded, I couldn't see the whole page.  I could see a choice: do you want us to email a link to you, or do you want to answer a security question?  But that was all I could see.  There was no 'yes' button for me to push, just those questions to choose from.  The page was too big to see.

I looked for a scroll bar.  There was no scroll bar.  The page was too big to display, but yet, there wasn't a scrollbar down on the bottom so that you could move out to the sides, and there wasn't even a scrollbar on the right side of the screen to scroll up and down.  There was nothing.

I clicked my touchpad to highlight the text, and then I slid the cursor down to the bottom.  Bingo - when I highlighted text and then moved down, the page scrolled for me so I could continue highlighting the bottom of the page.  That was a trick I learned years ago while working at a job where I had to look at badly designed web pages all day long, and find ways to print them.  I learned lots of tricks to make web pages viewable or printer friendly when they had strange problems like no scrollbars.  Some other tricks include things like:  taking a screenshot of the page and then pasting it into the drawing program, and then printing that image, if you have one of those web pages that wants to print a panel here on one page, and another panel on a separate page. 

This password reset page was one of THOSE kinds of web pages, not viewable, having strange unpredictable problems doing something which ought to have been straightforward and simple.  But I'm using the latest, greatest version of internet explorer.  It should be able to handle anything.  I was VERY annoyed.

After using the highlight-and-slide trick, I saw that there was a little zoom setting on the bottom right, saying '100%', and when I changed that to 50%, I could see the whole page.  I'm not used to this new laptop; I'm not used to internet explorer; and I'm not used to using a touchpad instead of a mouse, because I didn't bring my mouse with me.  I'm using the bare minimum netbook right now, no electrical cord, no mouse, a naked netbook.  So I have to use it the hard way.  Every little thing I want to do is a challenge that takes several minutes to figure out. 

Well, anyway.  So I couldn't even view the page properly, and it wouldn't interact with my browser properly (by creating scrollbars so that I could view the whole page).  I was very annoyed.  I can't believe that this kind of stuff is STILL going on in my latest, greatest browser.  No wonder that I'm still using Windows 98 and an ancient browser - the new ones are just barely any better than the old ones. 

I was thinking, does Curtis know that if he gets an iPad computer, he won't be able to view Flash on the internet?  I don't know if he wants to.  But I think that includes YouTube.  My iPod has a special app for viewing YouTube, but of course, it didn't work for a long time.  Then I got an updated version, and it sort of worked for a while.  I could be mistaken about this, but I think you can't view YouTube.  Maybe you can just get an app.  I think that's it.  Yeah, I think it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be.  Anyway.  I was just reading about this somewhere, reading about the iPad.  I just know about my own irritation with anything having to do with Apple.  Well anyway, I'll try this later today and comment whether it worked yet, whether I can look into my iPod or not. 

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I'm going to try to find Curtis again before the end of this month.  That has nothing to do with the rest of this post.