Please Note: My personal journal is now fully independent of my main personal Web site, but I am still working on some things such as my new page designs and many improvements to PageDrive, my software that runs my journal site. If you encounter any technical problems, please either just try again a while later or let me know.
I just installed iTunes 7.4.1.2 on my Windows Vista system four or five times—first simply allowing Apple Software Update to do its thing, then trying the "Download Only" option and running the installer directly after Apple Software Update failed (Apple Software Update always fails to update iTunes on this system), and eventually giving up on Apple Software Update altogether and downloading a fresh iTunes installer via Apple's download page. Both of the latter methods resulted in apparently working iTunes installations, but both also resulted in iTunes Setup Assistant windows appearing with a "Warning!" message I have never before seen every time I start iTunes:
iTunes was not properly installed. If you wish to import or burn CDs, you need to reinstall iTunes.
I tried. A few times. It didn't work. That, unfortunately, was not a very helpful warning message at all.
iTunes 7.4.1.2 seems like a step backward, at least when running under my installation of 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium. I don't know if the iTunes installation problems are peculiar to this version of Windows, to Windows Vista in general, to all 64-bit versions of Windows, or what, but installation worked fine under the 32-bit version of Windows XP Professional that I have running on my recently rebuilt and demoted secondary system (currently dual-booting that version of Windows and the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.04) while Apple as a company has been specifically promoting and advancing 64-bit computing with Mac OS X, so I wish they would extend that 64-bit love to their customers who want to run their software on and connect their devices to and buy their media through the 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.
Of course, Microsoft could have made things easier for people using 64-bit versions of Windows by simply recognizing how many new systems are shipping with 64-bit processors and making only 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. Then software developers would either support 64-bit Windows Vista or no version of Windows Vista and the tighter support focus would result in faster, better software support for everyone.
I miss having a Mac. Apple software has its problems under Mac OS X as well, of course, but the overall iTunes and Software Update experiences just feel cleaner and more solid under Mac OS X than with Apple's Windows versions. The same is true of QuickTime and Safari, although the Windows versions of QuickTime have gotten much better over the years and I think Safari—beta or otherwise—comes in a peculiar combination of a somewhat ugly and clunky-looking application wrapped around a great rendering engine with strange JavaScript behavior regardless of platform or version. At least Safari looks like a native application on Mac OS X, though; the Windows version looks out of place and seems slower than native-appearance windows.
