ITunes can't install because iTunes is being installed






  • This kind of thing happens quite alot...

    I'm wondering if it's the MSI software that's causing this or the software developers that rely on it that forget to exclude the installer itself from the check

     



  • Did you have iTunes running in the background when you tried to install the update? It's a perfectly legitimate error. Might have been a bit clearer if they'd named the installer something different from the app's name, like "iTunes + Quicktime Installer".



  • Legitimate? Your copy of iTunes (or QuickTime Player?) is called "iTunes + QuickTime"? Funny, I always thought iTunes, QuickTime Player and Picture Viewer were separate applications. I would imagine that the similarity between the title bar and the name of the offending program is not a coincidence.

    Personally, I just wish that Apple Software Update would recognise that I have QuickTime only installed and stop telling me to update to iTunes + QuickTime. (I use Winamp) I also wish QuickTime playback didn't involve some ludicrous Export Controller that causes the QuickTime framework to take forever and a year to load whenever I want to watch anything. WMV, MPEG and DivX playback has no such problems. I have QuickTime installed for compatibility, not because I like any part of it at all.



  • Kill quicktime, install quicktime alternative. Sorted.



  • My favourite bit is that when you want to uninstall iTunes after realising how poorly designed it is you can then find out that there are hundreds of Mb of files left in %appdata%, %allusersprofiles%, needless registry keys in HKLM and HKCU, and the pointless Apple Software Update.

    Sadly I had to go through this process to upgrade my sister's software from 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 to stop her iPod Nano from continuing to crash randomly.



  • My favourite one was when trying to remove it from someone's machine and after uninstallation after every reboot there was some fragment of it left that continued to reassociate as many file types as possible with it. This meant that no media files could be double-clicked to play as windows gave the usual "can't find associated program" dialog. I managed to sort it out eventually but it reminded me so much of various pieces of malware, if I didn't delete all its files (hidden in a million places) along with all the registry entries then there was always something that would recreate them. I'm still not sure it was entirely gone at the end, maybe I just got rid of enough to stop it being able to recreate everything on every boot.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Personally, I just wish that Apple Software Update would recognise that I have QuickTime only installed and stop telling me to update to iTunes + QuickTime. (I use Winamp) I also wish QuickTime playback didn't involve some ludicrous Export Controller that causes the QuickTime framework to take forever and a year to load whenever I want to watch anything. WMV, MPEG and DivX playback has no such problems. I have QuickTime installed for compatibility, not because I like any part of it at all.

     Funny enough, I have no problems with iTunes or QuickTime.  Then again I use a Mac....



  • @dphunct said:

     Funny enough, I have no problems with iTunes or QuickTime.  Then again I use a Mac....

    So do I. I have a computer each with Win2k, WinXP, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10.4.9 on, as well as various other weird stuff.

    I still have a problem with the Mac. It doesn't run Winamp.



  • Silly Gooses!

    You don't need Quicktime!

    Install VLC to play Quicktime movies. And install Quicktime Alternative to ensure that you can play them in your browser. No Quicktime updating or any of that other crap to bother with, just the right codecs and the right registry keys to make them do their job.



  • VLC comes with a complete QuickTime-7-compatible video decoder? That's mighty impressive. However, I wish VLC came with an "actually work" mode -- I tried VLC recently in Windows 2000 and it did, well, pretty much nothing but get its knickers in a twist. Generally, no playback, no movie info, no nothing. A bit of wrong window sizing and a mental note that if you use a certain skin, you lose the menu bar for good.

    I use Media Player Classic but MPC still relies on real QuickTime, which still loads the Export Controller first (takes forever). But .mov files are still associated with QuickTime Player since there's no fast way to get into QuickTime.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    VLC comes with a complete QuickTime-7-compatible video decoder? That's mighty impressive.

    The best solution is simply to install a standard QuickTime DirectShow filter. QuickTime alternative will do this.

    Of course, some media players (eg Winamp) decide to do their own thing and not use DirectShow so this won't help, which I guess is yet another WTF. If Windows offers a standard way to decode media, why not use it? ;-)



  • I use VLC for everything. The only thing I have issues with (other than the obvious <expletive deleted> rm's, which sometimes work but suck anyway) are some wmv's where it can't pull the keyframes properly. It stills plays them, they just look bad in places.



  • @benryves said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    VLC comes with a complete QuickTime-7-compatible video decoder? That's mighty impressive.

    The best solution is simply to install a standard QuickTime DirectShow filter. QuickTime alternative will do this.

    Of course, some media players (eg Winamp) decide to do their own thing and not use DirectShow so this won't help, which I guess is yet another WTF. If Windows offers a standard way to decode media, why not use it? ;-)

    Actually, I rather think Winamp can do DirectShow, with a plugin. But I quite like the VLC approach of eschewing plugins althogether - no need to hunt for codecs, just play anything in VLC! Seriously, I don't think I've ever found anything it wouldn't play. I don't care if it eats my CPU cycles like Homer eats doughnuts, I've got plenty :)
     



  • @misha said:

    Actually, I rather think Winamp can do DirectShow, with a plugin. But I quite like the VLC approach of eschewing plugins althogether - no need to hunt for codecs, just play anything in VLC! Seriously, I don't think I've ever found anything it wouldn't play. I don't care if it eats my CPU cycles like Homer eats doughnuts, I've got plenty :)

    I do not.

    I don't install video support for Winamp for at least two reasons. It saves on RAM by not having video playback code held in memory all the time (or increasing paging) when I can have it load on demand with MPC. I also don't want to interfere with my music -- Winamp, like pretty much every music player -- has poor support for multiple tunes at once. If I want to play a second MP3 while I have another one (normally a DJ mix) paused, I just launch WMP 6. But to have to start a second Winamp manually and feed it the video file (since double-click would replace my music with the video in the already-running Winamp) would be a pain. I'll stick to a separate video player. I did try MPC for audio on my laptop but it was pretty bad at it.

    VLC, I'll only waste time reinstalling under duress since it failed to do anything for me at all. MPC is far more reliable, install-free and adequately configurable. It doesn't come with its own versions of every codec like you're suggesting (which surely makes no sense at all), but that is probably a good thing in the end. I wouldn't mind if it magically supported Real media without me having to put Real Player on here though ;)



  • @pinkduck said:

    My favourite bit is that when you want to uninstall iTunes after realising how poorly designed it is you can then find out that there are hundreds of Mb of files left in %appdata%, %allusersprofiles%, needless registry keys in HKLM and HKCU, and the pointless Apple Software Update.

     

    Eh, sounds like just about every other application in the Windows universe.

    Personally, I can't stand installers and such - just have everything in a standalone folder. Fully test your libraries, statically link so you don't have to worry about shared library nonsense, and allows for de-installing to be in a single fell swoop. ;-)

    More realistically: I think a big unsung thing OS / application writers should focus on is the improvement of install / uninstall features, including a more appropriate separation of application and per-user configuration and data.

    I also hate when various applications eat other applications' file associations without prompting ( a few installers actually ask if you want to do this; others typically just take them and don't ask questions).

    Yes, it's disappointing as one who appreciates Apple to see that they fall into typical software usability pitfalls like a poor install/uninstall experience, but as there are very few companies who get this right I don't think it's a glaring offense - it's not like it's violating the status quo. That is very unfortunate though, that the status quo is "marginal suckiness" :-/



  • @too_many_usernames said:

    More realistically: I think a big unsung thing OS / application writers should focus on is the improvement of install / uninstall features, including a more appropriate separation of application and per-user configuration and data.

    I also hate when various applications eat other applications' file associations without prompting ( a few installers actually ask if you want to do this; others typically just take them and don't ask questions).

    Yes, it's disappointing as one who appreciates Apple to see that they fall into typical software usability pitfalls like a poor install/uninstall experience, but as there are very few companies who get this right I don't think it's a glaring offense - it's not like it's violating the status quo. That is very unfortunate though, that the status quo is "marginal suckiness" :-/

    Pretty much all of the unix and bsd platforms get all of this right. Windows and macos are the exceptions, not the status quo.



  • Actually, I rather like the way OS X does things. Usually the only programs that need an installer are those who really need to put their stuff in unusual places (like shell-based apps). You can install various different versions of the same app just by renaming one installation and OS X even is smart enough to distinguish between them by version number (at least it does so for Preview). I'm also rather fond of "download DMG, mount DMG, copy application, close DMG, delete DMG" being the whole setup instructions - very easy to get.

    Of course it doesn't solve the applications-eating-file-associations issue, but if they prevented the installer from doing so the app writers would just do it at first app launch. This is an ego issue, not a technical one. 

    What OS X needs is a decent package manager for those apps that don't make sense as an application bundle. Fink is infinitely finicky (on my system it's unusable because I'm not using the exact build of the GCC it requires) and tends to scatter stuff around. Portage is very clean (refusing to put any file outside of /Library/Gentoo) and offers all of Gentoo's flexibility goodness -- but only about 10% of the packages have been converted to the format required under non-Linux. Darwin (now Mac) Ports left me wholly unimpressed the last time I tried it, not offfering most of the packages I wanted.

    It'd be nice if Apple could officially adopt a package manager and make sure it integrates with the rest of the system...



  • @Kemp said:

    My favourite one was when trying to remove it from someone's machine and after uninstallation after every reboot there was some fragment of it left that continued to reassociate as many file types as possible with it. This meant that no media files could be double-clicked to play as windows gave the usual "can't find associated program" dialog. I managed to sort it out eventually but it reminded me so much of various pieces of malware, if I didn't delete all its files (hidden in a million places) along with all the registry entries then there was always something that would recreate them. I'm still not sure it was entirely gone at the end, maybe I just got rid of enough to stop it being able to recreate everything on every boot.

    If it behaves that much like malware, treat it as malware. HijackThis is your friend... 



  • @j6cubic said:

    Of course it doesn't solve the applications-eating-file-associations issue, but if they prevented the installer from doing so the app writers would just do it at first app launch. This is an ego issue, not a technical one. 

    There's no reason why the application should be allowed to modify them either. But more to the point, most of the unix-like platforms implement a database of mime types that anything can register to, and it records all of the applications registered to each mime type, not just the most recent one. That's all it takes to solve the problem.



  • @asuffield said:

    @j6cubic said:

    Of course it doesn't solve the applications-eating-file-associations issue, but if they prevented the installer from doing so the app writers would just do it at first app launch. This is an ego issue, not a technical one. 

    There's no reason why the application should be allowed to modify them either. But more to the point, most of the unix-like platforms implement a database of mime types that anything can register to, and it records all of the applications registered to each mime type, not just the most recent one. That's all it takes to solve the problem.



    Windows does that too.  It's still really annoying when the default program associated with a file type changes.



  • @dphunct said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Personally, I just wish that Apple Software Update would recognise that I have QuickTime only installed and stop telling me to update to iTunes + QuickTime. (I use Winamp) I also wish QuickTime playback didn't involve some ludicrous Export Controller that causes the QuickTime framework to take forever and a year to load whenever I want to watch anything. WMV, MPEG and DivX playback has no such problems. I have QuickTime installed for compatibility, not because I like any part of it at all.

     Funny enough, I have no problems with iTunes or QuickTime.  Then again I use a Mac....


    Ditto

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