Deauthorize This!


Over the last year+ since leaving Apple, I've been doing some consulting, and working for a number of different companies. During a couple of longer stints, I authorized computers that I was using for iTunes playback, so I could listen to my music library on the job. Being human, when it came time to move on for new opportunities, I had other things on my mind besides remembering to "deauthorize" those computers. Now I find myself down to only three authorizations, and getting help from Apple to solve the problem has been quite exasperating. Today Apple Support finally "reset" my authorizations, which means that now all of my computers are no longer authorized to play my purchased music, but I again have five authorizations, so I can re-authorize them at my leasure. This "solution," which is akin to having to replace all the locks on your car because you lost one key copy, is not very satisfying; to say the least!

So after three attempts to use Apple's iTunes authorization reset form, they finally did it for me. At this point I'm so disillusioned at the unneeded complexity of this process, that I sent the following message to iTunes Feedback. If you've also been stung by this idiotic process, I encourage you to send them a "fixit request" as well.

iFolks:

You need a better way to manage deauthorization of user computers than just warning them to "remember" to deauthorize before giving up access to a particular machine. I mean, they are my five authorizations, right? I pay for them. So why do I need to contact your customer support if I forget to deauthorize a computer before I lose access to it? When I'm getting ready to change employers or upgrade systems, the last thing on my mind is iTunes deauthorization; people are going to forget.

I don't need to go through your customer service in order to change my credit card number, billing address, or e-mail address do I? Why aren't my authorizations available through my account settings in ITMS along with all that other personal, confidential information? You are obviously able to exchange some information with the client computer during the authorization process, why not grab the computer name during the process and identify each authorization with that computer's name and type? It would ease the burden on your support organization, and more importantly, on your users.

I'm a professional software developer myself, and quite frankly, the technical term we have for your authorization/deauthorization process is, "kludge." It's a process that has not been defined and managed well by the developer, so the burden of management is placed upon the end-user. And then to have your support system include that little guilt-trip message with the deauthorization confirmation -- "we're doing this as a favor to you, but we're not obligated to do it..." -- it's just the epitome of kludginess. This system is so far beneath Apple's reputation as a solver of these types of usage issues that it's not even funny. Fix it soon please!

Posted: Sun - December 19, 2004 at 05:08 PM          

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