Revengeful Lobster

At work I use an Apple laptop. An iMacintoshPowerG4Book Semi-Pro, or whatever they’re called. When I was given it, I realised I hadn’t used a Mac since they were uncool. Or at least, since you didn’t need to wear a beret and black polo neck to appreciate them.

Anyway, until yesterday I hadn’t really been getting along with its not-quite-unix ways. Here’s a little backstory. Having landed myself a new job, I decided to treat myself to a new PC at home. My old machine, hachiroku, was fast approaching retirement age, so I spec’ed up a new rig based around a quad-core processor and 4GB of RAM. Slap it all in a shiny new case, and add water cooling. Pics of ultraviolet-reactive green fluid being pumped around components that really don’t enjoy getting wet soon.

Isambard, for that is the new machine’s name, runs Vista. Go me.

The phone I currently use is a Sony Ericsson P990i. The phone charger it came with died ages ago, but that wasn’t a problem because I could charge it off the USB data cable. The other day, just a few days after having turned hachiroku off for the last time and canabalising its parts, my phone’s battery died, again. “No problem, I’ll just plug in my data cable,” I say to myself. But naturally, isambard won’t charge the phone unless the drivers are installed. RIGHT. This is where I remember how utterly incapable SE are at writing software for PCs. There are no “drivers” for SE phones, at least, not on their website, but only “PC Suite”; an irradiated mutation of an application designed to feast on the digital flesh of your computer and seep festering ichor all over your desktop.

PC Suite installs without a hitch, aside from the obvious soul-rendering and mind-melting realisation that I’ve just Doomed Us All. “Great, so now I can charge my phone?” Not so fast, first I have to establish a connection. Which is in fact the driver installation process. Connect up the phone, listen to the bongly-beeps, and press whichever button says “automatic”. This is where I notice the flaw in my plan, and the massive, massive failure in system design illustrated by Microsoft since the original XBox controller, and from Sony since everything they ever do, ever.

The phone won’t switch on long enough to install the drivers. The moment it dies, the driver installation stops with a friendly “device unplugged” message. Gee, thanks. Now, I’m on the verge of my contract expiring, so I’m seriously considering tearing my phone to pieces, and proceed to throw every piece into a fire.

In what can only be described as a fit of insanity brought about by overexposure to poorly-written abomination-ware, I decided to search for “Mac OS P990 drivers” on Google. Lo and behold, such drivers exist, and were even possible to install without connecting the phone to my Mac.

To cut a long story short, I can charge my phone off my Mac. No thanks to Gates. Or Flint. Or Jobs for that matter. I don’t want my next phone to be able to talk to anything, not even other phones.