Addressing Bias in Technical Solutions
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@DustinB3403 If you desire to actually be useful, try to refrain from obvious bias. This entire post just does nothing but set me on edge because of the tone.
I may need these instructions sometime, but even the title would cause me to skip it in a search result.
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@JaredBusch if you read the subject without a "tone" that you're assuming is in the OP, you'd realize that no tone is applied.
Apple Backup literally leaves a pile of "unusable files" on your system. Please stop assuming when it comes to topics I post.
Thank you.
DustinB3403
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I have to agree with Jared here. "Pile" is not a term for a group of files and I can't figure out how to read that without the implied "of crap" after it. And they are certainly not unusable files, that is purely a Windows issue with file detection as we determined in the discussions leading up to this. The iPhone literally leaves you with a folder full of totally useful audio files with no issues whatsoever.
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As we can tell from the directions, the directions themselves point out that nothing is wrong with the files. Having to change the name of a file to accommodate Windows' lack of file detection is the issue. These files work transparently for people on other OSes. This is a specific issue around old DOS functionality in Windows that has been carried forward and causes tons of problems. Yet another example of where Windows fails at being user friendly. Windows requires that end users understand file types and extensions, just part of "using Windows."
While generally I do not find Mac OSX to be user friendly, it's inheritance from there UNIX world makes it naturally far more powerful and easy to use around file types. All UNIX systems would see these files as a specific type and be able to use them. Adding extensions is just a crutch for Windows which chooses to not use that same capabilities here.
If you want to imply that there is an issue, the issue is one of these three things:
- You have end users on an OS they don't understand and should consider getting them onto something that is more user friendly.
- You have a mismatch of ecosystems and what is meant to be user friendly on one is not on another - you are doing a direct file move from UNIX to Windows and Windows just doesn't have enough smarts to handle this well.
- Windows just lacks the functionality that you want.
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That only Windows-level metadata is modified to "fix" these files and no file changes were made proves that the files were totally useful and that the issue was in the OS identifying them. If you had to fix corrupted files, modify the files themselves or whatever, that would constitute non-working files.
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I don't want to get into the definition of what "useless" is.
Useless is completely dependent to the person looking at them.
An average user on windows will look at this backup folder and say "Now What?" the files are useless to them without a 3rd party application to extract the files they need. (On windows)
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@DustinB3403 said:
An average user on windows will look at this backup folder and say "Now What?" the files are useless to them without a 3rd party application to extract the files they need. (On windows)
An AVERAGE user does not collect 600 voicemails on an iPhone and migrate them to Windows and want to work with them on Windows. Average does not apply here.
Average also does not do file manipulation between UNIX and Windows. These are power user tasks.
Average people can't do all kinds of things. And it is not to blame Apple for making a system that works great everywhere, including Mac OSX, but not on Windows. You say that the iPhone leaves a pile of useless files. I say that Windows chooses not to do something useful with them. The average user should probably not have been given an OS that they are not prepared to use, right?
The wording of your post was absolutely biased to make it sound like the iPhone was screwing over Windows and Windows users rather than doing industry standard things and Windows choosing to not operate logically on those files. I'm not saying that either is right or wrong, the real mistake is in trying to move iPhone audio files to Windows or even having all those vmails at all.
We are into "not how things are meant to be used" territory. So things like "average" and "ease of use" do not apply.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Useless is completely dependent to the person looking at them.
Then the computer itself is useless and this thread is pointless.
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@DustinB3403 said:
I don't want to get into the definition of what "useless" is.
Useless is completely dependent to the person looking at them.
An average user on windows will look at this backup folder and say "Now What?" the files are useless to them without a 3rd party application to extract the files they need. (On windows)
An average user would not even be doing this. They plug their phone in to iTunes, and make a backup and then they restore. If they even do that much.
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I think that it has also been overlooked that an iTunes backup was used in an attempt to do a data migration. This is someone on Windows trying to use files not intended for that use. That's not Apple's fault. Those files are designed to be restored into an iPhone, not used on a Windows desktop.
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@JaredBusch said:
An average user would not even be doing this. They plug their phone in to iTunes, and make a backup and then they restore. If they even do that much.
Argh, you beat me.
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And these days, isn't the average user:
- Sans computer and only working from mobile devices?
- Those with computers primarily on things like Chromebooks that won't do stuff like this anyway?
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Usefulness is dependent on the person looking at the file(s). The average user in today's world (unless they 're already running Linux) is on Windows.
To them having things that just work (in windows) is the norm. When presented with a file that has no extension (yes a crux to windows file system) the files are "useless" as bias'd as that sounds.
Just because a user has 600 or more voice mail's doesn't make them any less average. They know no better than a child with how things work, or how to properly manage what they have.
Just because an Average user came to me, and specifically asked "Can I upgrade my phone from an iPhone 5 to a 6 and save my voicemail" (which this is a limitation of the iPhone and Verizon who don't carry over the mail box) does not take this out of the "Average" user territory.
Users are average 99.99999% of the time. They don't know and don't care to know how things work.
In regards to Windows, an Average user could and easily would backup to iTunes, it's literally, plug the phone in and connect. What they wouldn't know how to do is listen to their voicemail or see their pictures directly from their backup location.
Which I've been asked by many users over and over again "how do I backup my phone". Not including voicemail there, just their phone. Because they want to save what is on it.
This user's father passed away, the voicemail was all that is left of him, to lose these voicemail the employee would have completely lost their beloved father. So they came to IT to find a solution for them. That is what IT does, we find solutions.
Looking at it from the eyes of the end user (and knowing this end user uses Windows 100% of the time) had to find a solution to sort the pile of files that iTunes dumps into the backup directly.
That solution was to find, sort, and assign an extension to the pertinent files.
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From a solution standpoint, I'd call this user error. Nothing wrong with being a power user or doing things outside of the norm, but when users totally diverge from how products are meant to work and try to take products outside of their purpose and design, you really have to blame the user for issues that might arise, not the vendors.
Apple made one product and it is working exactly as intended and as intended is totally easy to use, useful to the end user and just simple. The files as stored are working and useful. Do a restore and they go right where they are supposed to.
Windows made another product not meant to handle files in this advanced way and makes it very clear that they don't do this. They do this because they see full support of DOS compatibility as more important than UNIX style file detection. They made a tradeoff in backward compatibility versus ease of use. UNIX made the opposite choice, that's all.
So I don't actually see this as a fault anywhere but on the user trying to do something that while it is okay for them to attempt to do, they have no one to blame for issues but themselves. It's like taking your Toyota Prius offroading. It's legal and not what the course or the car are designed for, but there is nothing wrong with doing it as long as the driver deciding to use a Prius for that assumes the responsibility for their actions and decisions.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Usefulness is dependent on the person looking at the file(s). The average user in today's world (unless they 're already running Linux) is on Windows.
Actually that is not true. The average user is actually on UNIX. Whether Mac OSX, Linux, Android, etc.
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@DustinB3403 said:
To them having things that just work (in windows) is the norm. When presented with a file that has no extension (yes a crux to windows file system) the files are "useless" as bias'd as that sounds.
This is like saying that the average car driver drives a Toyota and calling it "useless" when they buy a Ford engine and it doesn't "just fit."
The files are NOT useless here, however. They work perfectly as designed, which is as a backup to be restored. Calling them useless is totally biased. I look at the same files on the same Windows box and they are not broken in any way, they do exactly what they are intended to do.
The problem is that you are doing something they are not intended to do. Once you do that, all of your talk of average users goes out the window. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Are we talking about average people doing average tasks? If so, the files work perfectly. Are we talking about quirky people doing quirky things that nothing is meant to support? Then the files require special effort which we are already well into the range of.
So you have to stop saying average if you want to describe the files as not working.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Just because an Average user came to me, and specifically asked "Can I upgrade my phone from an iPhone 5 to a 6 and save my voicemail" (which this is a limitation of the iPhone and Verizon who don't carry over the mail box) does not take this out of the "Average" user territory.
Average users do not store voicemails and certainly do not migrate voicemails between mobile phones and Windows. Not average in any way.
Average users don't care about voicemails. Period. Nearly average users might care but not enough to back them up. Kinda average users might want a backup.
Under no condition can you, with a straight face, claim that anything approaching an average user has 600 voicemails, cares about them and certainly does not want them migrated to other platforms and especially not using a non-migration tool.
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@DustinB3403 said:
In regards to Windows, an Average user could and easily would backup to iTunes, it's literally, plug the phone in and connect. What they wouldn't know how to do is listen to their voicemail or see their pictures directly from their backup location.
That's not true at all. Lots of us do this, and we backup and restore. Migrating the voicemails to another platform would never occur as an option to an average user.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Which I've been asked by many users over and over again "how do I backup my phone". Not including voicemail there, just their phone. Because they want to save what is on it.
Absolutely. And backing up works perfectly. No question there. Average users take backups.
How does this relate to the non-backup situation at hand? This is a red herring.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
In regards to Windows, an Average user could and easily would backup to iTunes, it's literally, plug the phone in and connect. What they wouldn't know how to do is listen to their voicemail or see their pictures directly from their backup location.
That's not true at all. Lots of us do this, and we backup and restore. Migrating the voicemails to another platform would never occur as an option to an average user.
When the user knows that their voicemail would be lost forever, does the user then ask how do we back it up. Backing up to iTunes is "average" but the files are useless to the same user who perform's that backup. Unless that user is above-average.
