Hmmmm.....

Right. This is a convoluted way of getting around to my main point, but it neatly illustrates how silly and convoluted things can get, unnecessarily, too.

I'm going to the rather swanky and exclusive Roof Gardens nightclub/restaurant in Kensington in a few weeks (guest-list only darling, didn't you know? *looks down nose*) and although getting on the guest list might prove to be a bit of a mission, I didn't exactly expect viewing the freakin' website to be one as well.

The charade starts with the rather charming, and undoubtedly (hopefully) efficacious 360-degree panorama gimmick that the page linked above directs you to - and I hope that it may be so effective because I've arranged one on our company website as well, although it is a far less exclusive environment: we'll take your money no matter how you are dressed (click the bottom-most button on the nav-bar, marked `virtual`, if you really want to see our yards).

From this innocuous point we realise that the old man's PC, at which I am currently operating, does not, in fact, have Quick Time installed. Attempting to install quicktime from the ubiquitous `activeX control` bar that drops down below the toolbars in Windows XP leads only to a disappointing series of attempts, reattempts, failures and subsequent keyboard-thrashings.

The consumption of much beer hasn't exactly improved my reaction to these things of course, but still it is frustrating for even the sober among us, I am sure.

Then I get to manually install QuickTime as you naturally would, and after looking in all the usual haunts (ZDNet.com, Cnet.com, download.com etc.) for a hassle-free download (ha!) I find that Apple has caught every download site worth mentioning in some mirror-free licensing trap, and all the damn downloads go through the official Apple Quicktime download page.

Go on, try and get it with no strings attached. I dare you.

The bloody thing tries to bloody install bloody iTunes, and I tell you what; iF*ckng don't want it.

This rather wonderful blogger both sums it up best and saves my stressed out e-Bacon as well, as he has found the (fairly obvious, but really rather innapropriate in that it is even necessary) backdoor to the standalone download, and has also suitably chastised Apple in his nicely prominent tech industry blog for this underhanded and thoroughly consumer-unfriendly practice. `Bad Apple, dirty Apple, in-your-bed!!!`- as Harry Hill might once have said.

If anyone wants a stress-free, iTunes-free, bullsh*it-free new copy of Apple's latest Quicktime player then simply go here.

There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?

Well maybe not. But it shouldn't have been presented to us in this way in the first place, and given the general lack of tech-savvy that an awful lot of 'net users possess these days (consider the increasing bulk of older, non-'net-savvy users there are now) this is an unfair and totally innapropriate marketing strategy.

Shame on you, Apple, massive acid-heads that you probably all are .