JON HONEYBALL "Apple's headset still delights me, one of the few products that has the capability to make me gasp in wonder"

In a month where WiFi 7 starts to deliver on its promises and a six-year-old Mac mini listens to its master's voice, only one thing irritates Jon - and it isn't his Vision Pro

- JON HONEYBALL

I am getting increasingly annoyed with companies that make it difficult to update their software. Ideally, an app should have a “Check for update” menu item. Even better if there’s a “Check every day” switch as well, so I immediately get informed of an update.

It’s common in the high-end test equipment world for such downloads to require a login to companies’ sites. Sometimes access is limited to those on an ongoing support contract, so that makes sense. I have to log in to Audio Precision (ap.com) to access the latest software for my APX517 or to Audiomatica (audiomatica.com) for its CLIO audio analyser.

But for mainstream software, this login requirement is just a bind.

It gets worse when the company involved makes the process actively hostile. Take, for example, VMware Fusion, VMware's hypervisor for macOS, similar to Parallels Desktop. Imagine my surprise when I chose “Check for Updates” and was presented with a “Software update/ Checking” page, and then a popup box saying: “The update server could not be resolved. Check your internet settings or contact your system administrator.”

Naturally, I had a long, hard word with myself. And decided that there was nothing wrong with my internet settings, either for myself or for my computer.

Then I stumbled across an article on Broadcom’s knowledge base (tinyurl.com/371vmware) that said: “The product update feature is no longer available in VMware Workstation, Player, Fusion and VMRC. On clicking the Check for Updates option, an error stating Update Server could not be resolved will be presented.” And then: “Moving forward, updates will need to be manually downloaded from the Broadcom Support Portal.”