Ok this was too beautiful to not post. I use Macs as people know by now and I’ve been a Mac bigot for a long time. I’m much less of one now, but when something egregious happens, I love to post about it.
So I also use the wonderful Harmony remote. The Harmony was bought my Logitech, whom I despise for many reasons I won’t go into.
I had bought a Harmony for my folks and something changed in their setup and now my brother needed to change the remote. He calls me asking for the login info which I didn’t have for some damn reason so I told him to check the site and see if they can email the info.
Well they can’t But you can plug in the remote and it’ll find it for you! Sweet. Oh, but I had set it up from my laptop and Mom didn’t have the software on her iMac. Ok so Matt goes to the site to get the software. Well you have to log in to get the software.
Ugh!
Alright, well while he hunted for the CD in Los Angeles, I filed a bug on Logitech’s website stating this catch 22. Here are the basics from the report as sent to me from their system. I emphasized the important bits.
Customer (Steven Riggins) 06/19/2005 03:29 PM My mom didn’t have her account info, so it said plug in the remote, but she doesn’t have the software, and you need to log in to get the software LOL. Why can’t people just download the software without the antics? Auto-Response 06/19/2005 03:29 PM This is an autoresponse message. We have received your support request and will be responding soon. Question Reference #050619-000328 Product Level 1: Harmony Remote Product Level 2: H659 Model Number: 659 Operating System: MacOS 10.3x Computer Brand: Apple
Alright, I get a nice prompt reply this morning.
We are sorry to hear of this issue. We have provided a link to the software below. We have also forwarded this incident to our supervisors so they can review this and ensure the software is accessible in the future without an account. To get the latest Harmony software: 1. Install the latest version of Java from http://www.java.com/en/download/download_the_latest.jsp (Editoral: This is Windows Java link!) 2. Once this has finished reboot your computer 3. Go to http://images.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/Downloads/LogitechHarmonyInstaller4.4.exe 4. Save this file to your desktop 5. Run the file once it is finished downloading. This will install the software
Hello! So not only should I download a Java Runtime and run this exe to extract a Java app, they linked me all Windows stuff, after it was clear, twice, I used a Mac.
Alright, my response:
Dear Kyle, Thank you for typical Logitech support. Now if you would not mind reading the bug report and seeing that we are on Mac OS X 10.3 and not Windows, you can try again. Sincerely, Steve
LOL I know, I know, but I can’t stand it when people do this. Anyway, here was their response, also timely:
We would like to apologize about the confusion on our part in our answer. We have attached the link to the Mac version of our software. Before you install the software, please ensure there are no updates for your Mac system. The software is located at: http://images.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/Downloads/LogitechHarmonyInstaller4.4.dmg
LOL. Just a simple disk image which auto expanded itself. Ahhhhhh, no java runtime, just an installer. I love my Mac!
Kudos to Logitech for timeliness and simplicity of the installer and for keeping the Mac client up to date. They just need to read their reports more clearly next time. 🙂
Now I wonder if this new software works. Well the software went from version 0.1 to 4.4.0. Safari downloaded the update file and the harmony app saw it immediately. Now it is uploading new info to the remote. Update went fine and the remote works great!
1 comment
Comments are closed.