To finish the installation please restart your computer
As an addendum to the Apple iTune installation that wiped my playlists you also get the stupid instruction listed above. Why is it stupid let me take you back a little through computer history to explain.
Think of the operating system as a machine, picture it as one of the original printing mechanised presses, one with thumping plates, gears and valves. So the machine is working happily printing out posters or whatever and you need to change one of the rusting gears for a new one. Now in theory that section of the machine isn't being used while it's printing, it's part of the mechanism to load the type. So in theory you can change the gear while the machine is running, except it's not worth the risk if the machine suddenly attempts to use that part while you're swapping it out. So you switch off the machine, change the gear, and restart it.
That's the situation with the Windows operating system, or at least it was. Changes were being made all the way back to Windows 95 and culminated it XP and its descendent since. So back to our new and improved printing press.
You want to change the same part but now it's possible to isolate that part of the machine from the rest while it's working. Even if the machine attempted to use that gear while it was being swapped out it just wouldn't be able to and in theory wouldn't even try. The machine can keep running, you swap the gear, and de-isolate that section so it can be used again.
Now hopefully using this analogy it becomes obvious that there are still some things you can't alter while the machine is running - I wouldn't be able to swap the printing plate itself for instance. For such occurrences I still need to switch the machine off first. However hopefully it should be just as obvious that such changes should only occur with items that affect the direct working of the machine itself.
Translate that back to operating system terms and restarts should only be necessary when the system itself is being altered. So the question is - Is iTunes altering the system itself, if so what is it doing and if not why does it need a restart?
3 comments:
Who knows? Maybe it needs to restart so that all the keyloggers and DRM monitors it's installed can run?
(If you think that sounds paranoid, recall the Sony rootkit DRM fiasco. Simply putting the CD into your computer silently and irreversibly installs an application which monitors the CD-ROM drive and digitally distorts any audio data extracted from it. Not just from the DRM-protected CD, but from any CD! This even if you decline the license agreement that flashes up…)
It might indeed be a holdover from Apple's DRM days. I mean if this was a version that was built for 95,98, ME etc. then sure I can understand the can't be bothered so let's reboot attitude, but this is a Vista only installation.
Also, I've seen plenty of installers demand that you reboot even though you don't actually need to. As in, they just add the message as a matter of course, without bothering to check whether it's required.
(Heck, I've even inserted a USB flash drive and had Windows itself ask if I want to reboot, even though I can *see* the files on the drive!)
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