25th
Eye-Fi: How not to write software
The two main bugs I ran into were:
(A) When connecting to my Eye-Fi card for the first time, the Eye-Fi Center and the Eye-Fi webpage refused to let me create a new account, instead asking me to log into my account using my not-yet-existing credentials. Support told me that this should only happen with an already registered card but the Eye-Fi Center clearly showed my card as unregistered (see screenshot post below).
How did I solve it? No idea, at one point clicking somewhere in the window changed the screen from login to register. Trying to repeat this, it went to register right-away. In the end, it might have been that the ‘register’ screen only came up when using the version of the Eye-Fi Center software supplied on the card and not a downloaded, updated version (which the software initially prompted me to do before I even tried to register). Or it was just luck that it worked at some point eventually.
(B) Trying to set up a card became almost impossible on the second day (again it might be that on the first day I used the older card-supplied version of the software but I think I was working fine with the up-to-date software on day one as well). Basically, whenever an Eye-Fi card was directly connected to the computer, logging into my account (to start doing any changes) worked only for one or two seconds and then I would be kicked out again with the login screen appearing as an overlay. Eventually I managed to change my settings, but it was a real pain: hit login button, click field to edit, type one or two characters, be kicked out again, repeat until all changes are done. Every time, I was kicked out, the focus was lost and I had to re-center it to the field in question. A few times, I was able to bring up the settings window (via Eye-Fi Center -> Settings -> Eye-Fi Card) on top of the login screen and it stayed there.
Other minor annoyances are:
(1) Installing the Eye-Fi software required quite a number of Adobe Air updates (which required a felt ten mouse-clicks in total).
(1) Starting the Eye-Fi Helper requires typing four characters into the Spotlight filed (+ four arrow downs) or alternatively tying eight characters.
(2) After starting the Helper, its menu bar icon gives me the beachball for five to ten seconds.
(3) Almost every time I start the Eye-Fi Helper I need to re-type my credentials
(4) For some period, typing the password in the login screen was a real pain as the focus switched from the password field to the user name field after every single keystroke.
(5) At some point the helper software kept crashing on start-up, support told me to re-install, that fixed it for the moment but had occasional crashes since then.
I would not be surprised if part of the blame actually lies with Adobe Air, but overall this is one of the worst pieces of software I have used.
