The timing couldn’t be more perfect. I’m on the road, with evenings free to bump against the four walls of my hotel room, the usual assortment of iPods in my computer bag (and also, finally, Apple’s Composite AC Cable to jack one of those new iPods into the room TV’s composite video port) and I receive this message from the iTunes Store:
Your pre-order item “Ratatouille” by “Brad Bird” is now available for download….To download your pre-order item, open iTunes and select Store (or Advanced for iTunes 6 or lower) from the iTunes menu and click Check for Purchases.
Excellent! The hotel TV was offering something with Keanu Reeves that costs nearly as much as this latest Pixar pic. In a battle between Rat & Reeves, who would you pick? I thought so.
I dutifully select Store -> Check For Purchases and… nothing. iTunes tells me that all purchases have been downloaded.
What the…?
Ah, but I’m aware that the Store is cognizant of my pre-orders. I know this because when you click on your Apple ID in the upper-right corner of the Store’s window and enter your password (or sign in and enter both your Apple ID and password), the Apple Account Information page tells you the number of items you’ve pre-ordered. I wondered if rummaging around in this Information page would reveal the answer.
Indeed it did. As soon as I entered the page, up pops an alert telling me that Ratatoille was waiting for my simple download command. Because the hotel’s Internet connection would be considered speedy only when compared to an iron-deprived sea cucumber I chose to leave Pixar’s latest right where it was until my MacBook Pro and I found ourselves in a location more broadband rich.
Just for the pure joy of it, I also clicked the email alert’s Check for available pre-orders now link to see if it produced better results and, sure enough, it launched Safari, which, in turn, launched iTunes, which, in its own turn, confirmed that Ratatoille was just dying to come home with me.
Given all the evidence to support its existence would now invoking Store -> Check For Purchases reveal my movie?
Well, no. Why I can’t say but I was pleased to discover there are more ways than one to flambe this particular rat.
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