comcast frustrations

ok, so i just swapped out a comcast modem and used their little Comcast Wizard Installer to setup the new modem on my Mac. this was necessary so the modem would have its customer account setup properly. but for some incredibly dumb reason the installer didn’t just setup the modem, it modified my local computer’s network configuration for no good reason and in doing so it broke my Airport menu status icon completely. afterwards it just read “Airport: Not configured” even with the network connected and working fine. also, i could no longer use an “Automatic” network location in the System Configuration; every attempt to do so would automatically switch me to some new and pointless “Comcast” location it created. I say pointless because the network is setup to be a generic, automatically configured wireless network - no special settings at all. no configuration needed, you know? so why are they modifying my local settings in any way at all?

this is the kind of behavior that really used to piss me off when i worked in apple’s os engineering group: poorly behaved developers writing shoddy software causing needless aggravation.

anyway, after finding their uninstaller on the CD and uninstalling their software everything is back to normal. but i really want to know what they were doing that caused so much odd behavior. also of note (and so you gentle reader who got here via google can find this page), under status for my wireless connection it no longer said “Airport” but instead said “PCI Ethernet ‡±¨Ä, Port 2″ (yes, those garbage characters were really what showed up). that was disconcerting to say the least. what was the installer doing?!

i want the hour of my life back, comcast. thank you for your needlessly poor customer experience. i’m available for some consulting, by the way. i’d be happy to tell you in more detail how to improve this mess. please, let me help you.

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