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Flawed iTunes Stands Out Among Apple's Products
waderoush writes "On top of all the other features that it has crammed into iTunes, Apple this week added Ping, a Facebook-like social network for music discovery. It's all part of the company's plan to dominate the world of consumer media, but Xconomy argues that this time, Apple may have gone a bridge too far. iTunes, nearing its tenth birthday, started out merely as a program for ripping CDs, and has grown increasingly creaky and impenetrable as Apple has added more and more cruft, the article argues. The company won't have a stable base for its new media empire until it rebuilds iTunes from scratch — perhaps along the lines suggested by its other new product this week, the revamped Apple TV."
But there’s one piece of the Appleverse that I’ve always detested, and that’s the desktop version of iTunes. The ugly duckling of the iFamily, this program is hard to understand, hard to use, inelegant, and ill-behaved—in short, the very opposite of most other Apple products. I dread booting it up every day ...
Yeah, yesterday I bitched about this and have actively refused any upgrades to iTunes since 9 because I'm not sure if 10 is going to get better or worse.
... which I am not a fan of. And what's worse is that reviews are telling me that it's faster but with a crappier UI while at the same time Ping concerns me if it has my credit card information and is just a spam portal.
... so that leaves me tied to the beast that is iTunes.
Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine
So while I want iTunes to run faster, I definitely don't want anything to do with this "Ping" service and if it's reminiscent of how they made me dependent on Quicktime (despite the fact that I have never used iTunes for anything video -- VLC kicks ass) I don't want auto-opted into something that I cannot get out of!
If you're looking for open source alternatives to iTunes: CDex, VLC and handbrake
My biggest problem is that support seems to wax and wane with actually moving songs/videos on and off an iPod with open source alternatives
My work here is dung.
What isn't there to like about an application that wants to update itself twice a day and requires you to agree to a new EULA each time?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Kindof like they did with Mac OS X. They should have no problem doing this with iTunes.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Not only is itunes full of cruft, it was originally bought from an outside developer and shoehorned into what apple wanted it to look like. It has been horrible from the get go.
Come on Apple. Everybody knows you can do better than this. I refuse to have iTunes on my machine right now. No bronze leaguers.
is still about all I use iTunes for; well, that and transferring them to my iPod. Can't remember the last time I actually used it to listen to music, and I think I've only "set foot" in the store a few times (and only when I had a coupon for a free download).
I don't really care how big and ugly iTunes gets given how rarely I use it, my only objection is that Apple feels the need to install three different startup processes in Windows along with it - 'cause, you know, it would be absolutely awful if I had to tell Windows what program to use when I connect my iPod to the computer...
I'm sorry, but iTunes is a piece of crap as far as software is concerned. I don't know how smoothly it runs on a Mac, but on Windows it's nigh useless (this is on a Phenom II X4 965 with 4 gigs of RAM, btw).
The day my wife switched over to an alternate piece of software (she uses SharePod) was the day she became much happier.
Living With a Nerd
I use iTunes everyday and it's sucked ever since Apple bought SoundJam MP and renamed it iTunes. No wait, SoundJam MP sucked too.
iTunes is the hillbilly armored Humvee, sure it "works" sometimes but it's still an old clapped out rig with a bunch of crap bolted on to it.
http://www.bartcop.com/chick-jeep.jpg
Hmmm. I don't have the same experience as you. I use iTunes daily without issue. It works fine with my iPhone. It has yet to be "ill-behaved". My only issue with Ping, which I think is a great concept, is that it will probably languish and not catch on. Right now there is not much to it, and without some major initiative on Apple's part to seed it with worthwhile connection opportunities, I don't see it taking off.
I have no interest in Ping, and I don't use it. iTunes 10 continues to work even though I don't use the feature.
In the past year or two of iTunes releases, it's only gotten faster for me. I also noticed that the download for iTunes 10 for Mac OS X is 86 MB, whereas the previous version (9.2.1) was 106 MB.
iTunes 10 is an improvement. Apart from the almost useless Ping, it seems a fair bit faster. The patch notes claim performance improvements and frankly I believe them. I'd recommend it. Only downside I've seen is that the first time you try and download from iTunes Store it attempts to trick you into activating Ping (click Cancel when it asked you for personal information that "might be available to the public.").
I can't believe iTunes is still a Carbon app to this day. Everybody else has updated to Cocoa, what's taking you so long Apple? Are you too busy figuring out ways to break your own Human Interface Guidelines?
I read the internet for the articles.
I got very frustrated with the itunes interface for my 64GB touch and when getting a new phone, opted for GalaxyS rather than the iphone. maybe apple has finally "pooped in its mess kit"
Anything you say will be held against you.
Back when I was on Win2k (or Windows, period) I used Winamp... and then they started adding crap I didn't want that slowed down the program. At least I had the option to keep the older version.
Sounds like iTunes is doing it again. Social networking in my music player?! Not needed. I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Twitter, I don't want that in my music player, I must be a Luddite.
Can't they have a iTunes "lite" that only connects your iPad/Pod, organizes your music, and that's it?
The iTunes "Plus" can play your videos, tweet your OMGLOLs, and buy DRM music for you.
I like to sort my music by Artist --> Album --> Track Number --> Song Name. (Madness; I know.) Apparently this is not what Apple wants. Although I can move any other column anywhere I want, I can't move the "song name" column in iTunes. Does anybody out there know why? Is there a logical reason for this that doesn't involve lazy programming or "because Steve Jobs said so"? I am genuinely puzzled by this.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Um, you do realize that you can use Flash on a Mac right? Also you can download alternative media players to your hearts content.
I was very happy when I turned in my iPhone for a Droid and could remove that POS iTunes from my machine. I would block it by group policy on every network I run if I could.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I lit up Ping last night, it seemed to only know about music I had bought from Apple (1.4% of my library), and said "That user hasn't written any reviews" when I clicked on "My Reviews". Hel-lo? Might you suggest to me, "here's how to write a review?" "would you like to write a review?"
Or maybe, an option to harvest ratings already made (1-5 stars) from my iTunes library, instead of asking me to go wandering through the store?
The route to "review an album" goes down an interesting rabbit hole that accidentally exposes their database organization into the UI. Take an album that is not in Apple's catalog (e.g., Anderson/Burroughs/Giorno, You're the Guy I Want to Share my Money With), you get to the "write a review page" by clicking on the arrow next to a song. This then takes you to a different album containing that song, not the one you might want to review.
I realize that Apple, like everyone else, is just trying to make a buck, but you're not supposed to give the game away quite so crudely. If you don't have the album, say "sorry, we don't have the album in our store. Do you think we should, and would you like to review it anyway?"
Just as a heads-up - Ping is OFF by default. If you want to use it as another spam portal you have to turn it on.
At least they didn't follow the Facebook protocol: add a new insecurity, uh, "feature" and turn it on to the whole world by default.
Death looks every man in the face. All any man can do is look back and smile. - Marcus Aurelius
I assumed it was because they don't want to buy a Windows computer and don't know how to use Linux, *BSD or any of the other alternatives.
Mac hardware for better or for worse tends to work much more reliably in my experience than the Windows equivalents do, for the simple reason that Apple is able to effectively set rules about what is and is not acceptable for the platform. Whereas MS has been caught over the years programming around hardware bugs rather than saying no, we won't support it. The most notable example I can think of is the ACPI debacle, where many motherboards would have buggy implementations which wouldn't properly compile on the Intel reference implementation, but would run fine on Windows thanks to workarounds in the Windows source. Sure it would work, but as a result there'd be consequences and ultimately you'd have a tough time using the hardware with full support outside of Windows.
Refuses to install on my quad core intel with 4 gig ram and windows 7 x64.
Perhaps I don't have a beefy enough system to run it ?
Heh.
rule number 1 of slashdot: ANY thread can be twisted into a bash of microsoft/Apple. no exceptions.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
There's no auto-opt-in for ping.. you have to turn it on manually.
the store part is a web browser with a slightly different GUI than other web browsers. even on my iphone, which is how they added Ping to it without me upgrading to the latest firmware. i'm still on 4.0.
the local storage part is either xml files or a sqllite database. that's the slow part unless you have a new computer with lots of RAM
the problem is not building a new iTunes, that's easy. it's migrating the existing data over. the big challenge will be to migrate the existing data seamlessly during an upgrade, which will probably cost too much money to code so apple won't do it since there is no return on investment and no viable competitor. we will just have to wait for a technological evolution
Ping is a major fail so far. no facebook because apple tried to bully them and got told to go away. no twitter integration.
Ping doesn't even have an auto scan of gmail and other email account address books. who is going to manually try all their contacts?
no artists. i think there are only 20 or so on there
spammers have taken over
everything is geared to make you buy something, no real social networking
people on macrumors have figured out that a lot of content comes from Tumblr and is not even original
a lot of artist postings seem fake and like they were done in some call center. some celeb tweets are like this, but compare Lady Gaga's twitter feed and Ping feed. the twitter feed seems like it's really her
either this is a public beta or this will die in a few months like digital LP. Apple wants to hoard cash and maintain profit margins at the expense of hiring enough people to code these things to completion. there were stories earlier this year how developers at apple are always changing projects depending on what is priority. also explains why some things like an iPad OS update are so far behind schedule
one shocking thing i learned on the Pong of social networking sites this morning. Lady Gaga like Iron Maiden and Faith no More.
If you have Windows, try Media Monkey (www.mediamonkey.com). It's NOT open source, and it's free version isn't as functional as it's non-free version, but the cost of the lifetime license as well as the MP4/AAC encoder has been worth it to me so far. They've been really good at pushing updates to sync with new versions of iOS (though I have a Classic 6G so that hasn't been an issue for me), and although they only support music right now, they will support video in the next version. It's the first alternative to iTunes that actually had me uninstalling iTunes from my system completely... I only use iTunes to "reset my iPod to factory defaults". You can write your own custom scripts to do stuff, and many are avaliable to download, it works with a LOT of WinAmp plugins, and it's skinable... though I prefer the ugly but fast and functional "Don't skin it and look like a windows app". Downsides: SOME podcasts are itms only, and check for an iTunes client version. That's ridiculous of the podcast provider, but there you go. It doesn't currently do video. It is windows only. The free version lacks some of the advanced AutoPlaylist creation. It can't currently sync an autoplaylist to an iPod as a smart playlist that dynamically changes (though to be fair, I'm not sure if that ever worked on the Classic anyway), and the AAC encoding doesn't play nice with the iPod 100% of the time, so I generally wind up doing a transcode to MP3 whenever I sync, which isn't a huge issue for me. Also there are some "niceness" fixes that could be done, but haven't so far in the name of speed... so... yeah. Not perfect, but a reasonable solution on Windows for music now, and video soon. Ebooks and apps... you'll have to boot up iTunes every so often.
of iTunes from scratch because that's pretty much the only way to fix this behemoth. Then when you consider that complete rebuilds always result in higher quality software, there's only one question to ask! Apple, where are you on the rumored iTunes rebuild?
Given that this is a company that blew up their entire operating system to, more or less, start from scratch, I would not be the least bit surprised if they decided to do this with iTunes if they feel that it has bloated too far off track. Say whatever you want about Apple but they are, and have long been, a company that is willing to make tough decisions if they feel it is the right one. They do not shy away from the hard choice like so many other companies do.
Do they need to blow up iTunes and start fresh? Well, I'm sure everyone will have a different opinion on that but, if Apple starts to think that way I am certain it won't be long before they actually push the plunger and rebuild from the ashes.
I never understood why people willingly buy Macs when you get limited so severely to Apple's choices for you. Granted their computers are visually stunning, but Id rather not have to deal with quicktime, itunes, and no-flash at all, its anti-consumer.
No, I suspect you understand perfectly well why people buy Macs, and simply don't agree with their reasons. For example, you seem to think that Apple severely limits something or other. Whereas the people who buy them don't feel limited at all, They think that the machine (iPad, Mac, music player, phone, whatever) does what they wanted it to do, which is why they keep buying them. My wife owns a Jaguar, it requires Premium gas, and she has no choice in this. But she loves that car, so it does exactly what she wants it too, and, god help me, when it comes time to replace that 12 years old beast, she's gonna want another one.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Perhaps they buy them because they're not as wildly misinformed as you are? Macs are not iPhones.
Macs have flash, you aren't forced to use iTunes on a Mac any more than you are on a PC (that said, the Mac version is far less shitty, though it still desperately needs a rewrite as TFA says), and "Quicktime" isn't some add-on cruft like on Windows, but rather is part of the video frameworks of the OS (but as far as playing videos goes, you can use VLC, Mplayer, Plex, whatever the hell you want).
Yes, but you can't on the iPhone or the iPad. It pretty much hamstrings the devices since alot of the internet uses flash.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
iTunes is slow and bloated and has been for many versions. The ripper is still substandard. Back in the day, way before it started telling you what music to listen to, it was the best music organizer around, but today it pales in comparison to the many media players available for Linux.
But I'm not at all surprised someone who "thinks Ping is a great idea" looks forward to moment when they need only open iTunes for all their consumption of "content" and the poisoned gifts we so gratefully receive from the culture industry.
If all you are doing is ripping CDs, you need to grab yourself a copy of: http://www.audiograbber.org/
:-( )
Benefits:
1. No iTunes.
2. No Quicktime.
3. No iTunes.
4. No bloatware laden PC (unless, of course, you have Norton
5. No Quicktime.
6. No iTunes.
7. No Quicktime.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Im not saying Im a big fan of Microsoft. I only use it because I play games occasionally (which is getting rarer the older I get) and my work pretty much requires it. I just dont understand why people flock to Mac over their Windows issues. There should be something else. Linux has a little bit of a learning curve, so I understand people not using it. Its like you either pick bugs or a ball and chain. I wish Apple would loosen up a little because I would be more willing to use their products at that rate.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I've never had any problem using it, including what looks like a dozen in-place upgrades on my 3 year old XP SP3 box.
But it is getting to be "too much" of an application that does too little. I don't think it's going to change, though, as AFAICT it has become the "Apple Desktop". In fact it wouldn't surprise me if it became almost some kind of virtual desktop environment in the future, a place to run iApps on desktops, interact with Apple's Apple-product-only app and media marketplace.
It doesn't scale well in terms of being able to categorize your media or create media libraries specific to individual devices, especially if you have multiple devices -- I've always hated the way you choose and filter media, especially music, among media devices. "Checked" songs are sheer idiocy with an iPhone, iPad and two iPods all syncing the same music, and there's no other song-level ability include/exclude specific songs from specific devices.
I'd like to see a much more specific sync application for iPhones in particular, especially one which would allow you to sync with multiple computers and was more focused on mail, contacts and app data than on digital media like music and movies.
Apple surprisingly has manage to keep most of the new features they add pretty streamline when added to the UI.
My main complain about that stupid app is it's speed and memory consumption.
Something which has been it's Achilles' heel since forever.
It seem just about every piece of Apple software on Windows is 2-3 times less efficient that any other software of it's class.
Don't spread FUD.
Ping is completely opt-in. The iTunes Store is completely opt-in. Even "Genius" is opt-in (since it sends your library contents and play information to Apple servers where the mixes are calculated).
And I'd add Double-Twist to the list of iTunes alternatives, especially if you have an Android phone.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine ... which I am not a fan of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_Alternative
It pretty much hamstrings the devices since alot of the internet uses flash.
I hear that old line a lot yet I don't seem to every having it be much of an issue on my iDevices. Certainly the loss of Flash-ads has more than made up for any perceived loss of functionality.
YMMV.
Trolling is a art,
I still can't get over the fact that you can't use in iPad without iTunes. When you first switch it on, you have to sync it to iTunes before you can do anything, and you need it to apply updates to the OS.
I got an iPad purely as a portable photo portfolio - the rotation makes it better than a netbook as you can show portrait and landscape format photos full screen. Sadly the built in photo gallery software is poor, especially if you have to sync with iTunes (you have more control if you use iPhoto - on a Mac).
I kinda feel dirty for buying in to the whole Apple thang.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine ... which I am not a fan of. And what's worse is that reviews are telling me that it's faster but with a crappier UI while at the same time Ping concerns me if it has my credit card information and is just a spam portal.
Are people really still complaining about this? I hate QT as much as the next guy, but it's a design decision. Do you want identical functionality and codecs in iTunes and Quicktime, or do you want to have both installed on your computer? Using VLC for video is of absolutely no consequence to Apple as it is hardly a ubiquitous claim. I, for example, ONLY use iTunes for video and absolutely hate VLC. If you don't like Quicktime, don't use it and set all your video filetypes to default to something else.
Whale
iTunes has always been a frustration to work with. I have thousands of MP3s in mine, mostly OTR and the concept of one central library isn't too bad, but the inability to create folders within folders, for organization, is exasperating. It's like these designers never thought anyone would like to organize more than 1 folder deep.
I looked over the new iPods and 'Meh' is the best I can muster. Why isn't there a 64GB or 128GB Nano? This is 2010, after all. 16GB just doesn't cut it, way too small and I don't want all the stuff of a Touch, just for more capacity.
I'm still on my 30GB classic, which is starting to hit drive errors. Time is running out and Apple doesn't look like the answer for a replacement.
So happy all my stuff is in MP3 format, not Apple's proprietary format.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'll second Media Monkey. I found it while looking for an iTunes replacement years ago. I previously only used iTunes to tag my music, and then it started to fuck that up too (was putting long random strings in the comments field and wiping out album art for no reason). Never looked back.
...
So I choose not to upgrade either of them anymore, and actively avoid to use them if I have an alternative. I used to like iTunes. And all my computers are Mac's. But Apple, you are killing a product out of greed here.
So far, I have had light success with the following iTunes alternatives:
Winamp - Various plugins seem to work, then not work depending on iOS versions. Sharepod turned out much easier, then later I discovered MediaMonkey.
SharePod - Originally for iPods, but seems to support iPhones fairly well. Last I checked, you DO need to have iTunes installed. It's been flaky from time to time, but is good for providing a drag-n-drop interface for the iPhone.
MediaMonkey - This one I think is going to be big for me in the future for as long as I keep my iPhone (Perhaps not too much longer). It seems to integrate very easily with my iPhone, and provides a relatively simple interface.
Now, I'm in the process of building all of my CDs to FLAC, and from what I understand the paid version of MediaMonkey will convert FLAC to MP3 (or other formats) on the fly as it copies it over to my iPhone. Having the ability to not need a MP3 library and a FLAC library might be nice.
The only thing that I wish MediaMonkey would do (and I think the next version gets it) is handle video files for the iPhone.
Oh my main point: it seems like even the most poorly written and feature limited versions of iTunes alternative software is lightyears better than iTunes itself.
It is so freaking annoying trying to keep my computers 'updated' to Apples preferred setup. 9 times out of 10, each time I hook up my iPhone to my computer it will tell me it needs to erase my phone before it can even think of managing it. I'm sorry, but I'm not surrendering to the Apple method of letting them manage every aspect of my data and would prefer to just do it the way that has worked for me since 1994.
Looks like you reformated your computer: Let me erase your phone
Looks like you altered your library: let me erase your phone
Looks like you updated your phone from your laptop: let me erase your phone.
Yeah, I'm sure that there is some way that I can avoid iTunes caring about how my phone is managed, but if it does it even 1 time out of ten, that's one too many.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
If you're aware of the limitations of the devices and decide you can't live with them, then don't buy 'em. It has nothing to do with the functionality of a Mac.
iPhone/iPad != Mac. I grew up with Mac computers and have always liked them, but I've never really wanted an iPod or iPhone. Still undecided on iPads.
which is totally what she said
What, you think the apple cultists don't get mod points?
I am well aware of the limitations of the iPhone/iPad versus the Mac. I just don't like how Apple makes decisions for the consumer ahead of time. Its not totally exclusive to Apple, for example IE is Microsoft's default decisions for the consumer, however Apple seems to force people to accept certain formats or programs more often without apology. I somewhat misspoke in that I was lumping the iPhone/iPad in.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I hear that old line a lot yet I don't seem to every having it be much of an issue on my iDevices
Thats because you are spoon fed content from Apple itself. Of course they would design things to work on their platform, but it works the way they decide it should rather than leaving it up to you to decide.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I am aware of this.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Thats because you are spoon fed content from Apple itself.
I also run Firefox and NoScript on Linux and Windows which blocks all Flash. How, again, is Apple spoon-feeding me?
Trolling is a art,
I would agree Apple should go back to the drawing board with iTunes. Not because I think it's horrible-- IMO it works fine on OSX-- but because it was designed primarily to store and play a music library. Since then, it has grown to store movies, TV shows, podcasts, sync calendars and other personal information, store and transfer applications to portable devices, backup the applications' data, transfer documents to portable devices, and now have a built-in social networking site. It's also used to do weird little things like sync photos to portable devices with iPhoto.
It's just a lot of stuff for one application to be doing, and if you want to use it for one thing, you need to install it all. The name doesn't really make sense anymore; iTunes does a lot that doesn't have to do with "tunes". Many things seem incongruous. For example, managing applications and transferring documents to an iPad are not the same sort of activity as listening to your music library. The method for transferring documents is kind of terrible, which I think it tied up with trying to do it in an application that was not intended for it.
I think they need to break things up a bit. Maybe they could make the media store software, music management software, video management software, and the device syncing software into 4 different pieces of software, each optimized for its task? Or maybe some things could be built into the OS better?
I don't know, really. It seems like there are always trade-offs between trying to put everything into one application vs. trying to make a separate application for each task. You can go too far either way.
Apparently they do. I criticize Apple and all the sudden my Email is getting bombarded by responses from Apple-heads.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
But dude, you said "Macs", not iPod or iPad. Make up your mind.
Good, perhaps you can help me out. My old computer died, so I had to install on a new computer.
These were the main two headaches, but there are heaps more.
Honestly...I read comments waxing lyrical about how easy and intuitive it is, and I wonder what I'm missing. Every single time I try and use iTunes, it ends up a frustrating and painful experience, because I can't figure out how to do what I want without going to the help forums. This is not how software should be, especially from Apple.
Then either A) You have a Mac or B) You have an awesome machine. I've ran iTunes on Windows 7 with a Core i7 and 6 GB of RAM and it still lagged. iTunes on OS X is rather nice, iTunes on Windows is complete crap. Plus, it takes about 10 times as long to "process" a song as it does to download it!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Apple and Google both seem to do a really good job at drawing the media attention to their hits and not their misses. There's always a back catalog of unsuccessful software, this is just a fairly high profile case.
I briefly owned a 2nd generation iPod Nano when they were brand new, and of course it insisted I install iTunes in order to transfer music to it. I installed it, uploaded some songs, and found out that Apple insists on ignoring folder structure when organizing music playlists. Since all my mp3s came from random sources, the id3 tags were a mess, but up to that point I did not care. Every computer and mp3 player I had used to that point was fine reading folders first with Artist_name/Album_name/track_number_-_song_name being the default sort.
Apple just HAD to be different. It was using just file names and id3 tags to sort songs in playlists, so "Unknown Artist", "Doors" and "The Doors" were all different, even though on my PC they were all under the same folder. This was annoying beyond belief, but I wanted to fix the id3 tags anyway at some point.
So I embarked on the gargantuan task of editing the id3 tags in my entire music collection, about 90Gb at the time, using iTunes. It wasn't as horrible as I thought, since iTunes does have batch id3 tag processing. At first everything was fine, all my songs were nicely organized both in iTunes and iPod.
Then a few months later I decided to sell the iPod Nano and just use a cellphone as an mp3 player. Since I was only using iTunes to sync the Nano and play the mp3s, and I always liked foobar better anyway, I uninstalled it. HUGE MISTAKE!!!!!
It turned out that iTunes wiped out the id3 tags from the songs and stored them somewhere else, because when I loaded the mp3s in foobar not a single one still had their tags. They were wiped clean! I posted this before and people said it must have been a mistake on my part. But I promise you guys, every single file in my music collection did not have an id3 tag. Verified with several media players on several computers.
After that I swore never to buy another product that requires iTunes to function. I'd probably be tempted by an iPhone 4 once my Nokia N900 breaks down, but since I have to use iTunes, it won't happen...
I had no idea apple made an entirely separate internet just for the iPhone. Quite and impressive accomplishment.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
That for the most part, when media pundits make fun of an upcoming Apple product, more often than not, it's exactly what the market's been looking for. It's easy to tear down something on a technical basis but nobody will call the writer out when they get their predictions wrong.
You're conflating Apple PCs running OS X with i-devices. You're not limited in any way to an Apple 'ball and chain' using one of their desktop or notebook machines. There's probably not as much choice as on Windows, simply because Windows has a larger installed base and more software available in total, but you can install whatever third party software you want, including Flash.
I've found that iTunes is very slow on XP with 1 gig of ram. On VBox Hackintosh, it's a lot quicker, and even dare I say it, smoother. It's nicely linked into the OS (though syncing to an iPod is slow as hell). The problem is making a Windows version - lots of different OS code, probably a load of UNIX code they have to replicate and convert badly into windows syscalls when it already has the same calls but incompatible. This is probably some of the reason why they didn't want a Linux version - it'd have to be another version to maintain, plus Linux is quite different from Mach. But the userspace stuff is not surprisingly similar. I think they just couldn't keep up with the flak. It's slow enough already.
As not a fan of Apple or iTunes, I'll give them that their products work well together, just not with anyone else's. And as for iOS updates? Asking Apple if that's okay? Not allowing downgrades? I think not. It's MY iPod after all.
I hope you've found my speech useful. Yours sincerely, the guy who wrote it.
You have to use a third party program like SharePod (http://www.getsharepod.com/) to get it to work. I had the same issue, now I just keep SharePod on a flash drive and can dump my music collection wherever. And for your second problem try ( http://www.obsessable.com/how-to/how-to-deauthorize-all-your-itunes-accounts-at-once/ ) but I haven't ever used it so your results might vary.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Look, you called them iDevices. This already is justification to lump you into a sub-group of people known as Apple Enthusiasts. Blocking flash ads is a bit different than choosing to use flash for a video game or something. Apple just wants to control the flow of content through their App Store and ITunes. Shackle yourself to them if you must.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Which formats and programs do you think you are forced to use on the Mac? You're no more forced to use anything than you are on Windows or Ubuntu.
Are you sure about that? This is your exact post from four minutes ago (emphasis mine)
I never understood why people willingly buy Macs when you get limited so severely to Apple's choices for you. Granted their computers are visually stunning, but Id rather not have to deal with quicktime, itunes, and no-flash at all, its anti-consumer.
a) you don't with iTunes, you use a third party software such as Senuti to get third party music off. iTunes will only sync over songs that are associates with your iTMS account.
b) you don't if the computer is dead. However, this is a non-issue. Once you reach the five computer limit you can deauthorize all of them with one click and then reauthorize the ones that are still valid. If you never reach the five computer limit you won't have to do that.
Not so much internet, how you view it yes. You can't play flash games on the iPad. Apple made this decision for you. They are a tad too authoritarian for my taste, but apparently people think that my own personal opinion is wrong since they keep bothering my inbox with slashdot replies.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
When I first checked out this web write-up I concluded Apple Slashdot regulars should check this out! http://hubpages.com/hub/rent-a-laptop-rentals . I just don't get renting a portable PC at all! The rate for renting a portable PC for even a couple of weeks is going to set you back as much as just going online and buying the portable computer!
I misspoke, I am aware of the difference. I should have said "Apple products" not Macs.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Um, no I really don't want to use QuickTime at all. I'd rather a few things happened:
A) Microsoft implemented basic codec support out-of-the-box using native libraries included with Windows
B) Apple (and most other programs) used these codecs
C) The weird codecs could be implemented by third party programs (like VLC)
Basic codec support should be a library in -any- commercial OS (yeah, there are reasons for not including all codecs with Ubuntu/Fedora and other OSS OSes) and programs should use it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
there's an option to transfer purchases from the ipod/iphone to your computer under the file menu. go into the itunes account area, there's an option to un-authorize the other computers
I hear that old line a lot yet I don't seem to every having it be much of an issue on my iDevices
Thats because you are spoon fed content from Apple itself. Of course they would design things to work on their platform, but it works the way they decide it should rather than leaving it up to you to decide.
I'm certainly not spoon fed content from Apple, yet I get by quite nicely without Flash. Flash is a crutch for lazy web designers and ad agencies. None of the content that I actually give a shit about relies on it.
I consider having the device reject Flash without me having to install a handler for that a BONUS.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
The article makes an interesting hypothesis, but then completely fails to back them up logically. This is an empassioned article full of "cruft" and no substance.
First let me say that Cruft is defined by Wikipedia as "computing jargon for code, data, or software of poor quality". Great, you could make a case for this, but the article completely fails to do so. The author defines cruft by the number of features... errrnnttt WRONG. You use that word... I do not think it means what you think it means. If cruft were defined by number of features, then every major piece of software that runs the internet would be full to the gills of real and true cruft. The only example of a real problem the author gives is that iTunes is in fact lacking a feature, specifically Facebook integration. I can understand that's a concern but you can't say that a piece of software is crufty for having too many features and then give an example of this as a lack of features.
Now, if you want to make a case for cruft, you have to start pointing out things like crashes, bugs, design flaws, etc. Show me the poor quality code. By what I consider the definition of cruft, I'm sure someone can make an argument that iTunes is crufty. But the arguments of the article don't line up with the premise. Now personally I like iTunes, and haven't had a crash on it in like 5 years. There are some interface oddities I'd like to change, and iTunes 10 didn't introduce a whole lot and I think the new icon as well as the color changes within the GUI are ugly but not a major problem. I do think the media list is easier to navigate now, and syncing reports more information on the progress of the sync which I like. It's only 2 days so the jury is out on Ping, but personally I've not run into huge problems in iTunes resulting from crufty code in my history working with iTunes. i know that's anecdotal, but so are all the anti-iTunes rants here.
The moral of the story... Adding new features does not necessarily add cruft. Adding poor quality code adds to the cruft. And if you think this is poor quality code, please, go forth and make that argument now.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
This is what I do too. I use Media Monkey for library and metadata administration because it's way more powerful and intuitive for power usage than iTunes...but it's ugly. Media Monkey is just ugly and it doesn't make all your hard work with album artwork and such feel very rewarding.
I've disliked iTunes for quite a while now as it's still treats your music library like it's a stack of CDs. It's completely uninspired when it comes to how metadata can be used to re-shape an interface to better meet it's data set. It seemed natural to treat your MP3 library as digital CDs at first when your library was mostly ripped CDs. But that's not the case anymore and Apple has clung to that paradigm while also being a top online music seller. It boggles the mind really. Side Note: The iPhone app management interface they released for iTunes is shockingly bad. Like it's 2003 Microsoft bad. What were they thinking?
Media Monkey gives you quite a nice set of tools to shape your library at it's core but it doesn't do a good job of helping you enjoy your music. I think there's still a big hole in the media library+editor+jukebox marketplace (XBMC, etc. don't count as they're not for editing, just enjoying). Anyone want to start a project?
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Until just a few months ago, I had only watched other people suffer through iTunes, and while it left a bad impression, I hadn't actually experienced it myself.
Then I got a work-issued iPod for mobile website testing, and had to use iTunes. The "have to use iTunes" was really a strike against the iPod (you can't even boot the iPod the first time until it talks to some machine which has iTunes) but as a bonus, this personally exposed to be the shit that is iTunes. Naturally, I tried using iTunes to put some music on the iPod to see how it does, and holy fucking shit. You simply cannot imagine what iTunes is like if you haven't tried it. If everyone you know constantly flames it, I guarantee you still don't know how bad it is. You would never guess that a company that had Apple's evil-but-at-least-it's-slick-and-friendly reputation has anything to do with this atrocity. Even Microsoft makes better software than this. Microsoft. I am not kidding.
The iTunes requirement is one of the reasons that I am so amazed that anybody would ever buy an iPod a second time. Maybe everyone is only using iPods as portable wifi web browsers now (they're pretty good for that, but you'll need to find some iTunes-installed victim to help you get it booted the first time), because the iTunes requirement makes loading music onto them, and keeping it loaded and synced, is just absolutely horrible.
iPod: potentially a decent device, someday. iPod+iTunes (which is currently required): simply the worst way to portably play music, on the market. If you want to play music, you cannot make a worse decision than buying an iPod. It is dead last, and all thanks to iTunes.
I assumed it was because they don't want to buy a Windows computer and don't know how to use Linux, *BSD or any of the other alternatives.
Or they do know how to use them but like having a system that just works, out of the box, and yet allows them to mess around with the *nix side of things. Once you open the terminal and install Macports (which is not an Apple project, but hosted by Apple) there's very little difference in actual usage.
When I use a media player, I don't like it when my files get copied around my computer. I'll take care of the file management, you just take care of playing them, okay?
This is the same problem with iPhoto. What kind of software hides the fact that it's decided to take over file management? Whose idea was this?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
This used to be possible in early versions of iTunes, but the record labels were not to thrilled with that. What was stopping you from dumping all your music into your friends' iTunes? (Yeah, it's a BS argument as there's still not muchs topping you, but Apple seems to have caved to it.) There are any number of third-party apps that have taken up the slack in that regard, like Expod. Find one that works for you. [Insert obligatory 'you should back things up next time' warning here.]
Since you can't access the old computer, you have to use the 'deauthorize all' option and reauthorize the one(s) you want. In iTunes go to Store -> View My Account to find the 'deauthorize all' button.
Yes I am sure. If you bothered reading other replies you would know what occurred.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
iTunes is a nice OS, but what it needs is a decent media manager.
Use Rockbox instead http://www.rockbox.org/ I record (and download) a lot of live music and prefer to keep it lossless, so I convert everything to flac and tag it all in foobar2000 http://www.foobar2000.org/ rather than going the MP3 route. Rockbox will remove your need for iTunes and the unwanted QT install and does a very nice job on most older iPods (I have a 5.5 video 80 gb as well as an older iRiver that it works sweetly on). Unfortunately, they stopped after the mini and 1g Nano so if you have anything newer you're out of luck, but this is easy to use and works a treat for me.
I saw the update was available for my Mac and didn't download it. I've disabled Genius and the other cruft, all I use it for is ripping and playing music and dealing with my iPod Touch.
I definitely don't need a musical social networking site. I haven't bought a single music track from iTunes and don't plan on ever doing such. I have bought one album from Amazon, that's about it. I much prefer to own the physical CD and rip it myself, but my music is firmly rooted mostly in 70's/80's rock, and there's lots of good used music stores in Phoenix (Zia's, Bookmans) to shop at.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I hate iTunes too, it is crap.
But you never throw away code and write something from scratch. Refactor, refactor, refactor, refactor. Even when working on a brand new product. Code that has seen customers is always better than code thats never seen the light of day.
Small moves.
Bothering your inbox with replies, eh? God forbid people engage in a discussion with you when you post something stupid in a discussion forum like Macs have "no flash at all."
I am starting to think that even Apple developer would find it's difficult to use webkit for developing desktop applications. iTunes seems a perfect candidate for webkit to showcase how a browser can revolutionize desktop app development. I am curious about this because there are always managers who push for using browser engines for GUI, as if those engines were made for it.
Itunes 10 fixes many security flaws:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4328
Unfortunately, Apple is bad about mixing security and functionality upgrades, so you must get both.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
I hear that old line a lot yet I don't seem to every having it be much of an issue on my iDevices.
Go buy an AT&T MicroCell, for example. The whole thing is written in Flash. Why, you might ask? Well, there are reasons - it's an interactive presentation. Probably it was easier to write it once in Flash than many times in JavaScript, for different HTML versions and different browsers.
I'm blocking Flash with AdBlock Plus and NoScript for everyday browsing, but I also have IE and Iron (Chrome) as alternative browsers, so that I don't need to temporarily enable 27 hosts to see a video or to make a purchase. Sites that I visit regularly are whitelisted if needed.
"My biggest problem is that support seems to wax and wane with actually moving songs/videos on and off an iPod with open source alternatives ... so that leaves me tied to the beast that is iTunes."
Or you could buy an mp3 player that -doesnt- come from apple.
They do exist.
Apple would have done better to buy Twitter and link it in somehow. Yetanother social network isn't what I'm looking for as I can scarcely keep up with the 2 or three I'm on already. I haven't much to say, most of the time - I'm too busy doing things to talk about them.
As far as performance, the dog for me has always been transfer rate to my iPod, which is not too surprising as I usually am moving a gigabyte or so over USB 2.0, so what can I expect? Fire it up and go do something else.
My main gripe is the functionality, which never seems to approach a proper level of manageability for the volume of media I have. I don't need eyecandy, I don't need social networking, I need an interface and tool which performs simple tasks well and was designed by someone who has more than a 2 dimensional view of things.
yeah, this perceived notion that Windows computers are less reliable than Macs is just not true, or very misguided. I have known plenty of people with problems with their Macs. With the much higher number of Windows users versus Mac users, indeed, you will find more people with problems with a Windows based machine, but that is obviously due to the many computers out there; the ratio is not well represented. Also wanted to throw this out, but the Mac hardware definitely is not special, tends to be overpriced for the stuff you are getting inside. I built my Windows machine knowing that: A) I would save a ton of money B) If there was a problem with the hardware, I could fix it or replace a part, which can be a pain, but nothing like having to turn in your whole computer if it failed. C) The hardware in my machine is superior since I handpicked it Macs can look slick, but they all look the same, kind of ironic when you consider their history, and I trust myself over a company when building a computer, (Yeah, so that extends beyond Apple) Okay, I am done with my Apple hate, and seriously, people should play around with linux more, it isn't that difficult if you get OSes like Ubuntu.
"iDevices" is easier to type than "my iPhone, my girlfriend's iPhone, our daughter's iPod Touch and the family iPad".
I believe in the right tool for the job no matter what the OS. If you want to go on an anti-Apple rant, feel free. Just don't use my shorthand term as an excuse for it, it's far too obvious.
Trolling is a art,
It's not that simple. Quicktime is neither backwards nor forwards compatible, nor does it allow for multiple simultaneous installations. .mqv files from my camera, I can't use the newest Quicktime because the new codecs can't handle files created with earlier versions. So what do I do then? You guessed it -- ditch iTunes, and make sure I never buy an iPod or iPhone.
If you have other programs that depend on earlier versions of Quicktime, installing iTunes will break those programs with its forced upgrade. If I ever want to view the
If Apple could have provided a self-contained Qt installation within iTunes that didn't install at SYSTEM level, the situation would have been very different. Then it would have been just bloat for those who don't use any Qt features. But as it is, it's directly detrimental.
My biggest problem is that support seems to wax and wane with actually moving songs/videos on and off an iPod with open source alternatives ... so that leaves me tied to the beast that is iTunes.
Moving songs and videos on and off a device should be trivial. If it's not, it's a shitty device. Don't blame open source alternatives for whatever convoluted bullshit Apple implemented in their product.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
ps: sent from my iPhone... LOL
Trolling is a art,
I'll third MediaMonkey. It is the best media program I have ever used, and I've tried an awful lot of them. I have it working in Ubuntu under wine. The interface is totally customizable so you can make it look similar to any other media program you're familiar with. And, like the GP said, it is scriptable and can use tons of WinAmp plugins. They also have a forum for scripting support, and a ton of user made scripts available there.
How the hell did this get modded flamebait? I didn't call anyone out nor did I say Macs are inferior without justification. I just said I don't like Apple's policies on their platform basically.
No, you posted something factually incorrect and not surprisingly people are disagreeing with you. You have since tried to correct yourself by saying I should have said "Apple products" not Macs, but that, like the reference to "their platform" above, is still wrong. "No flash" is not an issue with "Apple products" or "their platform" - it is an issue with a certain subset (iOS devices).
If you have an issue with those devices, great, you have a legit argument there. Don't buy them. But don't conflate the Mac with iOS devices, they're two different platforms with different sets of rules.
Don't mind him, he's being cool by being willfully ignorant of and not caring about the intricacies of the evil Turtleneck Empire when it suits him and his (lack of a) point.
working on it (according to rumors that have been circulating for a while anyhow). They are going to create an HTML5 web-based iTunes.
But you weren't talking about iOS devices, were you? Or can you not tell the difference between a mobile device and a computer running a desktop OS?
As for Flash itself on iOS devices, I truly don't care.
Yes, glad to see Apple learned from their mistake enabling "Genius" for everyone when it was introduced and everybody was complaining about privacy. Now it's opt-in, which is a good choice. And while I also think they should split iTunes into at least two apps, iTunes 10 runs somewhat smoother than the previous version. Not perfect, but better, no reason to hold off from upgrading.
this sig is useless
I love how everyone seems to think that Ping is more like Facebook than any other social networking site when it's really more like twitter. First off there's "followers" which in Facebook it's all about liking people not following them. 2nd you get updates for when one of the people you follow does something, like buying a new cd/song or putting a rating on a song/cd just like Twitter. This is not Facebook look-a-like it's a Twitter for music junkies
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine ... which I am not a fan of. And what's worse is that reviews are telling me that it's faster but with a crappier UI while at the same time Ping concerns me if it has my credit card information and is just a spam portal.
Even if it was a separate application, your credit card information is in apple's servers, not on iTunes itself.
Quicktime has always been required by iTunes though, since iTunes does not have any native playback. All playback of music is being handled by quicktime libraries.
So while I want iTunes to run faster, I definitely don't want anything to do with this "Ping" service
Good news: Ping is optional. It wont be active until you go into that Ping icon, turn it on and then create an account. You can't even do this by accident. So you can have the speed of iTunes 10 minus Ping.
My biggest problem is that support seems to wax and wane with actually moving songs/videos on and off an iPod with open source alternatives ... so that leaves me tied to the beast that is iTunes.
For what it's worth, yea, its inflated as an MP3 player, but iTunes stopped being about that long ago. iTunes is more of a store these days. There are bucketload of apps out there if what you want is just an MP3 player.
I can't believe iTunes is still a Carbon app to this day. Everybody else has updated to Cocoa, what's taking you so long Apple? Are you too busy figuring out ways to break your own Human Interface Guidelines?
Unless you're one of Apple's iTunes developers, why should you care what APIs its using?
Lots of people think that Cocoa is the magic fix for old Mac applications; that it makes them faster or makes their UI better. It doesn't. About the only thing it gives end users is better support for certain system-wide features (especially in text editing) and 64-bit support.
Neither of these is a big issue with iTunes, which is not heavy on text and does not need a bigger memory space. (Jokes aside.)
iTunes' biggest issues are with its UI design, as you said, and feature set, and that's neither Carbon nor Cocoa.
What is obvious is that Apple enthusiasts don't like it when someone has an opinion contrary to theirs. Look at how many responses I am getting. I don't like Apple's authoritarian nature. I dont understand why others do. End of story. You can like them if you want.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
but apparently people think that my own personal opinion is wrong since they keep bothering my inbox with slashdot replies.
When you start out with statements based in ignorance, willful or otherwise ("no-flash at all"), and then try a bait-and-switch when you're called on it ("were we talking about Macs? No, no, iPhones"), expect a few replies in your inbox.
I misspoke. If you and others would bother reading the whole thread you would have figured that out and could have saved the time it takes to type your unnecessary drivel.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
You do know that when you upgrade to iTunes 10, it asks you to put in info about Ping. And that you can just hit cancel. Right? Otherwise, you wouldn't be whining about it. Right?
Oh, and you actually have to enable it first.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/how-to/tutorials/started.html#video-started
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I know the difference. Read the rest of the thread. Get back to me if you are still butt hurt about one persons opinion.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
quicktime is the new realplayer. NOOOOOOOOO
its because you shove dildos in your asshole.
Then either A) You have a Mac or B) You have an awesome machine!
I have both!
Ping is off by default (or so I've heard).
You are NOT tied to the beast that is iTunes. It's not as if Apple is the sole producer of media players. Personally, I recommend virtually any Sansa player that supports Rockbox. Once Rockbox is installed on your device, its functionality doubles or triples.
Someone should work on a Zune type front end to Media Monkey. Zune had... well, a confusing store, and a frustrating database engine (especially for classical lovers)... really Tagging all around was bad... but the listening experience was amazing... it took music to a whole new level with it's HD photography of bands, and band bios, etc... If it weren't for the complete lack of syncing to relevant devices, and the database and tagging problems, I probably would have loved it. As is, media monkey is MORE useful to me, because I'd rather have visual rather than functional sacrifices if I have to chose (and it seems like I do)... but Microsoft did a pretty damn good job at envisioning new ideas for what playing music could look and feel like. On the software side of things at the very least. (Also - does the Zune Social count as being pretty darned similar to Ping? It's been a while since I used either... but I seem to remember similarities...)
Yes, I'm pretty well aware of what occurred. You spewed a bunch of FUD, got called out on it, then tried desperately to backpedal.
Wait, so, Microsoft builds its whole business around old, unstable software......and this guy bitches about iTunes?
Honestly, iTunes is rock solid. It NEVER crashes. I can't think of a time when iTunes crashed on my Mac. Or if it ever did crash. Sure, it's getting a little bloated, but it still works great. The latest update is quite a bit faster it seems.
Sure, it would be nice to see iTunes be 64 bit, Coca on OS X so we could get it to be a little faster. And perhaps Ping isn't quite what everyone thought it would be.....but Apple has a great track record of fixing stuff. I think we won't see iTunes become completely Coca and 64 bit until Apple deems that PPC Macs are completely off the radar......I'd expect that in OS X 10.7 that we will see a new iTunes that is quite a bit different.
Plus......why didn't we see any iLife stuff????
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Apple just HAD to be different. It was using just file names and id3 tags to sort songs in playlists, so "Unknown Artist", "Doors" and "The Doors" were all different, even though on my PC they were all under the same folder. This was annoying beyond belief, but I wanted to fix the id3 tags anyway at some point.
There is the principle here that a song is a self-contained unit, it knows where it belongs all on its own. If you took hundred songs from my iTunes Library, copied them all into one single directory, and imported them into your iTunes Library, everything would end up exactly where it belongs.
The statement is not based in ignorance. My wife owns an Apple. I am aware of the difference. My criticism is of Apple's products.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Hey retard, your original comment was for Macs, not the iPhone or iPad.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the reason is because there isn't a "-1, Factually Incorrect" mod.
...why people willingly buy Macs when you get limited so severely to Apple's choices for you.
This bit here, for example, is wrong. You can install and run any bit of software you want on a Mac. If you don't like Apple's applications you are completely free to use something else.
...Id rather not have to deal with quicktime, itunes, and no-flash at all, its anti-consumer.
This bit here (ie. the other sentence in your post) is also wrong. You can avoid QuickTime and iTunes if you so choose, and you can install Flash.
Maddox: One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't
It is a little outdated since it's bitching about iTunes 7, but the arguments still apply.
If you don't like calling them 'iDevices', call them 'i\w+'.
It certainly speaks to ./'s need for "edit post" capabilities if you truly know the difference. But no, I'll pass on reading the rest of the thread to see how you spin your way out of it. Because the real "butt hurt" lies with the one that can't abide someone using a different platform. People like Apple's stuff, and apparently think it does what they need, don't let it ruin your day.
I have a good bit of iTMS DRM'ed music.
I'm afraid that with breaking DRM being at least arguably illegal, buying iTMS DRM-cracking software via credit card would get me a court summons a few years down the line.
I am not at all a fan of iTunes, especially because I prefer Linux for my desktop. But at this point I feel like it's that, or giving up on a good bit of my music collection.
If you're looking for open source alternatives to iTunes: CDex, VLC and handbrake .
You forgot a big one Songbird
Reading some of the comments here, I guess I'm one of the few that just doesn't have a problem with iTunes. I've run just about every operating system from AmigaOS to Windows. I really don't care what's under the hood, as long as it does what I need it to do. I've got an iMac running iTunes with a pretty extensive library of songs. I can stream music to two different stereos in different rooms or stream video to my home theater. I can lay in bed and use my android phone as a remote control for for the iTunes box on the other end of the house. There's a few things I'd like it to do differently (like, an easy way to just tag a song to play next. I keep thinking I'm just missing this...) but overall for what I need it to do, it's the best option. Could it improve? Sure. But saying it's completely useless is a far stretch.
I'd just like to be able to download the music I have licenses for but my non-functional ipod has the only copies of.
Amazon wins here, and is pretty much my only source of music anymore because Apple seems hellbent on making me buy the same thing I already bought *again* on each piece of hardware I own. If I happen to be unlucky enough to lose my iTunes library (which happened) you don't get to get that shit back unless you buy it.
If you aren't bittorrenting or sneaker-netting your tunes, just don't bother with Itunes.
What OS are you using? If a Mac, then just restore everything at once from your Time Machine backup.
Flash on Android has a setting to only start flash items when you "click" on them. It's very similar to "flashblock" for firefox. So, you won't see any flash ads unless you really want to. I like being able to see video on websites that aren't youtube.
God is imaginary
Because your "justification" was flat wrong. I have a Mac. It has Flash, and I use VLC, not QuickTime, for videos.
OS/X is very open in that it comes with a Unix command shell, and lets you use nearly any open source software. Virtually any software that runs on Linux, also runs on OS/X.
Don't forget Songbird. It looks enough like iTunes to be non-intimidating but is very noticeably more responsive. The laughable part is Songbird UI is mostly Javascript & XML since it's based on Gecko and it's still faster than the POS known as iTunes.
I think the reason iTunes is so awful, at least on Windows, has to do with its look and feel. It has a wretched OS X like behaviour which suggests some genius in Apple decided that they make iTunes run on Windows by porting Cocoa & Objective C with an Aqua like UI, all compiled with gcc and as a consequence performance is in the toilet. At one point iTunes was a very nimble and handy music manager. These days it is a bloated slug.
Or, more simply put:
The products Apple make are the closest thing to 'appliances' you can get in the computer world.
Most people look at PCs as appliances, like a toaster or a TV. That's why they get frustrated and confused when something doesn't work like it always did - like a toaster. Most people don't understand just how mind-bendingly complex a PC and its OS is and that it just takes one of a brazillion things to go wrong and think we look like jerks because we cannot articulate why it doesn't work anymore. Apple's computers and consumer electronics are all about simplifying the user experence. To do that, it has to be limited, consistent and work the same way every time; otherwise you get the support nightmare that Windows PCs have been for a very long time.
Some people are fine with that... others aren't. The whole 'choice' argument against apple is sort of a red herring really. Your choices are: Apple and their appliance model or PC's and their DIY model. Pick one.
Yes
Parts of the iTunes UI is done in QT. It's not just for media playback.
Odd, I have iTunes on a Core i7 running Windows 7 and 6GB of ram and it moves very nicely. It sometimes gets hung temporarily while syncing my iPad, but not often, and it has always recovered.
I haven't used iTunes on my one Apple-branded computer in quite some time because my iMac will not charge my iPad. Battery draining while syncing is very lame.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
The thing about the Apple cult is it lets Apple sell people bad design because those people will convince themselves that it's actually a great design. The fact that itunes doesn't have nested playlists is idiotic. But the Apple fanatics refuse to accept this characterization, instead arguing that through a complicated series of smart playlist kludges and a lot of work you can sort-of simulate nested playlists.
I've used sharepod as well (anbd avoided Itunes like the plauge) but the the IOS4 breaks the sharepod's ability to sync, so am now temporarily stuck using itunes. Myabe there is an update for sharepod I've missed though.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Yes. / . does need edit. I don't need to spin my way out of anything. I only said I do not understand why people willingly choose Apple products. An opinion does not deserve people like you bothering me.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I have a late '05 Mac Mini (Core Duo) that I use daily. I know its time to upgrade but I want to get at least one more year out of it. That said Itunes 9 has been running very slow. Cover flow was very choppy and even grid view was a joke.
iTunes 10 feels like a whole new program. Sure it's the same beast at the surface but it really feels like the optimised or reprogramed iTunes from the back-end.
You really have to stop being an idiot. It can't be good for you. Apple is a company. Companies provide products and/or services. There is not a single company that provides every single feature on every single product. Apple is not limiting your choices in any meaningful way. They are doing the opposite: they are providing a choice of products in a variety of markets. You are completely free to choose something else.
Haha! That's what you think, but for some reason you missed the fact that the statement is an exclusive or. It is not possible for both to be true at the same time (unless you have 2 computers and only one is a Mac of course).
Whereas MS has been caught over the years programming around hardware bugs rather than saying no, we won't support it.
Not as such. Microsoft provides hooks and shims into the OS, and the hardware vendors write their own drivers. A lot of these drivers do get bundled into later versions of Windows, but Microsoft did not do the programming. This is the reason that it's so hard to get drivers for Linux. If it worked the other way, the hardware vendor providing freely available hooks and shims into their hardware, then Linux and Apple would be able to support a wider range of hardware. As long as Microsoft has the proverbial monopoly on the desktop, then they will continue to make the hardware vendors do the bulk of the work.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
iTunes has always suffered from a not-quite-native feel on Mac OS and that's disappointing. Version 10 is definitely a step in the wrong direction. Besides Finder, it's probably the single most used application on a Mac considering all the purposes it serves.
In Mac OS 10.7 I'd love to see a user interface redesign that obeys Apple's own human interface guidelines and removes some of the serious bloat. For instance, why does the music application handle synchronizing with the iOS devices? I understand this single application paradigm keeps things simpler in some respects for cross platform support, but really, why bother porting the interface? I agree with a previous poster that the back end(s) for the music player, synching, etc. should be maintained as cross-platform libraries and native front ends should be created for Mac OS and Windows. This would probably reduce bloat in the long run and make it easier for Apple to integrate synch behavior into the OS on the Mac but keep it in iTunes for the Windows application.
I had the exact same thing happen to me just this month.
While doing a Windows update I figured it was easier to just format the drive and reinstall my few programs with all my media on a separate partition. After the update I re-installed itunes and all of my carefully labeled and sorted id3 tags were gone.
> Um, you do realize that you can use Flash on a Mac right? Also you can download alternative media players to your hearts content.
If your approach to Apple software is to avoid Apple software, then why bother to begin with?
Once you've gotten away from the "it runs everything" benefits of Windows and installed all the things that probably run under Linux too, then what's the point really?
The fact that Apple is actively hostile to Linux when it comes to iTunes would be the main thing there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My wife owns an Apple.
Read: "I ordered my RealDoll from a Mac at the public library."
LOL!
No Flash at all? Do you realize that Macs have Flash? You didn't say iOS devices, you said Macs. They do have Flash. In addition, while iTunes and Quicktime are installed, there's nothing that says you must use them. I barely ever crack Quicktime open (although I have to admit that Quicktime X is a big improvement over Quicktime 7) and fire up MPlayer most of the time instead. I use iTunes simply because I own an iPod and an iPhone, but I really don't use it beyond organizing and synching music, so I don't really give a crap about all the kludge that Apple is adding because I never get that far. Not to say that iTunes isn't getting clunky (much more so on Windows, though), but it's not a problem for me.
In addition, you do realize that the average consumer doesn't know and/or doesn't give a crap about what you've listed, right?
I hope people reading the parent post realize this guy has absolutely zero understanding of intellectual property (copyright and patents). His remarks flagged as troll seem quite appropriate.
The term freetard was conceived by a guy that maintained a website that had the intent of trying to humiliate those that wanted free choice. He is now defunct (his own choice). The rebut to freetard is proprietard. Those that think that proprietary software is the only thing of value.
Linux and FreeBSD came into being through the hard work of others. Those individuals sat down and began working in earnest with the goal of providing everyone with choice. They were not copying the proprietary code of others or even trying to violate any patents or copyright. Their efforts reflect those of the generation of shareware authors, except they chose to give theirs away freely and to release the source code so that others could use it and improve it.
Windows 7 though significantly better than Vista is still Vista and Vista was still XP as XP was 2000 and earlier. They were incremental changes to previous OSes. Win phone 7's future is as questionable as Zune's. Considering that this is paid software that must be licensed on a per unit basis (whereas Android doesn't have those costs/requirements) makes Win Phone 7 hardly a sure win.
If you count that Android can be (and is being) modified by virtually every handset maker it bears fortune as it shows that Android represents the future of the smart phone and tablet market across the board. A paid closed proprietary one-size fits all Win Phone 7 isn't guaranteed success. As well, the development tools, the products, and features of Android on both the smart phone and tablet really shine making it a high mountain to climb.
Microsoft isn't a company that can't afford to fail. If it were to fail the orbiting markets that fed it and others would still exist for some time while the competition came in to chew up chunks of the market. In other words, Microsoft's failure wouldn't be as devastating as the parent's post makes it out to be. Also, considering that the failure of Microsoft wouldn't be like a light switch where it is on one day and off the next. The competition would already have come in and chewed away at segments of the market. Nothing about Microsoft's failure could seriously hurt the computing market. There are some incredibly smart businesses out there that would step in and ease our transition.
Apple has invested billions also in creating a good user experience. Linux has too. Large corporations have invested considerable money. To make a kernel on par with the Linux kernel by today's standard would run a company 5+ billion dollars. FOSS software also has had billions invested in it. This is from large companies such as IBM, Sun, Oracle, NASA, Red Hat to name a few.
Many of the more modern features of Microsoft Windows came from other OSes. In fact, most of what they created comes from copying others. The latest task bar in Win 7 is a copy of the features of Apple's dock. The desktop itself is a copy of Apple's product (I know, it was copied from other companies). The transparent window borders, and other 3d affects were copied from the likes of Linux. The UAC is a copy of the Mac and Linux. There are features that Linux has that exceed anything Microsoft offers and you should expect copies of that to occur in Windows.
The point is that *all* OSes today take considerable commitment, even in the billions of dollars. The features of any given OS and the user experience behind that are common between virtually every OS. Microsoft's paid model for Win Phone 7 and the fact that they are late players and doing nothing more than emulating the already successful Andoid and iOS foretell of slow adoption, higher costs, and a weaker user experience due to the lack of apps, the lack of refinement as is found by revising your product over the years.
Essentially, the parent's post is a weak attempt. He demonstrates an almost complete lack of knowledge about anything of which he is speaking. His perspective is utterly one-sided and he's showing his prejudice throughout. He reminds me of a wanna be Glen Beck of /.!
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It's true. I've been dealing with computers on a continues basis for 2 decades, and Windows computers are pretty much the most unreliable pieces of crap I've had to deal with. It's not just that they break routinely and need to be fixed, it's the fact that the configuration utilities and help files often times aren't correct and that often times I have to admit to not knowing why it's broken. The OSes completely lacking any coherence of design doesn't make it any easier. And frequently I have to resort to hackery upon install to make sure that things that I don't want and could break aren't installed.
Frequently I have to say I don't know why that reboot fixed the problem and I don't know when it's going to be an issue again. The help files and configuration utilities being often times broken, incomplete or including information from a different version of Windows hardly makes it any easier to fix. There was a time when I thought that was interesting, but these days it just pisses me off that MS seems to think that they know better than I do as to how the machine should be operated.
And that doesn't even get into the times when the update process freezes, one of their updates breaks my computer or I have to learn a new way of doing something because they didn't feel like giving the end users the ability to actually fix all the problems without some arcane hackery which one really shouldn't need to know how to do. Not to mention the fact that they don't make it particularly easy to find information on the obscure ways of doing things when things don't go the way that they should.
Honestly, if Linux and FreeBSD can get that stuff right, there's absolutely no excuse for MS not. They just don't care enough to do the QA and bug fixes necessary to make things work properly and reliably.
iTunes is just the media player from Mac OS. It runs great on a Mac. It's fast, it never crashes. It's happy to download many 1-2GB movie files while transcoding and syncing hundreds of music files to multiple mobile devices.
When you're running iTunes on Windows, you're essentially running a chunk of Mac OS to get that done, because Windows doesn't have the corresponding systems like open media playback. But you're running it on the creaky Windows core, which can't multitask to save its own life and which falls over if you blow on it.
It's like running PHP on Mac or Windows. On a Mac, you have actual PHP on actual Unix and you just turn on PHP and you go. On Windows, you install something like EasyPHP that has to put a hunk of Unix into a creaky Windows application.
Maybe if 90% of the Windows platform was on the latest OS version like Apple's users, then Windows users would have a right to complain about how iTunes performs on Windows 7. But you are mostly on the 2001 version of Windows, which predates the iPod by a few months. So Windows apps are XP apps, even if you're running Vista or 7.
If you want good performance from your PC, get a Mac. This has been true for the entire 21st century. If you haven't caught on to that yet, then STFU. Nobody gives a damn about how bad your Windows works anymore. We all know it's broken, we all know it's not being fixed, we all know there is an alternative that has thousands of advantages as well as much cheaper TCO. You're working harder and paying more to run Windows. Stop complaining that it sucks. Your destiny is in your own hands.
It's more that you're being a lugubrious asshat who lumps people into one group if they give the slightest indication of liking or using Apple products. Cry some more.
Is it just me or does Slashdot just alternate between Apple-adoring fawning pseudo press releases and over-the-top reactionary anti-Apple flame bait? Apple is a company that makes some great tech products, some not-so-great, but does so with class. How many "reactions" to itty-bitty iTunes update minutia really need to make the front page? Can we get back to tech news & nerdy discussion now? You know, "stuff that matters?"
> I just dont understand why people flock to Mac over their Windows issues
Windows is crap. Windows has always been crap. People are tired of the nonsense.
Macs are visible and well advertised.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Come on, there are two mobile video sites you really need: Youtube, and ifap.to.
My biggest problem is that support seems to wax and wane with actually moving songs/videos on and off an iPod with open source alternatives ... so that leaves me tied to the beast that is iTunes.
I had the same problem & concerns. I put rockbox on my iPod, and I haven't looked back. You literally just drag and drop music/videos/pictures on & off your ipod. No itunes, no random 4-string names, and far more features than the stock ipod firmware. When I put rockbox on my iPod photo/color, my iPod could now play videos!
There are downsides. You'll have to transcode ipod videos to mpeg. The menus are slower loading, it takes some twiddling to make the interface really look good, and I'm not enamored with the sleep behavior. But for me, it is well worth it to avoid iTunes and flaky 3rd party iPod loaders, not counting the new features.
Or they are uninformed buyers. They get most of their information from advertising.
> Or they do know how to use them but like having a system that just works, out of the box, and yet allows them to mess around with the *nix side of things.
That's what Debian or Ubuntu is for.
They exploit Mac hardware better than MacOS does.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You said Macs, not iPhones or iPads. In addition, I really don't miss Flash on my iPhone, and if the crappiness of Flash on Android is any indication, I don't want it.
Slashdot has undergone the same transformation as iTunes.
I remember when I used to get a spam-prevention timeout for posting comments too quickly.
Now, the preview window takes so long to load that such a fault would be impossible!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Apple tries to limit you to their own formats. This is evident in their inferior support for nvidia GPU video acceleration.
They have h264 on the brain and try to push you away from using anything else. They try to pretend that other stuff doesn't exist and the community group think goes along with this nonsense.
They make simple things harder than they need to be. They herd rubes into a much more limited approach than is really necessary.
They would ignore MS Office if they thought they could get away with it.
It seems to be a universal rule that you should always avoid the applications of the OS vendor (Microsoft, Apple, Ubuntu).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
For the present... .
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm guessing you use a Mac. This is a program which I LOVE on the Mac and HATE on Windows. I've got a dual-core 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo based Windows machine... granted, it's running XP, but shit, if iTunes is running, everything grinds to a halt.
To that end, the same thing happens with Quicktime and Safari on my Windows machine. I'll be upgrading soon to Win7, so I have hopes that it'll run better, but at this time, Apple products on Windows *suck*.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yes. Ignoring the native OS libraries for a given function should be a big fat no no.
This is especially true for stuff like video that quite often requires very low level hardware integration.
Someone running iTunes should not have to worry about whether or not Apple properly replicated PureVideo or VDPAU hooks.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's not about the performance, it's about the UI. iTunes sucks on Macs, and Mac users (who generally have higher standards than Windows users) are probably the people who are most aware of its suckiness. Windows users are used to things being difficult, astonishing, arcane, and unreliable. MacOS users expect things to Just Work, not for their iPod to randomly delete a bunch of songs from itself after the user merely tries to copy something from his computer to the iPod.
was it really updating id3 tags? Like, you could open it in winamp and read the info you had input in itunes, or could it have been storing the info in some kind of itunes specific database?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
>> Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine ... which I am not a fan of.
>
> Sorry your crappy PC didn't come with a standard media layer and Apple had to provide you with a free one.
What are you? Some Apple cheerleader that just popped out of a wormhole from the 80s?
Windows is not lacking in such a facility.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I assumed it was because they don't want to buy a Windows computer and don't know how to use Linux, *BSD or any of the other alternatives.
I can't help but chuckle every time someone implies that Macs are for lightweights who don't know how computers work. I have a PhD in computer science and attend a lot of conferences full of code-writing grad students. Looking around the audience I see basically three populations:
0. People who could afford, or get their advisor to pay for a Mac. (About 60%)
1. People who couldn't get their advisor to pay for a Mac (and use Linux/BSD on some cheaper laptop).
2. Poor lost souls who still use Windows.
Now, graduate CS researchers are not the perfect proxy for the "serious" computer using population, but they absolutely 'know how to use Linux/BSD'. They just prefer Macs in large numbers, at least for personal machines --- servers are a different game.
It's not hard to understand: a Mac comes with a Unix shell, runs a nice optimized version of x86 gcc, and can get a full GNU distribution in a few minutes via Macports. Your video card is always supported by the OS (no futzing around with drivers and X issues). Most importantly, when you need to, you can run a large complement of applications including Keynote and the entire MS Office suite (and yes, unfortunately this is still necessary sometimes). They also run nice hardware and don't suffer from crappy build quality like many Wintel laptops.
FWIW, there are some drawbacks. I have trouble compiling some Linux packages because some MacOS/Mach/BSD conventions are different enough that they break. Also, Apple has a tendency to ship some old-ass libraries with the base operating system, and doesn't update them often enough. MS Office for Mac was designed by monkeys, but that's because MS Office was designed by monkeys.
You should stop being a prick. Apple is limiting things on their own platform. As far as competition existing elsewhere its not relevant to what I said.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I hope people reading your post realize *whoosh*!
Im not the one bitching someone out for not liking Apple products. I ended up being right though didn't I? He admitted to owning quite a few Apple products. You don't own a lot of something you are not enthusiastic about. Go wipe up your tears.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I'll briefly mention that I was gifted an iPod nano, but I was well aware of the clumsiness of iTunes and I have always avoided it like the plague after using it years ago. I found an open source python script which would allow me to just drag whatever mp3s on the device I wished and it randomized them for me. I would highly suggest it.
Anyway, about rewrites of software. They hardly ever happen and in the vast majority of cases they do not work out for the better. OS X was an exception, but lets face it, OS 9 was a piece of absolute crap compared to other modern day operating systems and Apple has an entire team devoted to their OS which was aware of this. They even saved themselves some work by using some OSS *nix code (the guts of OS X runs on a BSD variant and a Mach kernel, but my memory is fuzzy).
That brings me to my over-arching theme, such that, a rewrite of a "successful" application is a very difficult sell. OS 9 was not what anyone would call successful. iTunes could be described as successful given its usage. Sure, those of us here are going to scoff at it, I think we expect more, but until Apple sees some sort of sales hit or massive negative backlash about it, the management will likely stay the course.
This brings me to my next point, the rewrite of any application will likely have an equivalent and/or reduced feature set. In some cases that is good (for cleaner, crisper software), however if you take this proposal to non-tech-savvy management, they will interpret the request along the lines of: spend X man years, Y million dollars, and end up with the same product that only works slightly better. The obvious follow up question from management then comes in: "well, can we fix what we have for cheaper?" In doing the trade-off analysis, nearly any sane management will take the significantly reduced cost for a minor improvement in a trouble feature as opposed to a rewrite.
And to go to the car analogy, say you are management. Your car currently makes you a lot of money because people use it, but they complain about how old/clunky it is. To completely re-invigorate your car, the mechanic wants $25K to completely re-tune/paint/upholster/everything your vehicle. The end result will be basically the exact same car, just in mint condition. OR you think to yourself, you can do the bare minimum maintenance, and take that 25K and buy a new car, and have two cars that can make money. Even if your customers simply use the new car over the old one, at least now you can buy a different car from the old one and attract more customers! Management generally prefers the latter option here, while consumers might prefer the former. Then again, its management's money, hence the tough sell.
So the key here is, if you were someone who could talk to the Apple Management, how could you make a convincing enough case to do a rewrite of iTunes such that the ROI (return on investment) is worth it for management? A true answer to that takes more than just a /. post.
If you bothered reading other replies you would know what occurred.
You typed out your ignorance and got modded troll?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Can't play your archaic movie format? Why not use VLC? Why eschew features such as hardware acceleration and support for modern codecs? Backwards compatibility for out-dated formats is bloat as well.
I tunes behaves really wonky, until I figured out that all you need to do click the "Manually manage movies and music" on each devices home page.
Then you can drag music and movies from anywhere (desktop/ itunes) into the device and it copies it in. It takes more manual effort, but seems to make the program behave much better.
I used to not mind itunes till I got a tablet...
And...how many people know how to build a computer, much less troubleshoot their own hardware? I'm running a Hackintosh because I wanted OS X with the building and configuration options of a PC, but I'm not even going to pretend that a Hackintosh is a viable option for the vast majority of consumers. They just want to grab something that works out of the box with minimal fuss. One thing that Apple has going for them is the current lack of malware. People have virus/spyware issues all the damned time. Yes, much of that is due to user incompetence, but it's a problem nevertheless. It helps drive them to the Mac platform where they think they're safe, although OS X isn't going to be that way forever.
What geeks want in a product and what consumers want in a product are rarely the same.
In all honesty when you bought those songs DRM was probably the only way to buy them. You can upgrade them to itunes + (Higher bit rate non-DRM for 30 cents.). You can remove the DRM through various methods. The easiest is to burn them to audio CD and re-rip them. If you don't eject the disc, it should keep the file names.
You are correct with regards to the actual mp3 files. They should contain artist, album, song and track number information. That is why I accepted the need to edit my music collection. But that still doesn't change the fact that iTunes deleted existing ID3 tags completely. Those ID3 tags were gone, wiped clean, destroyed, NOT THERE ANYMORE.
Whether it may have been a bug in that version of iTunes or all versions of iTunes behave the same way I do not know. And I will NEVER find out, because I will never allow iTunes within 10ft of any music files I have.
All versions of Windows from XP up have very decent media layers. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to inflict Quicktime on Windows any more. If iTunes absolutely had to use its own codecs & filters, there is no reason they have to be exposed outside of the application
The "clueless sucker" argument is enough to explain why someone would buy them the first time.
It's not enough to explain why they *keep* buying apple products, and why Apple products have one of the better customer satisfaction ratings in the industry.
If you buy something and feel that you've been bait-and-switched and your new device absolutely doesn't live up to the marketing hype, you're not going to tell people that you "love" your new purchase, and plan to buy another.
This is so true. I am surprised not more people are bitching about it, in fact, I thought it was just me until just now. My experience with iTunes on Windows is laggy and awkward. When I read about how Apple detested Flash on Mac because it was laggy, the first thing that came to my mind was so what, iTunes on Windows is laggy too. I try to avoid iTunes if I can, but sometimes I have to, because there appears to be some media (iTunes U, or iTunes link sent by colleagues) that requires iTunes. You go vertical, Apple.
If you're looking for open source alternatives to iTunes: CDex, VLC and handbrake .
You forgot a big one Songbird
Have you actually tried using that? I have and its more sluggish then iTunes could ever be.
It's "solutions" like this that are exactly why I use a Mac. A giant paragraph of what it won't do, with bunches of little work-arounds you had to discover along the way? No thanks. You can spend all weekend arm wrestling your media into a home-brew solution, I'll just rip/download/sync/etc. and move one.
iTunes is far from perfect, but goodness, I never want to put up with the hot mess you just described.
Likewise, that's what gets me excited about the new Apple TV: plug it in, start using it. Compare that to the past few years of XBMC hacks and mythical HTPC solutions I've put my wife through. From my point-of-view, the future just got a lot brighter.
At least they didn't follow the Facebook protocol: add a new insecurity, uh, "feature" and turn it on to the whole world by default.
Woah...so Apple is less evil than Google? Seeing as how Google exposed all your contacts to the public with that whole Buzz fiasco.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
It turned out that iTunes wiped out the id3 tags from the songs and stored them somewhere else.
You need to select all the songs, right click and choose "Convert ID3 Tags", then iTunes will render all the song data into ID3 tags within the mp3 files themselves. Until you do that, it's all just metadata in the iTunes database. So iTunes didn't really wipe the data from the songs, as it hadn't rendered that data into the songs at all yet.
I made the same mistake, but I also took the basic step of checking the timestamps on the files after changing the song info, which made me realized another step was required.
iTunes actually makes a pretty good bulk tag editor, once you know about this extra step.
The problem with both Debian and Debian Extra Unstable (AKA Ubuntu) on the desktop is that unlike an Apple machine running OS X they don't "just work". I say this as someone who got started on SunOS in the early 90s, switched over to the x86 BSD world for a while, found Linux around 1995, switched back to FreeBSD around 2000 and finally to OS X about six months after the first intel macs came out. Really, an iMac, a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro that's literally straight out of the box and booted up for the first time will "just work", you might want to install some software, change a few settings here and there but overall it works, all the hardware is supported and you don't find yourself having to edit a repository list in /etc just so you can install software properly (I've done my fair share of manual compilations of software not in any repos with various Linux and BSD distros and I'd rather avoid dependency hell thankyouverymuch).
Now, my most recent desktop Linux experiences include Debian somehow getting the disk labels mixed up and installing grub configured to attempt to boot from a disk that didn't exist. Ubuntu wiping out Xorg when I updated to 10.04. The network manager in Ubuntu deciding on a whim that I should have no more network connectivity until I went in and emptied its junk-filled config files and then did a "chmod a-r" on the files and the subdir they were in. And there's plenty more, these are just the most recent things.
Now, I don't mind this on a "toy" desktop machine. I also don't mind having to edit some config files when setting up a $5,000 server. But when it comes to my main workstation I prefer something that just works, or which is at least built to just work (this one is for the trolls, yeah yeah, your brother bought a Macbook with a busted panel, that doesn't mean it was defective by design). I used to be a fan of UNIX workstations and I still am, it's just that the only one that's still making them happens to be Apple (yes, OS X 10.5+ is UNIX 03 certified).
...but today it pales in comparison to the many media players available for Linux.
No. I'm currently building a small Atom based HTPC running Linux to replace an aging MacMini (throttled by nasty Intel graphics), the largest stumbling block I've hit is finding a nice, full featured, stable, music player. It has to meet these criteria to beat iTunes:
1: Easy to use. Other people will be using the music feature, so it can't be overly arcane and "linuxy". (Goodbye gmusicplayer, amarok, and most everything else)
2. Has a feature like "iTunes DJ" or party shuffle: a small queue of whats coming up on shuffle, that is editable. (Goodbye Rhythmbox)
3: Can handle a library of over 7000 songs without dying repeatedly or being unresponsive (goodbye Banshee, Listen)
4. Handles ratings well (Goodbye Listen, gmusicplayer)
5. Keeps my library organized by folder (goodbye everyone but Banshee)
6. Decent management without ever having to delve into a huge directory of files
So far nothing has really matched these criteria. Guayadeque comes the closest, even though its queue preferences are pretty much meaningless (can anyone explain how to have a constant shuffle pool of 16 songs?). It isn't perfect, but it seems better than the rest.
Linux music players, as a whole, have a very long ways to go. Most of them feel like using Winamp (XMMS) in the mid-90s, which is pretty cool until you realize that your music directory has become so cumbersome that you really don't want to bother with hand making play lists and having to dig through 1000's of folders to find what you want to listen to.
Most of all, when I listen to music I don't want to have to think about how to do it best, or what process I should... etc...
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
iTunes runs fine on my Core 2 Duo with 2gb ram. One with Windows XP at work and another at home with Windows 7.
Macs just work. I've learned that Apple puts the emphasis on "work", where I generally, after the initial love affair, put it on the "just".
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Unless this was a feature of a very old version of iTunes, or your files were marked read only, you were certainly mistaken
iTunes saves id3 information directly into your mp3 file as well as an xml file and a binary file.
The only time something isn't directly written into your mp3 file is if you use the "get album artwork" option. It saves the artwork into a seperate cache folder
How do I deactivate the old computer so it doesn't take up one of the five "computer licenses" Apple allows me?
itunes has an item under "View my Account" to cancel all current activations. I don't know how long it's had that for, but I've used it off and on over the last few years.
Then you just re-authorize the computers you need.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, what occurred was you made a false statement about Apple's computers and when you realised what you had done, you tried to claim you were really only talking about the iPod/Phone/Pad.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
The fact that Apple is actively hostile to Linux when it comes to iTunes would be the main thing there
You are wrong there, it's much worse than that. Apple is actively hostile to Adobe (at least as far as Flash is concerned). They are totally indifferent to Linux.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Before getting rid of iTunes next time, select your entire library, right click, then "Convert to ID3 tag". It encodes all of the info stored in Apple's proprietary itunes library format into ID3 info that any program will read.
I know, hindsight is 20/20, but there is a workaround once you've had it happen to you once. I wish there was a better way for them to let people know about this; its damn inconvenient to spend hours and hours and hours redoing all of your library info only to have it wiped.
I mean, iTunes 9 was like an old van that couldn't get a hill. iTunes 10 is like a new van that can barely make it over the hill.
That's because iTunes intentionally breaks the id3 tag standard, and it's not the only standard it flouts. Virtually all of the tags that iTunes writes are encrypted and shoehorned into the 'comments' section of the standard id3 header, making it impossible for any non-Apple product to read. Not only that but the open daap music sharing protocol that APPLE HELPED DEVELOP was broken by iTunes when they realized that they could lock users into using iTunes to share music. You can't share a media library between iTunes and linux, even though they use the same supposedly 'open' standard.
"iTunes Enterprise Edition"!!!! Let me install whatever component and sub-component I choose on a corporate network-- i.e. no Outlook integration, no Safari, just enough to let people synch up their Apple devices without grinding their business PC to a hault. Offer management through GPO templates. Please stop the pain for America's IT departments!
Well thank you for making that decision for everybody!
Thank you, that need to be said.
I can't speak to every feature, but XBMC works rather well as a multimedia player. I only use basic functions, but my library of over 20,000 doesn't give it any problems, there is a shuffle mode, you can set navigation by folder and it's fairly user friendly and compatible with most remotes. My biggest complaint was when I pushed a certain button on my remote it would turn my X-Box on, a piece of electric tape over the X-Box fixed that.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Well, iTunes 10 won't work with my unslung NSLU2 running mt-daapd... It had worked just fine right up to iTunes 9.2.1.4, too!
At this point it's just a difference in OS, the hardware is more or less the same. My workstation in my office runs 7 like a dream, I haven't had a problem with it yet. Of course that's a bit like a mechanic saying he's never had a problem with his car. Up until now Windows has been hit or miss, but calling the latest incarnation "crap" is disingenuous at best.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
you forgot one: mobileboner.com
I've not had problems with backwards compatibility and QuickTime except for the odd regression. Movies made with Quicktime 1.0/CinePak back in 1991 even should play fine on Quicktime 7.x.x. But yes, it would be nice if QuickTime weren't such a low-level library.
This post seems to follow the same pattern as about 90% of the iTunes-bashing posts in this story. You rant on and on and on about how terrible it is - "the shit that is iTunes . . . holy fucking shit . . . you still don't know how bad it is . . . this atrocity . . . absolutely horrible . . . dead last, and all thanks to iTunes." Yet you provide not even one example of why it is bad.
I like iTunes as a music organizer/player/syncer. I've tried most of the alternatives, desperately wishing to be cool enough to avoid Apple products, but sadly, I find iTunes to be best in class for those functions.
There are other good features, too. It's certainly not perfect, though. Among my complaints are:
I'm sure I would have more complaints if I thought to write them down every time I encountered one. But a few common bitches around here that are not among my complaints are:
Now, I don't use it for anything else - no iOS devices with apps and data to sync, no movies, no tv shows, no podcasts, no social lameness. I hear those areas kind of suck, and I agree it's pretty lame to mash all that crap into the same program. But again, as a music player/organizer/syncer I find iTunes to be best in class. Is the hate just general Apple hate or what is it, really?
It's not about the performance, it's about the UI. iTunes sucks on Macs, and Mac users (who generally have higher standards than Windows users) are probably the people who are most aware of its suckiness. Windows users are used to things being difficult, astonishing, arcane, and unreliable. MacOS users expect things to Just Work, not for their iPod to randomly delete a bunch of songs from itself after the user merely tries to copy something from his computer to the iPod.
In your opinion, the UI sucks. Guess what? I'm a mac user at home and developer on windows at work. The iTunes UI is fine in my opinion. I don't see a problem with it. A lot of what the OP said is true. Windows does have a poor model for multitasking and resource management. It is particularly poor at managing virtual memory compared with unix OSes like OS X and unix-like ones like Linux.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Or if you want the same thing as Media Monkey but with video support (great for sorting and tagging porn) get J River Media Center. It is pretty expensive and full of DRM but it is the best media library and player out there.
Watching six years old home movies of now departed family members is not "archaic" use.
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardTagger
You don't need to sware off iPods. I hate Apple as much as half of Slashdot, but I have 2 iPods now, and have always owned them. I have installed iTunes once, lasted about 10 minutes and then got rid of it. There are literally countless programs out there that have plugins or whatnot to work with iPods. Foobar2000 as my music player with the iPod plugin is my current choice.
As far as I know, no version of itunes behaves the way you describe. And while I can't say I've used every single dot revision, I've used every major version of iTunes since they were on OS 9 classic. And I used it specifically to help handle batch tag editing prior to getting an ipod.
There is a possibility that the preference for whether it not it organizes stuff for you, or the preference of whether or not to copy it into the iTunes-managed root folder may make it appear like what you said happened. But if so, the changes should exist in a set of mp3 files elsewhere.
The best way to handle folders in my opinion was and still is, to drag the folder into itunes' source list. It'll create a playlist with that folder's contents.
Then within that playlist, select all the songs, to accomplish the batch edit. This way, you don't have to worry about missing a song with a mispelled artist tag or whatever.
Uh what?
VLC, mplayer, and WM6 seem to read itunes-edited mp3 tags fine.
And the DAAP locking was to prevent people from streaming somebody else's music library to a file (aka easy piracy mechanism). If share dumping utilities didn't exist, the locking wouldn't exist either.
iTunes is a decent operating system, but it really needs a good MP3 player.
Seriously, I love OSX and use two macs, I'm relatively happy with my iPhone (I like it, modulo ATT, and even that has gotten better), but iTunes is a bucket of spit.
I get the strategy. It just sucks for my usage model.
Things I think are crappy:
One Thing that would make it nicer, and aren't just fixing crappy bloat, would include more flexible volume spanning for libraries. I have a lot of music - it took a long time, but I've ripped my entire collection, which I've accumulated over ~20 years. I don't want or ever need 260G of music on my laptop. I keep a large amount of it on a network drive and put up with iTunes freaking out when it discovers a track is on a drive that isn't connected, but the whole thing is annoying, and keeping it working it needlessly tedious, especially for an Apple product.
Sorry for the rant - this isn't so much a reply to you anymore - I started this out just to get the refurbished emacs quip out, and it turned into this. I just find it remarkable that Apple has created such a monstrosity that it central to their ongoing strategy. They've created real duds before, but iTunes is... just a mess. They usually eventually get it right, but I'm wondering on this one. I think His Steveness actually likes how fucked up iTunes is.
I forget what 8 was for.
even when I've bought music videos off of iTunes, VLC works much better for playing the video files themselves (.m4v format)
I only use iTunes to visit the iTunes music store; then the files get put into my normal system of music folders and imported into MediaMonkey like any other .m4a (Winamp sucked less than iTunes; MediaMonkey is better than either IMHO)
[Seriously though, iTunes' default folder structure is one of my annoyances with it, although it now leaves imported files in the same place.]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I don't want to click through every song in the library anyway.
Sometimes, I download files that have other peoples' star rankings in the tag, which I don't agree with. Even when I do use them, 5's are used sparingly.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yeah; I tend to clean up id3 tags as the files come in so I'm not stuck with such a massive batch.
I remember seeing "Rolling Stones" and "The Rolling Stones" treated as two separate artists by the alphabetization system.
Does iTunes just change the info in its library database, as opposed to actually retagging the files? Is that it?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Gee, QuickTime *does* have pluggable codec support, e.g. Flip4Mac (http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm) which allows you to play (and edit/create, in the pay versions) WMV files in any app that supports QuickTime, such as QuickTime Player, which can't play WMV files normally.
"It's not that simple. Quicktime is neither backwards nor forwards compatible, nor does it allow for multiple simultaneous installations."
I not entirely sure WIndows even allows that. OS X does. WIth a knowledgable hand, Linux should (as well with most Unix systems). IIRC, Windows isn't so keen on multi versions of libs. Apps should be able to code around this, but the core operating system doesn't provide that level of versioning. What you are describing is a Windows issue, which Apple has to work around.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Convert the videos or run a separate environment in a VM.
I'm a foobar2000 user myself, but I was under the impression that the ipod plugin required iTunes to be installed, after which it can be removed for some models. Yet the damage caused by Quicktime is at that point already done, and a restore from backup is your only choice if you need to play files created with older and DRM-free versions of Qt codecs.
It might be possible to eradicate Qt from the registry and WinSXS to allow the old version to install without contamination, but I'm far from confident enough to try that. The easier choice is to never ever install iTunes, and avoid iPod/iPad/iPhone/iPussy/iWhatever (Cowon is a good alternative). And the next time I buy a camera, make damn sure it doesn't use a codec that requires Qt.
Believe me, I've tried, but I haven't found a single conversion program that both understands Sony-generated .mqv MPEG-4 movies and at the same time doesn't require a newer Quicktime than from 2004 to be installed. .mov, but lose the sound sync, and the result is rather blurry compared to the original.
I've had some limited success with Pinnacle Studio version 8.12 (newer versions appear to be too crippled) if renaming the files to
If I understand the issue correctly, the newer Qt versions refuse to decode MPEG-4 files that are pre-DRM. It seems to be OK with MPEG-4 files that don't have DRM enabled, but not ones that lack DRM support completely. Possibly Apple kowtowing to the media industry, with disregard for manufacturers who earlier bought an MPEG-4 codec from Apple, and the users who are stuck with the format. I could be wrong.
I also tried to replace the codec files in a new Qt installation with the dll files from the old version, but that was no go too -- apparently, Qt checks the version of the files and gets pissy if there are mismatches.
Anyhow, as the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I make sure that there won't be a second time by boycotting Quicktime and all products that require it, directly or indirectly.
In my case it stored all the information in its own database and then cleaned any trace of former tags from the music files themselves. I said that people reading my post will start replying "It cannot happen", "I've used every version of iTunes since the dawn of time and none did that to me".
Well, it did happen dammit! I was there, and I'm not a computer n00b, even though I'm posting this from Seamonkey running on Win7. :) Even if losing the id3 tags was a result of a bug in my particular build of iTunes and the previous as well as next versions worked as intended it still doesn't change things.
dl:tl
sounds like my guess was fairly on-target. .flac, .mp3, and .wma always seem to stick, whereas even with that program, tags on .m4a seem to hide/disappear
in MediaMoney, tags on
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Our company operates over 50 MacBooks and MacBook Pros. We also use non Mac Intel machines running Windows and Linux. In our experience the Mac hardware superiority is a myth. We must replace hard drives, fans and other components in the Mac lap tops more often by far then we do on the cheaper Intel computers. We are seriously considering migration to Linux exclusively.
I agree whole-heartedly. I don't see what's wrong with the interface to iTunes. You're dealing with a moderately complicated data base of stuff, all sorts of stuff. There's always a tension between simplicity and functionality and iTunes gets it pretty much right as far as I can see.
Also, contra much whinging in ./land, iTunes on windows 7 works fine. I have not had any problems with it at all. I run it on mac and windows, and while the windows version doesn't look windows-like, that's not an issue (I wish all windows software looked mac-like).
Now if there was a linux version, Apple would rise inestimably in my opinion...
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
though it still desperately needs a rewrite as TFA says
Arguably, a thing you should never do...
As of Windows Vista, MS includes DVD decoding out of the box. As of Windows 7, MS includes AAC decoding, MPEG4 decoding, and the .mov container. There *are* still other codecs (and always will be) but the most common ones are now included in-box... including the ones most relevant to Quicktime/iTunes.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Then you never had the problem of flash-ads that you complained about in the GGP post.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Why is there a 5 computer limit in the first place? Seems arbitrary. Why not 6, or 50, or unlimited?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I thought this place was "News for Nerds". It is not true that "alot" of the internet uses Flash.
A very small percentage of websites use Flash. And as an iPhone user for 2.5 years, I have had trouble with exactly one Flash-based website on my iPhone. I'm very happy that my mobile device isn't saddled with Flash. Adobe's horrible software runs on my Laptop, and constantly eats up processor time, heats up my lap, and drains my battery.
Now that Safari has an extension to block Flash, this is finally coming to an end. (Firefox has had it for a while.)
Flash always was an end-run around Web standards, and is far overused. And since Adobe makes low-quality software as a rule, every client is burdened with their slow, buggy, insecure, sloppy excuse for a virtual machine that could just as easily have been on years of Java experience, or submitted as an open Web language standard. Flash is a fucking abomination, and the sooner it disappears from the Web, the better.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
The problem is that iTunes goes to great lengths to look exactly the same on Windows as it does on MacOS. To that end it uses its own fonts and font rendering code, its own networking features like Bonjour, its own widgets and window decoration, its own media codes (Quicktime) etc.
All that adds a massive amount of bloat and prevents iTunes from integrating with the OS like a normal app does. Normally when an app opens a windows the OS does most of the work and uses the same resources (fonts, graphical elements) it uses for all other windows thus saving memory and eliminating loading them from disk. It also does all the rendering, including when they change colour as the mouse moves over them or slide out when clicked on. Since the Windows 7 is fairly well optimised and can make the best use of the available graphics hardware it is nice and quick, but iTunes ignores all of that. You end up effectively running half of MacOS just because Apple insist it looks a certain way and breaks the standard UI.
I made a list of stuff installed by iTunes 9 installs: http://blog.world3.net/2009/09/list-of-things-installed-by-itunes-9/
* iTunes itself
* Quicktime
* Apple Mobile Device service
* Bonjour Service
* iPod Service
* iTunesHelper startup task
* QTTask startup task
* Firefox plugin
* iPod Classic drivers
* iPhone drivers
* Apple Software Update
Grand Total: 276MB
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have a lot of different kinds of insurance, and I'm not enthusiastic about insurance. As the earlier poster said, "the right tool for the job."
Up until 2005 I believed Apple products were still crap, but I've become a user.I'm much happier dealing with something that simply works rather than the constant crap I had to deal with on PCs, mostly Windows, but Linux isn't all that great on a workstation either.
For me, the right tool for the job is a Mac with OSX on my workstation, iOS on my phone, and CentOS on my server. I've tried LOTS of alternatives.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
I bought an AT&T Microcell. It's not written in Flash, and doesn't use Flash for management. (In case you're curious, it's managed using the normal AT&T Wireless website, and it communicates with their back-end. The Microcell itself has no interface at all, but no Flash is required to manage or install it.)
And that marketing site is an example of where Flash should never be used. It provides nothing that could not have been done using Web standards (a simple form to gather ZIP code) but was done because the marketing department wanted more whiz-bang effects.
While we're giving examples, T-Mobile's website is another example of overuse and misuse of Flash. Each page (inside the Account areas) uses 10-30 Flash instances, for everything from using a specific font in headings, to displaying a block of text with a static graph. It's a pain to use on any platform, doesn't work at all on iPhone, and makes me want to find another provider.
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
Nvm splitting; I'd be happy, for starters, with them not trying to bundle / download every other of their free, high profile, multiplatform apps.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I have an Intel Atom N330 with a 256mb 9600 GT graphics card and 2GB's of ram. This machine is running from a 32GB SSD with Windows 7 x64.
When running the Divx Converter the machine is fine, I'll often browse the web and have divx player/windows media player running and won't suffer any sow down.
I allowed iTunes 9 on it and the experience wasn't pretty the background processes put a 0.5 second lag on the machine and iTunes took a full minute to load and then play a song. The only way to fix things was to reformat.
iTunes doesn't do that much more than Windows Media Player or Nokia Ovi Player and those applications run without using most of my limited processing power.
I don't get this bithing. My iTunes Library is more than 100GB by now.
I have been using iTunes since day one and I really like how it helps keeping my library organized.
The products Apple make are the closest thing to 'appliances' you can get in the computer world.
I love this sentence. I've never seen Apple's products summarized quite so eloquently.
Serious question: Has anyone actually read this post?
Serious followup question: Did you give a shit about what this guy had to say afterward?
If the grandparent was "appropriately marked troll", what's the point in responding? It was a TROLL. Do you even know what that means? That means he couldn't give two fucks about what he's posting, and is simply trying to incite an argument. And you bit. Hard. If you really felt like his post had so little merit, I don't know how you mustered up the effort to post even 2 paragraphs about it.
Anyway, Linux's user experience still sucks. The first step is to admit it. The second step is to fix it. Some Linux people passed step 1 and we got Ubuntu. Which just proves they still have a ways to go on step 2.
Oh interesting! Sorry must have missed that.
My Ubuntu box has no problems with iTunes-written and edited i3 tags. They work just fine.
Genius has never been anything but opt-in, requiring a store account to even activate it.
Sometimes bad things happen.
Yes, you're right, it has always been opt-in, I'm sorry. Obviously the privacy concerns were that it was not clear to customers that Genius sends listening information to Apple.
this sig is useless
I've asked the question myself so many times.
My guess (as worthless as it is) is this....
1. Your Mac Pro or iMac.
2. Your/significant other's macbook
3. Your system at work.
4 & 5: backups for when you forget (or are unable) to disable before you reinstall one of the above.
I'm far from defending it and I think it has a lot to do with an antiquated view of media ownership and hardware placement. I personally wish ICU handled app deployment, then I could ditch iTunes altogether. Apple appears to prefer that I view/listen to my media on their devices, not my workstation. I prefer to "share" media with my devices and keep it where it belongs, on my server (read: available everywhere I go).
For what it's worth, my workstation at home is also my DAW. I have a lot of money invested in pro studio quality monitors, D/A converters, power amps, etc... I don't want to sync audio to other devices and I don't want playlists (yeah, I'm weird that way. I like to walk over to ny virtual LP rack, pick an album and actually listen to it). Thankfully, I have Cog for my audio consumption. iTunes gets no use at all outside of my MBP for apps, podcasts, TTC lectures and a handful of weekly albums for the gym on the iPad/iPod Touch.
Sorry, long rant when weighing in on a single topic. Blame the sunday morning coffee...
#SickNotWeak
iTunes decision to use abstraction on Windows can hardly be blamed on Windows itself; it's just pure laziness on Apples' part. There's plenty of native media & drawing APIs that iTunes just can't be bothered to implement, and the result is a slow and shitty iTunes implementation on Windows. I know no other app that installs so much shit; a custom USB driver (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-rolls-back-usb-driver-in-itunes-8-for-windows/2270), various services, various other apps you never asked for, etc, etc. It's pure 100% bloat that seemingly only Apple seem to install; no other application I've ever seen piles in so much crap, and you blame Windows? The reality distortion field is strong in you.
Curious comparison with php; I never thought you could link the speed of a media player to that of a web-server technology until now. That aside though php is in fact faster on Windows apparently - http://blogs.iis.net/bills/archive/2006/10/31/PHP-on-IIS.aspx
I find it ironic that Apple call Windows out on being so slow & insecure when they are in fact one of the biggest perpetrators of shoddy coding. The whole "You must use native APIs for the genuine experience" thing going on with the iPhone, while disregarding the same rules completely for their Windows apps. Utter double standards.
throw new NoSignatureException();
An app that needs its own version of foo.dll can have foo.dll copied into the application's install directory. When app.exe launches, it'll look for foo.dll in its home directory before looking in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32 and whatever other directories are in the DLL search path.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.