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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."
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!
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.
"Sometimes I wonder how many people never tried a Mac because they experienced iTunes on Windows and assumed all Apple software must be that terrible."
Spot On. Agree 100%.
Itunes is the one Apple software that almost all Windows users will see. It could have been an opportunity to showcase the awesomeness of Apple software. Instead it is judged to be "meh" at best and in fact from other comments here, a lot of people think it is a bloated bugfest and actually hate it. Total fail on Apple's part.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
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."
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.
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
... consumes my PC resources, wants to automatically install more software than the one I asked for (Safari, Quicktime), starts at least two services on windows that cannot be voluntarily stopped, neither set to manual (or that only run when I open iTunes).
Seriously, why people use that software!?
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.
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.
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
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.