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iTunes' Windows Problem
Hugh Pickens writes "Jean-Louis Gassée writes that iTunes is the best thing that has happened to Apple because without iTunes' innovative micropayment system and its new way of selling songs one at a time, the iPod would have been just another commodity MP3 player. The well-debugged iTunes infrastructure turned out to be a godsend for the emergence of the iPhone. But today, the toxic waste of success cripples iTunes: increasingly non-sensical complexity, inconsistencies, layers of patches over layers of patches ending up in a structure so labyrinthine no individual can internalize it any longer. 'It's a giant kitchen sink piled high with loosely related features, and it's highly un-Apple-like' says Allen Pike. 'Users know it, critics know it, and you can bet the iTunes team knows it. But for the love of god, why?' People naturally suggest splitting iTunes into multiple apps, but Apple can't, because many, if not most iOS users are on Windows. It's Apple's one and only foothold on Windows, so it needs to support everything an iOS device owner could need to do with their device. 'Can you imagine the support hurricane it would cause if Windows users suddenly needed to download, install, and use 3-4 different apps to sync and manage their media on their iPhone?' But help may be on the way with iOS 5. As iCloud duplicates more and more of iTunes' sync functionality, they can start removing it from iTunes. 'Apple is very explicit about it in their marketing materials: they call it "PC Free". They're not quite there yet, but they're driving towards a future where you don't need to manage your iOS device with a PC at all – Mac or Windows.'"
Download and install 3 or more apps? No! You can easily avoid this. It's very simple: split up the apps, call the whole thing "iTunes Suite" (or "iTunes Pack", or "iTunes $WHATEVER") and provide one MSI/installer that installs these new three or more applications. In the first iterations, do add an iTunes application that does nothing more than provide you with a choice of "what do you want to do", per application, one friendly big icon with explanatory text.... and you're done.
Of course, that's the user-facing parts. Splitting up these applications is most likely what holds this back. Not the fact that it would be "strange" for the end-user. Especially, Windows users, who are used to nasty, nasty and continual changes in their interfaces.
All in all: it's a non issue. It can be split, it's just a herculeanean task.
However, they're already very close to the PC Free situation. My wife never connects her iPhone to her machine. I do sometimes, but only to be sure there is a backup. I really should switch her backup to iCloud or something.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I would be interested in the statistics, because I definitely will never use this feature, and in fact prefer to sync with my computer.
iTunes and all the B.S. it installs is worse than a virus to me. Same with Adobe.
Pitch the ipods and support another mp3 player like Creative Labs.
I bypass itunes completely on my PC with Copytrans
You still have to have iTunes installed for the dll it uses to copy media to the device.
I have never experimented with just loading the dll by itself with regsvr32
An awful, mish-mash, user hostile piece of software. Question is, am I talking about Windows or iTunes?
The title should be "Windows' iTunes problem". Apple can shove their ALAC-promoting, artist-scamming industry-crippling bitrate-raping software up their collective asses.
I actually like it being all in one app. I get frustrated on the Mac that my address book, email and calendar all come from different applications as opposed to them being one as in Microsoft Outlook. I'd be afraid that splitting up the apps would result in them being watered down micro apps. Not appealing.
More cloud dependency! What could possibly go wrong by putting someone else in charge of my data! I'm sure that my credit card being stolen from Sony was a fluke, and nothing like that will ever happen again in the history of the world! Yay for placing responsibility on the steadfast shoulders of large corporations! Yay for control systems! Yay for yay!
I couldn't possibly be happier that I moved away from iTunes. Now to convince the rest of my family to do so.
I'm always bemused why Apple doesn't bake closer iPhone/iPad integration into the Finder itself - the "root UI" of OS X, if you will. Shouldn't syncing between your Mac and your iPhone be a core service these days? And no, it doesn't solve the Windows problem - except if you're Apple. "See, if you have a PC you have to use this external app. But if you switch to a Mac, look how easy syncing is..." But then I'm an old grouch who thinks that Apple's once fabled UI consistency has been slowly getting messier from System 7.5 onwards.
Its not just Windows. Having multiple Mac OS X apps managing an iOS device would degrade the user experience. Having one app sync everything (musics, video, photos, apps, etc) makes sense. Having to use more than one app to do so would be annoying, even error prone. Hell, I'm mildly annoyed when I plug in an iPhone and both iTunes and iPhoto launch. I want to use iPhoto far less often than it auto-launches.
iTunes may need to be redesigned and rewritten, but probably not broken up.
I would be interested in the statistics, because I definitely will never use this feature, and in fact prefer to sync with my computer.
That is almost no-one.
iCloud isn't really the major thing here, it just helps with the true feature that allows users to break free of the PC which is on-device updates and purchases of all content.
Even if you don't explicitly use iCloud you can at least simply turn on an iPad and activate it without a computer, which many (perhaps most) people do.
iCloud is really a huge boon for most people though, because it means at last the devices are actually backed up. I know a number of people with iPhones and iPads that once activated, NEVER synchronized to a PC again. That's pretty dangerous, but iCloud makes sure those people are taken care of without them having to do much at all.
If you have an iOS device now the PC you use or the iTunes on it is already irrelevant, except as an alternative to browsing the store.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I say iTunes in its current iteration runs just fine on my PC (i5, 6GB ram, win7 x64). It no longer installs or requires quicktime so no idea what "bloat" people are still complaining about. The app is snappy and apart from some wifi sync trouble ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3390119?start=0&tstart=0 ) has no other significant issues. A solid 4/5 for a media/phone manager suite.
iTunes is bad because the team of developers and managers working on it is bad. Period.
All Apple products are banned from our business network and have been for years. All of their software (iTunes, Quicktime) causes so many various problems in any version of Windows, that we decided to just ban all of it.
I don't respond to AC's.
increasingly non-sensical complexity, inconsistencies, layers of patches over layers of patches ending up in a structure so labyrinthine no individual can internalize it any longer. 'It's a giant kitchen sink piled high with loosely related features, "
They wanted to emulate Windows users' typical experience and maintain familiarity.
Have gnu, will travel.
Set-up a separate team of programmers. One working on the original iTunes for one final release (11), and a new one rewriting the whole thing to produce a better cleaner iTunes (12).
Apple's done it once before, when they developed the final version of the Classic OS (9) and the new OS X concurrently.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
If everything moves to the cloud, you become dependent on the cloud. How much is managing your iDevice worth? $0/yr? $10/yr? What if you could sync everything through that cloud - all your music, all your shows? Now how much would you pay? $10/month? $20/month? What about backing up all your photos and documents? $30/month? And offering some streaming content? $40/month? $50/month?
If the cloud option is popular enough, we'll see the PC version (and possibly even the Mac version) fall lower and lower on the priority list for bug fixes, upgrades, and UI unification. It may come that buying into an iDevice means a monthly fee to use effectively, just as if you buy a phone. Sure, you can try to cheat the system, but you're going to get a significantly inferior service, or you'll spend so much time just keeping things up to date that you'll find it's not worth it.
I see this as the next revenue stream for Apple.
Personally, I'm limited to a 4Mb DLS line as my fastest (reliable) internet option. Syncing 40-120GB of personal music on each device when it goes toes up (and most have done that at some point; my phone has twice) is going to be a real bear. Movies? TV? You can't store/swap them locally, and the network providers will be salivating over the b/w charges (or business-class fees for those that go over their caps).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'm one of those weirdos who actually doesn't mind iTunes as is. I generally know where the things are that I need it to do and don't really demand a ton of it (organize my music, change ID3 tags, auto-download a bunch of podcasts for me, and when I plug in my phone, sync it all without me having to do anything).
I have ZERO interest in using iCloud. I want my data secured locally and backed up myself. I don't want the potential for lost/stolen data as my data is now in a giant honeypot with everyone else's data. I don't want the inevitable, "oh, yea, this isn't anonymous at all, and the gov't decided to go through iCloud and send you a $999999999 fine for having 1 song you may or may not have paid for."
So if Apple's answer is, "trust us with your data/music collection or you're not using iTunes anymore," then my answer is going to be to not use iTunes anymore.
I'm no fan boy and a Windows user but I can't really see what the big deal is. The only thing I'm careful about is always ripping with another tool then just dropping the files onto iTunes to upload to my iPod. I use it mainly for MP3s and podcasts plus the apps. I don't rent/buy videos much.
For me, it just works. It's easy to use and does exactly what I want. I have it set up to only sync what I want. Sure it has a bunch o junk it installs which I don't really use but big deal, it's not like most PCs are hard up for space and as others have noted, Adobe etc are just as bad.
My only gripe I could care about is having to upgrade iTunes to upgrade my iPod - that just seems nonsense to me.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
When you install itunes on a Windows machine, it already installs a bunch of different pieces, and quicktime too. I don't see why separating the other itunes components would be that big of a deal. It would likely be the same amount to download.
And I've found that wifi sync mostly doesn't work well. It's locked up and bombed on my iPad 1 and iPhone 3GS. I just don't bother with my daily-use 4S as GoodReader/SugarSync/Dropbox handle my "right now" file needs and ActiveSync takes care of mail/calendar/contacts.
I'd actually prefer my backups to be local and encrypted.
One improvement I would like would be specifying my local backup directory on a per-device basis (instead of relying on the Windows user profile clusterfuck) and the ability to say how many backup revisions I want to keep. The current system is far to opaque and makes it difficult to backup backups.
One thing Apple could do would be to rip the store out of iTunes and make it "really" web based -- purchases could then just show up in iTunes; it's horrible to browse the store via iTunes; on an i5-2500 with 16 GB of RAM it feels like I'm browsing the web on a low-end P4 with 512 MB of RAM.
I don't know, but the whole program kind of feels like its running some kind of interpreted code -- written for MacOS and somehow been run through a translation layer that converts MacOS system calls to Windows system calls.
I don't want to install special applications for every device. Let me mount the device as a drive, and buy content through a (secure) web page. All other administration tasks can be done through that web page. I already have an mp3 player I like, so no loss there either. The advantage of generic technologies is that Apple doesn't need to support them. The individual consumer would be better off with fewer applications, so that they could learn those applications to a greater depth, and have more general skills to use for computing in general as a result.
I gave iPod Touch devices to my kids and maintain the software through the device and my home WiFi. I only hook the devices to a Windows PC to do the occasional backup. If Apple just had an iPod backup tool I would be just fine.
Most people who want it split up only use one of apple's products or services. What about people like me who have an apple tv, use the itms all the time and have huge collections of video and music. I like having it in one application. In fact, I find it annoying that it has to launch iPhoto when I sync my phone everyday. Now you guys want it to start 4 applications that all hit the forground and vie for my attention. No, I don't want that.
1 bloated apple app is enough thanks. It's not like they'd get thin and light if they split them up. They'd all have to use the same shared libraries and load the same garbage into memory but then have extra overhead for the address space of 4 processes. I don't see how this helps the situation.
What apple needs to do is optimize iTunes. Get rid of dead code. Put it on a diet, but don't remove functionality. Can you imagine the code cruft for having it support two platforms and not being able to use some of the native Mac stuff?
It's not my fault that you guys only drank a little kool-aid and don't see the benefit of one app. I drank most of the kool-aid and it's painful for them to split it up.
iTunes is just as bloated and doggy on a Mac as it is on Windows.
I'm also not sure that iCloud 'iTunes Match' is 100% ready for prime time yet. I'm still hearing about issues where only a small percentage of songs are matched or worse, the wrong song is matched in the cloud. My biggest problem with iTunes Match is that once my songs are on iCloud I need to download them to my phone to listen to them and the last time I checked you could only download at most one album at a time. I still like the option of physically copying my music to my iDevice so I know the music is there for when I want to listen to it.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
They're not quite there yet, but they're driving towards a future where you don't need to manage your iOS device with a PC at all – Mac or Windows.
Sounds like my android phone. Well, I can manage it from a desktop of any breed, all I need is a normal copy of firefox and an internet connection.
I would assume when apple releases a IOS that does everything that an android phone did long ago, it'll be announced as a new innovation.
(Not a fanboy of either, own ipad and a android phone, just stating the facts)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If you've seen iTunes on Mac you know that it generally runs smoothly without problems. On Windows it runs like a pig, being just about the threshold of usable. It doesn't run on Linux and Apple seems to do everything in it's power to make sure that as soon as Wine gets a working version, that it changes enough so it won't work for another 6 months.
I hate to say conspiracy, but really conspiracy. It's a way to attract customers to their full machines. You buy an iPhone and you get all this marketing material to get you to buy an Apple computer....
iTunes will never have a native Linux version, and it's Windows version will always suck just a little bit.
Thank you for telling me that iTunes is bloated. Truly news for nerds and stuff that matters.
Gotta get those Apple ad impressions up huh?
Quick question: has iTunes for windows been rewritten yet? I know they rewrote it as a 64bit cocoa application for OS X (the Lion release, at least)...is it still a steaming pile on Windows?
Can you imagine the support hurricane it would cause if Windows users suddenly needed to download, install, and use 3-4 different apps to sync and manage their media on their iPhone?
Would it help if Apple just offered an iTunes suite, where you download 1 installer and it installs 3-4 applications? They already kind of do that. when you install iTunes, you get Quicktime and Apple's updater software too. I could easily see them at least breaking out iOS device management into a different application, and then having a dedicated media player and media library organizer.
Ever tried to use an iPhone with Linux? If you can't run iTunes you can't do *anything*.
iTunes is a tool Apple uses to avoid using standards and thereby maintain full control over the user's experience. They're tying themselves in knots trying to do it all within a single app, but the alternative -- things like allowing the phone to be used as a USB storage device, as pretty much every other vendor does -- is un-Apple. It's a wonder they even support PTP for photos.
I've happily gone over to Android, which does have its own quirks, but at least my Samsung phone hasn't been crippled by the vendor.
This isn't a ""Windows Problem" it's a "PC Problem" because it's about both Mac too, which is both a type of PC. What happens to the user who's traveling or doesn't have their PC available or one at all? They should still be able to sync their music collection with iCloud and such. This "PC-Free" initiative should be the answer to that.
So once again Apple/iOS is trying to catchup with other smartphones that haven't needed desktop software for years.
Why is iOS considered "cutting-edge" again? It's always trying to catchup with BlackBerry & Android.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I like the idea of having a single background service that handles downloading, organizing and sharing of all media assets and apps. You then have a (comparatively) lightweight library program for syncing media to devices or playing it locally / via Airplay. The iTunes store becomes a purely web-based entity that kicks stubs over to the downloader app, Amazon MP3-stylee, rather than pulling everything in through the browser, or allows direct download to devices. Pretty much everything else can probably be handled best from the device itself.
I don't have an iDevice and don't want one, but a couple days ago I had to load iTunes just to get a specific music release that wasn't available anywhere else. Sure I could have scoured TPB, but I wanted to make an effort to be a paying customer. Aside from the music company being dicks and only releasing to iTunes, how would a "PC Free" solution have helped me in any way?
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Never heard of it.
It always seemed somewhat silly that Apple's products with cellular capability needed a connection to a desktop machine at all. Apple got into this because they started with the iPod, which was a slave to a PC. That it continued years into the cellular era was just annoying. It seemed mostly intended to get crapwere onto PCs.
Split the functions into separate apps. This is pretty much how it is on my iPhone now.
I have three apps: App Store, iTunes, & Music.
For my PC you can split it into App Store, iTunes, and Media.
Done.
Apple needs to change their pricing model for the iCloud to really take off. Why would I sync my 64 Gb iPhone, my 64 Gb iPad, & my Mac and Windows machine to the cloud when this would cost me so much that it is cost prohibitive. Current pricing is $100 / year for 50 Gb so it would take a MINIMUM of $300 / year to backup my iPhone and iPad not to mention my Mac and iTunes Library. Why would I pay that when for $100 (or less) I can get a local hard drive and just backup to my Mac/PC? Yes, there is the convenience factor, but not for that cost. They need to make it an order of magnitude bigger for the same price before I will be interested.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
We all know it's technically impossible to include multiple files packaged as a single one. If only there were some kind of format to make that possible!
Seriously, I saw this on some Mac sites as if it was some great insight. Either this guy is an idiot, or he's making up some bullshit to get page views with a sensational headline like "Windows problem". Maybe Mac users are just that dumb, their file browser's special casing of ".app" suffixes on a directory are fooling them into thinking that software has to be some monolithic binary.
Bought an iPhone for my wife ~ 2 months ago. Set it up without a PC (the newly advertised feature of iOS 5). Obviously created a new Apple ID. She also has been using iTunes on her laptop for a while, and imported some music from some of our CDs. That iTunes has not been linked to an Apple ID.
Now, we decided to sync her address book from an old Nokia phone via Windows' Address book to her iPhone. Naturally, I also wanted her new iPhone to also work with her iTunes library. Can't do it. It cannot combine her iTunes library and link it with the iCloud. The iPhone had to be erased (not apps, but all iTunes stuff), and re-synced with the PC.
If she bought any albums via iTunes on her phone, it would've been a nightmare. Once again, iTunes is a complicated piece of crap. It is so freaking complicated to figure all the sync to PC/iCloud settings out that it's not the "Apple way".
And couldn't give a crap about their infrastructure issues. iTunes was built around the make more money for us model. It has had some glaring functionality issues for quite some time.
But I can understand there are some people who know only how to use iTunes and can't be bothered with other music management software which is better.
The only thing I use iTunes for us to connect to streaming radio stations to listen to the news and related programs. It works pretty well for that. It works well enough that I don't use VLC, which I also have, and which could also do the job. I'm SO glad I don't have any kind of "iDevice" - I hope this nasty trend toward morphing OS X into iOS doesn't continue. If it does, I might have to finally switch to Windows ):
With the data caps on supposedly unlimited (net download amount, not rate) home broadband connections, making iCloud the sole mechanism for syncing is ill-advised.
We bought a seasons pass for a TV show on iTunes on the ATV. It took us a surprisingly long time to figure out how to watch this on the Mac laptop.
The purchase did not appear in the item called "purchases", nor "TV", which only showed the things we already downloaded. Going into the Store, we found the show, and double clicking on it cause a smaller all-black window to appear with an episode list. Clicking on these played the preview. Eventually we figured out that clicking the cloud icon would download the episode. We could then go to the Downloads screen, and double-click to watch it as it streamed.
So logical.
As if this were not enough, last night we could no longer make this work. The episode list that used to open when we double clicked... somewhere... no longer appears. We tried everything.
Its time for this to die.
'It's a giant kitchen sink piled high with loosely related features, and it's highly un-Apple-like'
Nope, that's pretty apple-like.
they just put a bit of lippy on it and call it lovely.
"...but they're driving towards a future where you don't need to manage your iOS device with a PC at all – Mac or Windows.'"
Wonder how that'll work with my non-3g iPad, since I don't have wi-fi at home.
Does that mean I have to go to some place like a Starbucks to do manage my iPad? And as a photographer, I manage our iPad portfolios via our PC, no cloud needed nor wanted.
I bought my first iPod in 2005, my last in 2009.
The itunes database is a deliberately obscurant piece of garbage. I cannot even count how many items iTunes made all my album art disappear or messed up the database.
I am using a droid phone now with 16 gigs of space. All I did was copy my music from \user\My Music in Windows to I:\Music on my android phone and its done, no database no bullshit. Have never once seen album art disappear or it become corrupt in any way.
Errr, didn't use it in the early days did you? iTunes has always been a godawful UI that violates all of Apple's own UI standards, then ported to Windows where it made no attempt to fit in. It's been terrible from day one, along with the QuickTime player.
Example: not being able to sort by album, artist, or other tag fields on an iOS device set to automatically sync. Put it in manual mode and you can use the column browser to filter songs you might want to play in say your office to a single album or artist, but as soon as its automatic, you can only listen to the entirety of your music library sequentially. Want to switch it? Wipe the device and resync everything. What the hell, Apple?
One thing that iOS devices don't do is auto update your podcast subscriptions. iTunes is basically required for this unless you want to go to iTunes on the device itself and check for new podcasts one by one.
The only way they would allow downloads of their free podcasts was through iTunes. But I don't have any Apple products, and I didn't want to install iTunes.
just use any other mp3 player on the market and you don't have to worry about have assed apps like ibloatware. problem solved.
"...a future where you don't need to manage your iOS device with a PC at all â" Mac or Windows."
Ummm...no, and no thank you.
Security concerns aside, I don't trust any company to manage my data for me. If something borks while it's nominally under my control, it's my responsibility. Once it's "in the cloud" that all evaporates.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
It's just trying to be too damned much at the moment. Here's how I see what's needed:
The USB connection provides an internet connection to the iDevice, so if the iDevice is connected to your computer, it's connected to the 'net. Thus if your iDevice has an unlimited internet connection (WiFi or USB Tethered), it downloads apps directly on the device like the "Google Play" store. If the iDevice isn't connected to the net (or is on a metered connection, 3G/4G etc.) then the web-based store (Which can't connect to the iDevice in question) downloads a "token" (like a .torrent file or a magnet link) on the desktop, which is handled by the "Downloader" app, which (quietly, in the background) downloads the content and hands it to the service running in the background, ready to squirt the app to the iDevice over the USB tether as soon as it's connected.
Music and video are downloaded in the same way, but are downloaded by the "Downloader" app even if the iDevice is connected, to keep the libraries in sync, and allow playback of the purchased content on the desktop as well as the iDevice.
The service remains running to enable tethered devices like the AppleTV/iTV/whatever to continue working, even when the frontend applications are closed. When a disconnected iDevice (iPod Touch without WiFi connection, for instance) is connected, it's library is bi-directionally synced with the version held by the service, keeping the two copies in sync at all times. So, for instance, music you have grabbed from your friends' band while at his house is added to your desktop's library, rather than being wiped out, and music that was synced to your iDevice that you didn't like (The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band? WTF?) and removed from your iDevice, is removed from the "remote" library (but kept on the desktop, 'cause you never know when "I'm the urban spaceman" will be appropriate again).
That's how I would do it, anyway.
As a power user, what I want from my iDevice is simple. Give me a standard, file-explorer-style interface with nested folders. A Windows Explorer shell extension would be great. I do want access to the file metadata. I don't need access to the music or movie stores; I'll rip my own purchased content, thank you. Let me copy files to and from the device manually. No cutesy "sync" features that seem to always either mass-delete files on the device or else spam my hard drive with tons of junk.
Buying apps from the App Store shouldn't require iTunes or a PC at all. You should be able to do it from the iPhone or iPad itself.
iTunes for the PC is an open sore. It's the one major flaw in an otherwise excellent user experience for iDevices.
is data sensitivity. I have lots of info on my phone that I would never, ever want to have leaked. I simply will not back it up to a cloud infrastructure because to date these centralized data vendors have demonstrated that they cannot keep data secured.
What I want is to backup my phone to my computer so that I never have to wonder when the cloud provider is going to screw up and let itself be hacked.
Ah, BeOS. *sniff*
What if you could sync everything through that cloud - all your music, all your shows? Now how much would you pay? $10/month? $20/month?
iTunes match is just $25/year, built atop iCloud which is free.
To be able to sync everything across everything is totally worth $25/year to me.
I see this as the next revenue stream for Apple.
I don't know about that though, how much can Apple really be getting here? the content providers will get the lions share of that $25. Apple runs iCloud for free and Match probably on a near zero profit margin just to make hardware more compelling.
Syncing 40-120GB of personal music on each device when it goes toes up (and most have done that at some point; my phone has twice) is going to be a real bear.
That's the nice thing about iTunes match, if it can figure out what your song is there is no upload - it just lets you use the higher quality copy they have in the cloud. It's only files iTunes Match does not have that it needs to copy up.
Movies? TV? You can't store/swap them locally
Not sure what you mean there since you can download movies to any iOS device or Mac, then (if you have the right setup) airplay from any device up to your main display...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...The MS Windows of Apple. A product that trys very hard to do everything for everyone, but ends up making it complex to do many simple things. Featuritis at its best. There is hope, technology changes.
1) download mp3 from
2) copy to USB mass storage
No extra software
No heavy handed overlord control
No platform or hardware specific requrements
Thanks iTunes, but no thanks.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Hey Apple, why you are fixing iTunes, why not a Linux port? ios is already a rip off off linux/bsd anyway.
Why do you need a PC to "manage" an iPhone? My Android phone does just fine without any PC.
An iPhone also works just fine without a PC. However the advantage of using it with a PC is that a PC is a very convenient place to backup all the content on the iPhone. The cloud is another convenient place, but a PC is the place I have control over, the place I can do further backups, etc.
All my music/shows/movies/photos/documents across several devices. And I can (and do) replicate subsets to my devices for off-line access. Not sure what you are worried about.
I hate having a computer associated to my device, instead of just saying this once I need to use this computer to delete that f*ckin song off my ipod...
but no, you have a limit of what device can be associated to your ipod/iphone and takes up licenses, bullsh*t I say!
Just do the work I ask you to, and dont limit me from accessing a player I already own...
I wrote this post in December of 2005 on another forum site I belong to. This experience completely soured me on any interaction with Apple. itunes is useless and has been at least going back that far. In the years since I've run across several other machines with mysterious and intractable itunes problems. I'm told it's not uncommon for people to reinstall Windows to fix itunes issues.
Anyway
--
My boss brings me her notebook this morning.
She says "I can't get itunes to work"
I try to run itunes. Version 6, the one that came out maybe a month ago with the video support.
I double-click on iTunes. The computer goes "ding". itunes does not start.
I think "Oh well, I will uninstall and reinstall it."
Except it's not in Add/Remove programs.
Hit the program files folder. Yup. It's there.
Try to start from the .exe instead of a shortcut. Nope. Computer goes "ding". What does "ding" mean?
Download an updated installer, fresh from the web site.
The installer gives me the option to remove itunes or repair it. I try both. In either case I get "error 1605", which a quick google tells me is an InstallShield error. I'm told to upgrade my installshield engine and use a "Windows Installer Cleanup Tool". itunes doesn't show on the list of things I can clean up. Quicktime and the ipod service do. I go ahead and remove those.
OK. Fine. Done.
The computer goes "ding" and I *still* get error 1605 when I try to reinstall.
So I hit Apple's support pages for itunes. There are eight or nine suggestions there that seem like they might be related, but most of them lead back to the Installshield support site.
I try all those things. The computer still goes "ding" and I *still* get error 1605.
I run an SFC on the machine. The computer goes "ding" the next time I try to start itunes.
Finally, against all hope, I call Apple. Maybe there's something they haven't published, or maybe this is a new issue.
Apple won't talk to me until I find the serial number for a new ipod or I cough up $50. What the ipod has to do with an itunes problem, I don't know.
Fortunately, one of the women I work with has a new ipod. Good thing. Apple won't talk to you unless you've purchased their hardware.
I calmly explain to the apple tech (LeeAnn, if anyone wants to know), what I have done prior to my call. LeeAnn identifies herself as a *windows support specialist*.
I ask her if she knows what "ding" means, or if there's some support information other than that available on Apple's web site for this problem.
LeeAnn asks me to repeat the things I did. This takes me about five minutes. I reference Apple's support pages, as I can read them off the firefox tabs in front of me. At the end of everything, LeeAnn says "I need to check on this. Can you hold?"
LeeAnn is gone just under five minutes. When she picks back up, she starts reading verbatim off one of those support web pages. I say "I have already done the the steps on that page." She starts in on another page, that I have also read. This time, I just start reading ahead of her, for she is pissing me off. I say "Is there any additional support information that you can provide me, other than the information that I already got off your web site?"
She says "Not for this issue. Have you contacted your computer manufacturer?"
I say "This is not an issue for my computer manufacturer, this is an issue with Apple's software on a Windows computer."
She says "Well have you contacted Microsoft?"
I think this very well might've been the point where I snapped.
I say "No. This is a problem with the functionality of *APPLE'S* software. Windows is otherwise behaving normally. I ran a program to verify that." (Furthermore, I know Windows installer was working, as I installed my bundle o' antispyware apps from an .msi file earlier that morning while I was troubleshooting).
She says "What program is that?"
I say "SFC"
She says "I thought tha
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Why do you need a PC to "manage" an iPhone?
For much the same reason you need an MBA to "manage" a software development team.
You do not need a degree in computer science (CS) to be a software developer, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn is a CS degree program. Similarly you do not need an MBA to manage a development team, but you do need to learn on your own many of the things that you would learn in a MBA degree program. If you are going to manage a team an MBA would be useful, both in respect to technical skills and interpersonal skills. If you need to interact with other departments an MBA would be very useful, it helps you understand the perspective of these other departments and to communicate and persuade more effectively.
I once held an attitude similar to the one your post suggests. When I graduated with a CS degree I never imagined that I would someday go for an MBA. However when I eventually did so one of the things than made business school so much fun was to learn just how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business school and what is actually taught there. The CEOs and managers that royally screw things up are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their MBA program, much like the software developers who writes buggy and unmaintainable code are generally not following the lessons they were taught in their CS program. School can teach good lessons but neither CEOs, managers nor software developers necessarily follow their respective lessons.
I know a ton of non-techies who use iTunes everyday. I've never heard of any of them complain that iTunes "does too much." Hell, I use iTunes everyday, and I have no complains.
Alright so I'm going OT but I noticed most articles posted are by samzenpus and Unknown Lamer. Is it me only seeing this on slashdot.org (without /suffixes)?
mfwright@batnet.com
Macs don't come with Blu-Ray drives, and some of the newer models don't have optical drives at all. Apple may be trying to kill off removable media. They've done it before. Remember the shock of the first iMac? "How can any computer function without a floppy drive?!!" Yet today floppy drives are nowhere to be seen. Apple has shown a willingness to declare certain technologies as dead or dying long before the rest of the industry. Given what they're trying to do with iCloud, it wouldn't surprise me if optical drives continued to disappear from their product line.
I know it would cost a lot up front to change their overall software model - not to mention the security implications it could cause, but I'm surprised Apple hasn't gone the route of plugin based software development. Download the core iTunes app, which could be very small and fast, then if you want additional features, just select them from a list and click install. Heck, it would be really cool if when I bought a new iDevice, I could plug it in, it then would pick up the model number and then automatically download the newest plugin from the all holy Apple repo. Just throw in a little reflection-oriented programming Apple! What are you waiting for?
In short: I love the iPhone. I adore it. But I have seriously considered abandoning it just because of iTunes. There is really not much more to say.
iTunes was one of my primary reasons to move to Android. I haven't looked back yet.
Rockbox + cdex.
CDs are only dead because of ridiculous pricing schemes. Ok, fine, lemme download them instead as FLAC and rip/encode them with my own easy to use tools. Don't have your music database tied to a single computer. Instead use devices (rockbox) that properly index on the tagging data itself. Placing music on any device is just a matter of, well, putting the music on that device. No specialized software required. Drag/drop with the filesystem. Or, make a program that does this for people too retarded to know the basics of using any modern computing device.
'Can you imagine the support hurricane it would cause if Windows users suddenly needed to download, install, and use 3-4 different apps to sync and manage their media on their iPhone?' That's another way of saying that your customers are so ignorant that this is a task that's beyond them? Either that's a very thinly veiled insult or it's true and says a lot about a large group of users.
Sony wasn't a cloud system. It was a mishmash of about a dozen companies doing their own thing without oversight. Your equating cloud computing with purchasing things on the internet.
...and it's for a simple reason.
There are two iOS devices in our household - my iPod Touch, and the "family" iPad. The iPod has "my stuff" -- music and apps that only interest me. The latter is more geared towards the kids -- children's videos, songs, and games.
I maintain a separate iTunes library for each device, though both are tied to the same Apple ID, so that I can purchase content once, and load it onto each device as I see fit.
Apple's cloud service, however, forces me into two undesirable options:
1) Getting to buy everything once, but forcing me to keep copies of all content on all devices.
2) Setting up multiple Apple IDs, and having to buy multiple copies of anything I want to have on more than one device.
Neither of these appeal to me, so I have no interest in giving up PC-based syncing.
Keep trying, Apple...
why split? just split the ui.
could easily do that.
here's why not: insane lobbying inside the company about who's product gets to be jammed down the throats of the consumers. everything must be visible right there right then.
why not integrate with the windows os like it's possible? well fuck, they don't want to do that kind of favor. you know whats _really_ insane? microsoft copying this usage design. windows phone doesn't integrate with _anything_ else on windows than the fucking zune app.
the windows aspect of the reasoning in the article is equally insane. itunes sucks on both pc and macs and it's too precious to touch with a big hand, it has nothing to do with there having to be a windows version. itunes has _always_ sucked monkeyballs, I hear that nowadays it doesn't freeze if you drag 20 episodes from your hd to your ipod though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Intuitive" is not a synonym for "just like Microsoft Windows".
0 1 - just my two bits
Funny, I just switched to Quod Libet from iTunes. I was tired of iTunes taking 90 seconds to start and randomly hanging because the 95% of the program I never use was bogging down the 5% that I do use. Being Apple-free at the office is starting to feel as nice as being Microsoft-free at home.
With iCloud, I don't see any reason to install iTunes for an Apple device unless you have physical CDs or DVDs you want to upload to your device. Even then, it seems a shame to have to put it on; it's like taking a media player and strapping a 200-lb armoire to its back.
If they can get to the point where you don't need an PC/Mac to manage an Iphone/Ipod they'll almost be caught up to Android which never needs to be connected to a computer to be 100% utilized.
You want to install QuickTime? Well, install iTunes and safari too!
At least, that's how it used to be, back when I cared about windows.
iTunes is one of the main reasons that when it was time to upgrade, i did not go with another iPhone. I no longer run OSX or Windows, so it was a no-show.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1) You can have "PC Free" now, it's called Android. You never have to plug it into any computer.
2) Itunes did not become bloated and unwieldy, it started out that way. It was crapware from the start. Winamp blew it away, in every way, except one...it was never ALLOWED to connect to an I-device.
3) When is the FTC/DOJ going to investigate Crapple for anti trust? Why must we be forced into Capple's ecosystem to use their fucking phones?
Yes, the title is that way on purpose.
.. and not because it's not designed to, but because they specifically designed it NOT to. Their artificial limitations are too much for me - though again, I'm not the typical usage case.
Preface: I understand that as an advanced user I'm not a typical usage case. I understand that my usage case is based on old preferences like wanting to work with files and file systems directly.
I'm primarily a Windows user at home, mainly because I play games as well as doing other things that require either Windows or OS/X [like using Adobe applications that won't run in Wine]. I also use linux [mainly mint these days]. I don't own any iDevices and I don't use the iTunes store for anything - and I'll happily admit that that may change in the future. I'm not prejudiced against the devices, but I am prejudiced against their desktop apps.
My issues with iTunes and the other desktop iApplications from Apple revolve around their handling of data - usually by obscuring the actual location of things in illogical places that require digging to get to and once you done your digging you run the risk of damaging the files' interaction with the Apple applications [metadata in particular]. iPhoto in particular is egregious in this regard, and while on a Mac I won't use it unless absolutely forced to for the reason above.
On Windows I use foobar2000 as an audio player for multiple reasons, among them being broad format support [including SACD/DSD, HDCD, DTS, AC3, FLAC, etc.] excellent metadata editing, extremely versatile format conversion, support for direct to device playback bypassing all system signal processing, a customisable interface that I've actually customised [in several different versions suited to different tasks] to suit my needs, etc. iTunes can't even begin to compare to the capabilities of foobar2000.. or winamp, or songbird, or most of the linux-originating audio players, or for that matter even VLC. Format support in particular is important to me, and Apple's closed ecosystem makes that a near impossibility right from the start.
iTunes is also a cumbersome pig on Windows and generally unpleasant to use.
More than any of that, though, is that Apple's iTunes installer and updater likes to do things of its own that I don't want any application or installer or updater to do - like hijacking default player settings for various media formats and continuously suggesting that I install Safari [fuck off, installer!] if it doesn't just force-install it whether I wanted it to or not. Maybe their installer/updater has changed to be less fascist but the thing is - I gave up on them. iTunes isn't installed on any of my systems - I do use quicktime-alternative to maintain support for some formats that my editing software requires QuickTime for.
I see the problems they have here, and many of them may be fixable. The fundamental things I take issue with though [obscuring file locations and hit-miss use of metadata outside of their apps alone], won't be fixed without a change in philosophy on Apple's part that simply isn't going to happen, because their entire philosophy is based on wrestling control out of users' hands and keeping users' data inside the walled garden whether they want it there or not.
The truth is: my data is for my use. I use many different applications depending on what my particular needs of the moment are, because no one application handles every usage case. Because of that, I need easy, logical, user-controlled access to all of my data, and I need that data to work across all the applications without destroying usage on the others in the process. I don't want my data hidden from me. I want to be able to find things easily - preferably by looking in the places where *I put them*, not where some application thinks it should put them for me.
For my consulting clients running Windows? I don't install iTunes. I tell them they'll have to do it themselves, and if they want support to contact Apple. I don't support iTunes. I don't even like iTunes, beyond the simplest usage case of "load the program, find the track in the library, and hit play". There are so many usage cases under which it simply doesn't work
I'm not an iOS user nor do I have iTunes on my Windows PC; although I do have it on my Mac. It's quite easily the worst media player I have seen in a long time. I am sure I will be shot down, and hard, for saying this but Windows Media Player is much better for playing music and it handles videos, DVDs, etc just fine (just add codecs and it plays basically everything imaginable). I am sure there are better players out there but I don't really have the need to hunt them down as WMP plays everything I need.
The reason I really hate iTunes on my Mac is that when I play any one audio file (like for example a voicemail that turns up in my inbox) it opens my entire f&&king library and the file, which has a random string name, just gets lost in there, so I either have to hunt it down and manually delete it or otherwise if I play my music randomly, I will get voicemail messages popping in the mix.
Additionally, it seems to have duplicated all my mp3 files into its own library, thus wasting extra gigs of precious space on my tiny MacBook Air SSD drive for no valid reason. Again, Windows Media Play just plays the file I ask it to without needing to convert and duplicate it and hold it some massive, monolithic library, for all time. With WMP, if I am watching one movie, I can right click another and queue it up to play next or I can double click it to play it immediately. Again, iTunes has no such facility (not that it plays movies but you get the idea).
The guy next to me at work uses iTunes and an iPhone and I have many times sat in my seat and watched in utter astonishment as he goes through some ridiculous dance of updating iTunes, plugging his iPhone to his laptop via cable and then running some update, rebooting, repeating. He does this to back up his contacts too. My Androids by comparison, automatically (and have for many, many years) updates all my contacts to my MS Exchange and Gmail accounts (Facebook too, if I wanted to) and to get the lastest OS update all I have to do is leave my phone on - and it just does it itself, over the air. I know Apple is kind of sort of starting to do some of this now but they're claiming they're original in doing it when Android has done it since day 1.
The whole iTunes process seems about 10 years old to me. I think it might have been something special in 2000 but now it just seems like a gigantic piece of crap. This doesn't even get me started on my #1 pet peeve of iTunes on Windows which is the (to me) cardinal sin of installing a f&&king service on my computer that runs all the time listening as an open an unencrypted listener - and not telling me, being insecure and wasting resources.
I'm not sure I'd bank much on Apple's ability to do cloud synchronization. I've been an Apple user since the days of monochrome monitors and floppies, and so I eagerly tested .Mac, anticipated MobileMe and cringed at iCloud. In all three cases the ability for a Mac to sync with an iOS device was problematic and fraught with disaster. I'm a software tester and have some experience with client/server interaction, including synchronizing clients with servers. In Apple's case all three offerings they have had broke what they were supposed to sync: email, contacts, and calendars. That's each offering, each time. I still use their hardware but do not trust their cloud capabilities; unless you mean the kind of clouds that spawn tornadoes and floods.
Do you really think the majority of their people buy their content from the iTunes store?
No, I think the majority of people do not care about syncing a iOS device to a PC.
That doesn't mean buying music only from iTunes, if you have match it's easy to add new music to the PC and then let iCloud sync (instead of a direct sync).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
AC, I've thought about this since yesterday. I think you're right about the immediate situation, but you're missing the bigger picture.
Using a computer is now an everyday skill like driving, programming a DVR, typing, and downloading ringtones for your smart phone. Instead of hiding how the computer works behind a layer of interface, we should teach the average person the simple skills of computing.
I imagine this is a controversial view. It was controversial as I debated it with myself at least. But in the end calculus, I don't think that fancy GUIs and ignorant users are going to do anything but perpetuate ignorance and with it, helplessness. The best antidote to computer phobia is to teach the basics to everyone.
It's not particularly difficult material to learn, no more complicated than programming DVRs and smartphones. Among other advantages, this would encourage people who are above-average to move on to learn some code and more about their operating systems.
You're right that Apple (and probably Microsoft and Intel) would be upset about this change. Linux won't have that problem.
The answer's in the article (actually in the Slashdot summary). Take itunes, turn it into a platform for 'apps'. The iphone is a physical platform. itunes is a software platform. There can be music, pictures, video, etc, etc, etc apps. The itunes platform can manage the sync'ing of different apps with other platforms and the cloud.
It's a model everyone understands. It's strait forward. It's consistent with their other products. Plus it provides a new market. Apple could have an app store for apps that run on it's itunes windows platform.
I do security
Except Itunes can you name any other serious digital store that still working out of a local client. It all mostly cloud based and it been that way since more than half a decade ago. And since almost semi recent Apple devices have wifi except maybe the shuffle why should you need to run a local client on a PC or a Mac to sync files anyway? Are you telling me the itunes team can't code a simple sync to samba share app.
I don't know how or why. I've been using an iPod Touch for over 2 years as a PDA and had no problems with it. Got a 4S last November (my first smart phone) and made the mistake of telling it to sync to both iCloud and my Mac. Numerous dupes in both contacts and calendar, also notes. I finally turned off the syncing and had to push them back to the phone from iTunes. I'm pretty sure there was something else I had to do, but my brain is fried right now. THEN the cleanup began, had to delete lots of calendar entries and recreate them, also had numerous sync problems with notes for a while, it took a lot of work to get it clean and stable. I know I lost some historic calendar entries, but my notes and contacts seemed largely intact.
I know I have a lot more info on my phone than most people maintain, I've been accumulating it for probably 20 years now starting with Palm Pilots. But based on the number of support forum posts that I saw on Apple's web site when I was trying to find a fix, iCloud syncing is not a universal solution. As of right now, my iCloud account has zero information in it, I maintain it so I can use the tracking functions if my phone is ever lost or stolen.
I remember when my former boss went from an iPhone to an Android long before I bought mine. I asked him what the sync experience was, and he got a dumb look on his face and admitted he'd never sync'd it to his Windows PC. A couple of weeks later he said he finally installed the software and that it was sheer hell. Eventually he found a plug-in for iTunes that let him sync through it. I find that story a little scary.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.