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Flawed iTunes Stands Out Among Apple's Products 390
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."
How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org] 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 [arstechnica.com] while at the same time Ping concerns me if it has my credit card information and is just a spam portal [pcworld.com].
... 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 [sourceforge.net], VLC [videolan.org] and handbrake [handbrake.fr]
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
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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.
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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 mi
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
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 /.!
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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.
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What OS are you using? If a Mac, then just restore everything at once from your Time Machine backup.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
Then either A) You have a Mac or B) You have an awesome machine!
I have both!
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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.
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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*.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
To abuse the old standby, (Score:3, Insightful)
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:
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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Now I have to have Quicktime on my machine ... which I am not a fan of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_Alternative [wikipedia.org]
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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.
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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
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Um, you do realize that you can use Flash on a Mac right? Also you can download alternative media players to your hearts content.
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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.
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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.
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I had no idea apple made an entirely separate internet just for the iPhone. Quite and impressive accomplishment.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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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 bec
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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.
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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.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Informative)
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).
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What, you think the apple cultists don't get mod points?
Re:How Does the Same Company Make iPods and iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I love iTunes! (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Fixed it for you (Score:2)
Heh.
rule number 1 of slashdot: ANY thread can be twisted into a bash of microsoft/Apple. no exceptions.
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An application on the iPod that does the same thing -- only on the iPod the EULA is (I kind you not) 55 screens long!
Re:I love iTunes! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!?
They've done this before (Score:5, Insightful)
Kindof like they did with Mac OS X. They should have no problem doing this with iTunes.
Re:They've done this before (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that significantly fewer people used OS 9 than use iTunes, and considering its basically iTunes and the iPod that brought Apple back to life, there might be a slight bit more reluctance to admit that maybe it's gotten out of hand.
Although, I'm glad someone brought up the point about CD ripping. When iTunes first came out, the slogan was something like, "Rip. Mix. Burn," where as now its "buy everything off our store! cds are for squares!" Its kind of along the lines of the broadband advertisements of about the same time, which basically used Napster as a selling point for cable and DSL internet -- Cox saying "download music and movies at blazing speeds!". Apple and the broad band industry basically colluded to make piracy a selling point, then turn around and try and label everyone who engages in it now as some sort of social anathema or infrastructure hog rather than update infrastructure and/or software to meet the requirements of the new reality.
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Cruft (Score:5, Informative)
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I was one of the few people who PAID for SoundJam... it WAS that good.
iTunes has been nothing but a continuing series of disappointments. Uglier interface, no extra features that I even remotely care about.
It seems to be the nature of all software development as time goes on. Back in my day we counted bytes and processor cycles and knew how to handle interrupts. We wrote code to be functional, reliable and uncomplicated.
iTunes is like the internet in many ways, clogged with unnecessary code, features nobody really needs (or can understand how to use) and straying from its core focus. What next, a javascript version as a webapp? That'd be just lovely.
Ripping CDs... (Score:2)
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
What you need, my man, is not iTunes! (Score:2)
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.
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Good job not even reading to the end of his first sentence there! *thumbs up*
iTunes...feh (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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There's something seriously wrong with your rig if you can't run iTunes without problems using that kind of hardware.
Re:iTunes...feh (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not talking about performance issues, I'm talking about general usage problems. Tracks will disappear and reappear on a whim, playlists would disappear (and, in one extreme case, change its own order) amongst other things.
Tried formatting the system, still continued giving her problems. Since she switched to SharePod, she hasn't had a single issue. ::shrug::
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I'm not talking about performance issues
Then don't include your systems's specs as if they're somehow relevant?
I hated iTunes on OSX as well. Don't remember there being any performance issues, but the interface is just plain babying and annoying.
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you don't have to use every feature in the app (Score:2)
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.
Update the framework already (Score:5, Interesting)
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iTunes is a Cocoa app now. As of iTunes 10, it now has a NSPrincipalClass, which means it's running under the Cocoa runtime.
No doubt it still has some Carbon calls (It's based on QuickTime which is entirely Carbon, cept for QuickTime X which isn't out for Windows), but it's a Cocoa app now.
iBloat drove me to the droid (Score:4, Insightful)
Winamp. (Score:2, Interesting)
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 yo
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Can't they have a iTunes "lite" that only connects your iPad/Pod, organizes your music, and that's it?
First they'd have to come up with a version of iTunes that could actually do all of those things halfway well.
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.
Re:Winamp. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Can't they have a iTunes "lite" that only connects your iPad/Pod, organizes your music, and that's it?
I know there are a number of music players out there that do that job pretty well. My favorite is still Pana (Amarok 1.4.x plus bug fixes and upgrades) [bunnies.net], although it looks like they have stopped development on it.
And we still can't move the song name column (Score:2)
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I'm puzzled too since I just did it.
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Works for me.
iTunes is Th Suck (Score:2)
Sadly true (Score:5, Informative)
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?"
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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?
I'd agree with this one. It seems like absolute common sense. On the other hand, you know if they did that, no matter how clearly it was labelled, people would be complaining about it as a privacy violation.
Can't even get it installed (Score:2)
Perhaps I don't have a beefy enough system to run it ?
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i installed it last night on my wife's netbook. you have problems.
iTunes is just a web browser and sqllite (Score:2)
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 upgra
I for one am 100% behind a complete rebuild (Score:2)
Entirely Possible (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
It's kind of the AOL Desktop of the media world (Score:2)
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 wel
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No, it's the Homer Mobile of the media world.
The bloat isn't that bad. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Needing iTunes for iPad (Score:5, Funny)
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.
iTunes bad, new iPods not much better (Score:2)
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'
Re:iTunes bad, new iPods not much better (Score:4, Informative)
So happy all my stuff is in MP3 format, not Apple's proprietary format.
Huh? What proprietary format are you talking about? iTunes' standard audio format is MPEG-4 Part 14, aka ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003. It's supported out-of-the-box by Windows 7 (including streaming) and surely by other operating systems as well.
The only practical difference between Apple's implementation and the ISO standard is that Apple prefers the extension .m4a, whereas the standard states that .mp4 is the only valid extension. All this specifity in file extensions really does is help operating systems sort out whether a given file is an audio-only or multimedia file without having to read the contents. The file contents itself is the same.
iTunes is like Adobe Acrobat these days (Score:2)
...
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 i
iTunes Alternative programs (Score:2)
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
Redesign and rebranding (Score:2)
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 we
Apple's had lots of misses... (Score:2)
I used iTunes many years ago and it was horrible (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:I used iTunes many years ago and it was horribl (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
And if history repeats itself (Score:2)
Article with lots of cruft and no substance (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wow, nice troll (Score:3, Informative)
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