iTunes' Windows Problem 332
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.'"
Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Sounds about right (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Uhm, no... (Score:3, Funny)
Especially, Windows users, who are used to nasty, nasty and continual changes in their interfaces.
Don't confuse Ubuntu with Windows now.
Re:Bloated (Score:4, Funny)
Whatever you're doing that makes it seem bloated or doggy, it's you not the program.
Yeah, cob666. You're probably holding iTunes wrong.
Re:Uhm, no... (Score:5, Funny)
They are clearly following the Emacs philosophy. iTunes is a nice OS, it just needs a good media player.
Re:Uhm, no... (Score:0, Funny)
No need - Windows 8 will do that for them.