iTunes, It’s Far From Flawless
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Most of the software we use from Apple seems to run just fine, especially on their own systems. There is an exception, it’s iTunes. iTunes has been around for about ten years and has increasingly become worse over time. What used to be a simple media player has become a crazy resource hog with more and more features added what seems like every week.
Still, we hope it improves. Here are some of the things we definitely don’t like about iTunes and its current direction:
1) User Interface
Apple is a company that cares about their user interfaces. Just have a look at iOS. It’s great and very consistent throughout. iTunes is the exception. It’s not very clean compared to other media players. Some of the sub-menus are a bit poorly done and the options have grown so much within the application that it’s just become a mess.
2) Syncing Sucks
Syncing on iTunes is still a huge pain the butt. Sure, it’s one thing to have a new version of iOS update on your device or a system restore, because those tend to be huge transfers. Now, when you want to quickly just sync an App, you plug in your device and it’s a bigger pain that it should be. It’s also a bummer that after buying an App on one device, such as the iPhone, then wanting to use it on the iPad, requires syncing the iPhone to put the App on iTunes, then syncing the iPad to iTunes to put the App onto the iPad. Wireless syncing can’t happen soon enough.
Here’s one that may have plagued owners of the older Apple TV model: You would download a movie or TV show and iTunes felt the need to sync to the device. The problem is that you don’t want 6 seasons of Lost on your computer, you want them on your Apple TV. The only workaround we found is to not link it to our computer, but then we don’t have our iTunes music on Apple TV. It’s such a pain. We didn’t buy our little laptop with plans of filling it with TV shows, we bought our Apple TV with plans of filling it with 250GB of TV shows.
3) Update, Update and Update
What is it, every week now? It seems like every few days iTunes wants us to update something. These are mega updates too. Not little tweaks and fixes here and there. We are installing a new version of iTunes and writing over the old one. We understand that it’s not always simple to write this software and ensure that it works for everybody, but man do these updates keep getting bigger?
4) Downgrading is a Pain
Downgrading is a huge pain. Why would you want to downgrade, you ask? Well, aside from some of the users who were annoyed by the iTunes 10 interface, there are very good reasons. Here’s one that has happened do us at least once:
You download and install the latest update and restart iTunes, but now each time you try to hit the play button it crashes. You Google “iTunes 8.2 crashes” or something to that effect and you find that a few people seem to be having the same problem. At least now you know it’s probably the software. Now it’s time to try to downgrade. You have to find a file for the older version of the software, and now you can’t simply install it, because your computer tells you that you have a newer version of the software. You’re thinking, “So what? I want to install the other one; it actually worked!”
Now you have to go through a long process of moving and renaming folders. Thanks to Time Machine, (if you use it) this may now be easier on a Mac. For Windows it may be a different story.
5) iTunes has become bloated
Over the years iTunes has had more and more features added to it, and each year the program seems to get bigger and more bloated. It’s a little piggy when it comes to system resources (especially for Windows users, which we will talk about in a bit). Take a Look at the processes we had running, and note iTunes’ usage compared to everything else:
Here’s what those numbers and letters mean according to Apple’s website:
“PhysMem:” and “VM:” indicate overall physical RAM and virtual memory usage, respectively. The two columns on the right, “RSIZE” and “VSIZE” offer memory usage information per application. RSIZE indicates the amount of physical RAM in use by the application or process, in megabytes (“M”) or kilobytes (“K”). VSIZE indicates the amount of virtual memory Mac OS X has assigned for this process or application, in megabytes (“M”) or gigabytes (“G”).
We would like to note that iTunes was playing music at the time (Seems like a good reason to have it open).
6) iTunes for Windows is Still Horrible
While iTunes for Mac is comparatively useable, iTunes for Windows has long been problematic. It’s not very efficient and tends to crash and get error messages a lot. Most Windows users can’t stand iTunes. The only problem is that they have to use it if they want an iPhone or other iOS device. On that note, a crappy media player is definitely not a good way to get someone interested in Apple’s operating system.
In Conclusion…
There is lots of room for improvement from the software, and we hope that it happens over time. It has a lot of issues that continues to leave users unhappy. Windows users truly get the crap end of the deal here. Some of them have an iPhone or an iPad and are forced to use iTunes because of it, and end up hating the software and Apple’s shoddy implementation.
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I suspect that you’re making an assumption that is possibly no longer valid. iTunes is no longer a “simple media player” – it’s now a storefront, with advertising and whatever else goes with that. The media player part is now a mere sideshow to the main aim of selling the user as much as possible.
That being said, your concerns regarding it as an application are all valid.
I agree with you and would add that Apple’s maketing focus is on high consumer cost downloads. If AppleTV could do anything worthwhile it’d cost much more. But what it really does is suck money out of your bank account. People think boats are expensive; Try buying movies and tv shows from AppleTV!! LOL!! I’d rather buy a boat and a condo in Miami…
there is another idiotic conflict with iTunes, the mac notebook and the firmware in the iPod. While docked my iPod updated firmware, that only works with a newer version of iTunes, that won’t install on my notebook because its asking me to update my OS…. ??????? It seems a bit forced.
7. The New Logo
You’re forgetting he biggest problem with iTunes….Apple forces its iPod/iPhone/iPad users to use it! Every other portable media player on the market ships with bloated crapware, but then gives you the option for quick “drop-n-drop” loading of songs. Not Apple. Worst part about iTunes, is that if you own an Apple device, you MUST have it on your system.
My biggest complaint is that whenever you buy something from iTunes it spends 10-20 minutes ‘processing’ it before it considers it completely downloaded. Sure, I’m using iTunes on a netbook, but there’s no damn reason a 1.6ghz processor should have an issue doing what my 386dx40 could handle easily. That is, play music.
The Zune software that nobody uses is 10 times better than itunes.
You don’t have to transfer an app you purchased from your iPhone to your iTunes and then to your iPad. Just download it from the app store on your iPad. If you are using the same apple ID this is free and much easier than transferring to iTunes and back.
I purchased four non apple mp3 players over the last half decade based entirely on trying to avoid itunes. I have only recently bought an Ipod because i found a competent program that syncs music and manages to not hog my computer resources.
Apple definitely needs to make big changes to Itunes.
iTunes has always felt unstable on windows, something about the scrolling just doesn’t work right, the interface looks like it was designed by illegal filesharers, you just expect more from the company that is supposed to be more stylish and less practical, and itunes is neither
…not to mention it comes packed with other crap like quicktime, which is really annoying when you’re trying to watch porn and realize all your shit is set to quicktime as default.
fvck you mac
If you stop waxing the dolphin for a minute you’d realize that everyting is pretty much unstable on winders bubba
I love my Iphone 3GS. I despise Itunes. ITunes is the reason I did not purchase the new Iphone and it is the reason my next phone will be some flavor of Android.
Number 6 says that iTunes is not good on a Windows machine (not a pc because a Mac is a PC too), but anyways. I own one macbook only because it was given to me, no iPod, iPhone, iPad, nothing. I don’t like Apple bc they are over priced and under powered for what you are paying for. They have done a good job selling “cool.” I teach high school and the first reason they give me for having an Apple machine is “because they are cool”, never because the software, hardware, usability, dependability, sometime “they can’t get viruses” (also lies). Now that you know my feelings on Apple on to Number 6.
They don’t care about making iTunes for Windows better because they keep it crappy to “show you” how crappy Windows is. If you used a Mac it would be so much better. If their market share would not have been so small when the iPod came out they would have never created iTunes for Windows. But they needed to win over Windows users and were forced to play the game.
I bought and downloaded a movie from iTunes. It allows me to watch the movie only in iTunes or the other Apple devices I do not own. I am now going to download the pirated version and watch it anywhere I want.
True. I’ve always preferred Windows media player over iTunes – ironically, it just works. Now that I have an iPhone, I just have to live with the general suckiness of iTunes.
I agree completely on all accounts, except for a few notes by other users in the comments. There is no hard and fast rule or restriction which requires you to use iTunes on Windows if you own an iDevice. There are a number of alternative media players that are pretty damn capable (and pretty damn nice) that have total sync compatibility with iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. MediaMonkey is one of the best, in my opinion, and it works so well that the only use left for iTunes is software updates.
Meh, have you guys seen Windows Messenger for Mac? Its downright HORRIBLE.
I like iTunes for Windows, and have been using it ever since it was released for Windows.
1. Music in the main window, shortcuts and playlists on the left. Everything is laid out nicely, and it’s easy to use for first time users. I’m failing to see how this interface is horrible, especially after learning Winamp. (Winamp is a great piece of software, but downright ugly)
2. Plug in iPod or iPhone, use the tabs at the top to tell it what you’d like to sync, press the sync button, done. You download or buy something later on, plug device back in, press sync, DONE. If you can’t figure this out, then maybe you should pay your 11 yr old neighbor to come over and show you how to not be so useless when it comes to using computers. To the editor who wrote this: Don’t pretend you’re any sort of tech expert if you can’t figure out how to use iTunes without having problems.
3. What’s wrong with updates? I can’t see anything wrong with patching your software. Also, if you don’t like updating “weekly”, turn off the auto-update feature in Preferences, and download the new version whenever you feel like it, or when you buy a new Apple device. Problem solved. Or keep the old version if you don’t have a new Apple device. Note to editor: Do you really hate Apple so much that you’re grasping so desperately at things to complain about, such as them giving you software updates? Don’t expect people to read your articles if you keep this up.
4. Downgrading is hard? I’ll give you a tip, uninstall iTunes, do a 5 second Google search for an old version, install it. The reason is crashes? The newer version organizes the files differently now, they went from Itunes Music folder to iTunes Media. If you know how to use the “click and drag” feature they’ve added into Windows, then this isn’t going to take more than 30 seconds to solve.
5. Bloated? Keep in mind people aren’t using Pentium 3s anymore, and using 12% of your CPU to launch a program isn’t bad. How about you launch MS Word, it’ll be much more taxing to your hardware than iTunes. Trying to say iTunes uses 12% of you CPU after it’s loaded, even to play am HD show or movie, I would say is a lie.
6. I haven’t had a single crash, ever, and again I’ve been using it since it was available for Windows. If it’s crashing on your computer, then your computer has other problems and you should probably reformat.
Final Note: If you’re… 1 – Non-computer savvy enough to have trouble using iTunes, or 2 – or your OS is so messed up that iTunes actually crashes, you’re probably better suited for the Mac OS rather than Windows anyways.
iTunes is indeed becoming a resource hog.
I remember the early days of iTunes when it was nothing more than a simple, efficient music player. I miss those days.
Can we just take a second to talk about Ping and how utterly ridiculous it is?
If you have a problem with it go to apple.com/feedback so they know what to fix.
I realise this is more to do with overarching issues(most of which I disagreed with) but the thing iTunes has been missing for years is such a simple thing, the ability to queue a song when another is on, I have to wait for the song to finish then scroll to my next song, rather annoying. I think they tried to solve this with quick playlists but I found them totally insufficient
That’s not only iTunes. That’s DRM in general. DRM sucks. We got it taken off of music finally, but it hangs on in TV shows and Movies.
Streaming is another pet peeve of mine.
Why do I have to have iTunes running to share TV Shows/Movies/Music with an AppleTV? Can’t they make a proper stand alone media server already? Leave the syncing, and applications I can only view on an iPhone/iPad to another program.
It’s called a playlist. Wake up
1) User interface: Looks pretty clean to me, i see 80 percent of the window shows your itunes library (which is sorta the point isn’t it). With the exception of the bottom buttons everything is pretty easy to figure out. Movies is probably Movies, Playlists are playlists.
2) Syncing sucks: I agree I’m surprised they haven’t implemented wireless syncing. Now with every device having wireless built in.
3) This is dumb. How often do these updates come out really? 1-2 Times a month, 2 maybe if there is a new product?
4) Another dumb argument. Maybe not the reasons (crashing itunes or something along those lines), but seriously, all your info is saved in DB’s binary blobs and xml. Any changes to this (such as adding new features) make it a little harder to be able to work with previous version (they don’t have the features).
5) I’m listening to iTunes right now on a 13″ macbook pro, I ran top Safari 6.8%, Firefox 5.5% iTunes 3.1%. memory usage is half of those apps too.
6) On a mac no comment.
It always makes me laugh when people bitch about stuff like the whole iDevice iTunes lock in. Thats like buying a minivan and complaining it doesn’t go 0-60 in 3 seconds. The iTunes/iDevice partnership has been this way for what 10 years now? If you have such a complaint about it why did you buy it in the first place? Surely you researched your purchase first didn’t you?
Also the tech writers that complain about stuff being so bloated, typically are also the first people complaining that something can’t do XYZ. “iTunes sucks its too bloated….WTF it can’t do wireless syncing, WTF this thing can’t be backwards compatible with older version (requiring more code) ….
As much as some like to complain about iTunes, it presents probably the best user story in the business for integrated media across an ecosystem; synching content to an iPhone or iPad is painless and there’s tons of content available, streaming to an Apple TV requires almost 0 setup, and the “Remote” app makes it easy to stream music to remote speakers via an Airport Express.
There’s a reason they control something like 80% of the digital media market.
Then update your OS.
Simple and true fact here, most other music programs manage “iproducts” much better then apples software!
Not being able to play FLAC files is a HUGE issue.
He’s talking about on the fly. “Ya know what would sound great after this klezmer tune? Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass!” And you can’t queue it up on the fly in itunes…pain in the arse.
You’re not the messiah.
On the Mac I would like to see apple do separate apps for videos and music, like they do on the ipad.
What’s to “manage”. Really, the only thing you should need to sort out your iPod with is the Finder. Jamming two bad interfaces into the same app does not make the fact that you only need one app very compelling.
Only 6 things? The whole program is garbage. The only thing good about it is that lots of companies use the store to put up their music and stuff.
I hate iTunes I find it very messy and never like navigating around it. I hate the way it struggles to handle two iPhones on one computer with two different logins. I now have my wides contacts all on my phone. This is apple all over tho, they would rather make things just look really nice than function well. Don’t even get me started on MobileMe.
Really? You teach high school? With such horrible grammar? Ouch. Must be a very lousy school district.
iTunes has it’s draw backs. But overall it is a fantastic organizational tool. It’s shortcomings are also some of it’s finer features. For instance: it forces you to manage and stay on top of your metadata, which is painstakingly awful, but at the end of the day you’re left with a very tidy library.
Does it stink that it takes in excess of 5 minutes to open my 50,000+ song, 670+ movie and 100+ tv show library?! You betcha. The biggest problem with iTunes is that they keep plugging content in excess but are not addressing the performance hit that comes with it.
On the whole, it’s functional. Are we right to want more? Absolutely.
“Windows users truly get the crap end of the deal here. Some of them have an iPhone or an iPad and are forced to use iTunes because of it, and end up hating the software and Apple’s shoddy implementation.”
Now you know what Mac users have ALWAYS had to put up with when we wanted to use any piece of Microsoft software.
At least Apple have the good grace to update and support their own software, however poorly they may do it, where as Microsoft is known for foisting crappy software onto Mac users who need it to run things,
Office is a good example.
CJ:
1. Winamp is beautiful because you can skin it. YOU can decide how the interface works and not be stuck with how Winamp decides is the best way for you to work. iTunes is annoying and inconsistent interface. We have playlists on the left and a menu above. However the second you plug in a device, you’ve got the tabs that are nothing like anything else in iTunes. It’s suddenly a whole new paradigm for no good reason. Why not backwards place the tabs into iTunes for everything else? That’s more consistent and easier to understand, actually.
2. You’ve described the ideal sync interface. When it works, it works (other than the aforementioned changing up the interface for no good reason). When it doesn’t…. you’re screwed. I’ve seen it fail to sync on at least 3-4 computers. Sometimes it just doesn’t work and you shouldn’t have to go through a bunch of restart iTunes, disconnect iPod, or even reboot your machine crap to get it to work.
3. There’s nothing wrong with updates. It’s annoying as hell when they’re every single week at random times and the update takes a good 20-30 minutes to download and apply. Here’s how you do updates Apple – give me weekly, tiny patches if you must and save your big updates for once a month.
4. Downgrading – That’s the point. I shouldn’t have to uninstall and go do a Google search to find older copies of the software. I should be able to roll it back in the software, ideally. However, not a lot of software allows that, so Apple should put links to older versions up there, which they don’t.
5. iTunes is bloat bloat bloat. If all I want to do is play a CD, I’ve got to load the store interface, the media player, have it check for updates, etc etc etc. That’s crap. Ever look at what gets installed with the iTunes installer? Its like 5 different sub-programs! What for? iTunes’s competitors can get a MUCH smaller footprint and offer pretty much the same functionality, minus the store. Speaking of which, why can every other company on the face of the planet provide a web interface for their store EXCEPT Apple, who require me to use iTunes to use what basically looks like a webpage anyway? That’s crazy.
6. Assuming you’re unable to recognize that your experience does not reflect the experience of everyone, let me suggest you do a little Googleing around – iTunes is causing all sorts of problems in Windows. It doesn’t ‘crash’ the computer (although it itself will crash from time to time), but it will completely get rid of your Networking from time to time. Why? Because Bonjour likes to set the gateway to 0.0.0.0 so it has a known gateway for sharing music between machines. How do you fix it? Normally through reseting your network so it grabs the gateway from your router/modem. A lot of people don’t know this so they have to reboot (which does the same thing). It’s a travesty of programming that iTunes does this in Windows. What’s worse is you don’t really have the option to NOT install Bonjour which would solve the problem in and of itself.
iTunes is crap software and I don’t use it. Media Monkey is much, much better on Windows and that’s what I use. I could care less if my iPod gets updated. It works right now just fine, so I don’t need any updates.
it’s:
Contraction of it has or it is.
its:
The possessive form of it.
Used as a modifier before a noun: The airline canceled its early flight to New York.
irony:
Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.
An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity.
Windows version of iTunes is crappy because Steve Jobs and company want it that way. If you can’t get your iPad / iPhone / iPod to working with your Windows machine, they hope you will buy one of their worthless Apple products to use with your iPad / iPhone / iPod. It is no secret that Steve Jobs and company don’t really care about the consumers of their products, they only care about the bottom line.
Would be nice also if Apple compile iTunes as 64bit application, for Mac and Windows.
Most Leopard’s native Apps is 64bit.
lame answer
that’s the lame apple answer for everything. shovel more money.
If you don’t like itunes, use winamp to manage you music on your ipod. It seems to transfer the files to the ipod faster then itunes for me. I only turn on itunes occasionally to keep my ipod updated.
I hardly ever reply to comments, but I had to just to say that you hit it spot on with everything I was thinking.
right click, play next/add to queue
only thing i miss from winamp
I thought I’d get used to iTunes by now, but it has been taking way too long. The way all the tabs and features interconnect might make sense to someone who stares at iTunes all day, but, to me, it’s still a labyrinth of mysterious logic that just doesn’t have to be that complicated. (most of what I do is just manage my iPod Touch)
…and it should convert your videos for you, so you can put them on your iDevices (either that, or iDevices should just support more formats).
I love my iTunes and I think it’s one of the best apps ever. Still digging it after 10 years of usage and I use it on a daily basis. I mostly use it for my huge music collection but I have an iPhone and iPad and iPod so all of those little gadgets have apps, videos and more and more. I wouldn’t change it all I would do is make it faster!
He never said he was an English teacher. He could be the science or math teacher. Either way, at least he’s not a professional internet douche bag like yourself.
To be perfectly honest with you, all my performance issues with iTunes lost their significance when I upgraded to a new PC. It only runs crappily on slower PC.
Syncing does suck, tho. And I’ve stopped upgrading iTunes. Only do it when there’s a major new release. No point in downloading a 100MB+ installer that fixes minor bugs.
Yes! This should be number one!
Until it turns crappy and won’t sync with your Zune just because it doesn’t like Thursdays.
iTunes may be bloated, but Zune is buggy. Also, it’s unavailable if you’re not using Windows.
Yes you can.
Use iTunes DJ, previously named Party Shuffle. Drag the song you want into the queue.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/how-to/#playlists-partyshuffle
Agreeee so much. Software is so damn sexy. I have never had any problems with it.
Aaaannnnddd this is why I have a zune <3
Agreed
I may have considered a mac but with itunes so poor on windows its too bigger risk to spend huge amounts on a computer and OS when they cant manage a media player!!
if you use windows, use wmp12, it is best mediaplayer by far.. automaticly updates its media directory (watch your media folders all the time for new audio/video files), and if you dont get your media to run on it, just install some bigger codec pack for windows and your player plays your files just fine.
and what about iProduct and wmp, well there is some programs what you can download or buy something about 15-25 dollars. and then you can sync your files fith these devices..
and what about sync.. wmp12 is just great for that, you just simple drag & drop and thats it
wmp12 has also so many other features build in what you can easily love, like a mediadirectory share for your home network, just turn that on and you can watch your videos or listen to music on your home theater, no more long wires or thousands differend programs for that.
Mediamonkey? You can use it instead of itunes.
I hate itunes so much that it’s seriously put me off ever owning an Apple device. I use windows and to be honest I don’t love it, although it does what I need it to do. If I had downloaded itunes and thought it was great, maybe I would have considered switching to a Mac, or at least buying an ipod to replace my old Philips mp3 player, but as it is they lost me as a customer. I assume they lost others too by having such a shitty media player, because seriously, even Windows can perfect the media player.
I have completely given up on iTunes. This article is 100% dead on. I am a windows user and the entire UI takes forever to load. It is so bloaty. I now find myself listening to music through http://radiojunkee.com – They have like 20,000 live stations and any song I want to listen to on demand.
I love iTunes, but the constant updates are definitely getting ridiculous. As far as the Windows vs Mac versions, I agree the Windows version might not be as good as the Mac one, but I love it on my Win7 desktop at home.
-Josh InternetBeacon.com
We will buy your iphones and old phones new or broken at http://www.swapngreen.com
The thing I hate is the way itunes is forever re-filing my stuff. Album artwork disappears, tunes that are part of an album mysteriously get detached and it takes forever to work out which chunk of info needs to be changed back to what it was before so that the song reintegrates with its album. I don’t use the Apple Store because in the old days it did not sell tunes in a format that could easily be transfered to an non-Apple MP3 player. Amazon does a bang up job and is sometimes cheaper. I now have an iPod Touch which is fabulous, except for the MP3 player which is buggy. You are forever struggling to navigate. Its not that the process is hard, it’s just that it is forever getting stuck. Is the rest of Apple’s offering so problematic? I don’t think I want to know.