1. The fact I have to use it at all
In the normal, grown-up world, there are standards for things like MP3 players. That’s why every MP3 player I’ve owned in the past five years has worked, right out of the box, with both the manufacturer’s own library software and Windows Media Player. Every MP3 player, that is, apart from the one built into my iPhone.
2. Its high-handed approach to my system resources
iTunes is a program for managing your music files. All right, it does other things too (though I’d prefer it not to), but there’s absolutely no need for it to be running all the time. So why does it need to secretly install services and startup items?
3. The way it acts as a Trojan for other Apple crap
When I installed iTunes, it insisted on dumping QuickTime on my system too. It also tried to get me to install Safari. Why would I want either of these things? (Answer: I don’t.) Perhaps wisely, it didn’t ask me if I wanted to install the AppleSync Notifier or add a MobileMe icon to my control panel – it just went right ahead and did both.
4. Its inability to communicate
If you create a custom ringtone that doesn’t conform to Apple’s secret specifications, iTunes will refuse to upload it to the phone. No error message – it’ll just silently skip over the file and claim the sync was successful. It’s a similar situation with video: if you try to import a video file it doesn’t like, it’ll skip it with no message. Really helpful.
5. Its inability to transcode video
When you drag a WMA file into iTunes, it immediately transcodes it into AAC, presumably because Apple would sooner mess with your files than build WMA support into the iPod. When it comes to video, however, iTunes simply skips over any files it doesn’t like. Since iTunes supports approximately none of the major video codecs, this happens quite a lot.
6. Its refusal to look and function like a Windows application
Microsoft publishes Windows UI design guidelines which are intended to help users by providing consistency across applications. Apple, however, prefers to use the UI to demonstrate how non-conformist it is. So instead of a well-designed Windows application we get an ugly kludge that neither looks nor works like anything else on the system. The only people who won’t be put off are morons whose pattern-matching abilities are so limited they already have to treat every application as a special case.
7. Its wrong-headed notion of “syncing”
In the real world, synchronising two devices means making sure device A and device B both have full, current versions of selected data. What iTunes calls syncing is really mirroring - and in one direction only. You can’t make it just leave your files alone, either: untick the box that says “sync music” and you’ll see a warning that this will delete all the music that’s already on your player. Huh?
8. Its refusal to let me access my own data
Amazingly enough, I have both a computer at home and one at work. And I’d like to be able to manage my music from both locations. iTunes, however, won’t let me download a song at work and add it to the songs already on my iPhone. Nor will it let me copy a song from my iPhone onto my desktop. I realise that making this easy would also make music piracy easy, but there are plenty of devices that can be used for piracy. Only Apple is so paternalistic as to disable basic operations to ensure they can’t be abused.
9. The way it keeps deleting all my songs
All right, it hasn’t happened in a while. I don’t know if iTunes still does this. But way back in 2002 I had a first-generation iPod – back before there was such a thing as iTunes on the PC (it came with MusicMatch Jukebox and connected via FireWire). I was travelling a lot at the time, so I tended to charge it wherever I could, and one obvious way to do this was to plug it into a Mac whenever I happened to be near one. Normally this worked. But on two separate occasions iTunes automatically opened up on the Mac and silently erased all my songs.
Still, I don’t think it’s made me bitter.
Permalink
July 25th, 2008 at 9:37 am
You can’t make it just leave your files alone, either:
Not sure why you think this is the case! I set my Preferences to
“Manually Manage Music” and then iTunes doesn’t touch my files unless
I tell it to. This should also prevent it from deleting all your songs
(a thing which has never happened to me)
iTunes 7 allows you to manage your iPod using more than one computer -
again, make sure you select “Manually Manage Music” and it won’t eat
all your files.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
You may not like it, but the other choices are worse… be honest.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I disagree with point 1, because after all you wouldn’t expect an enterprise application like SAP to work with Oracle’s front end GUI any more than you’d expect the same rich Outlook/Exchange MAPI experience to be as effective when using Thunderbird/IMAP/Exchange. System integration is why the iPod has gotten where it has gotten, because the 99% of the population that want things to just work prefer it that way. After a day working with technology of all kinds I’m quite happy that my partner’s iPod just syncs and doesn’t require extra effort.
MS Apps install stuff on start up too in order to allow them to detect devices and find updates etc, it’s just these can’t be turned off. You can shut down the services if you are that concerned but let’s face it the resource footprint is pretty small on todays mega memory systems.
FInally why would you want to support WMA/WMV when neither are published standards like MP3 or AAC are?
July 25th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Chris - I see your point about SAP not connecting to the Oracle front-end, but we’re talking about a very different market. Pretty much every non-Apple MP3 player made in the past five years has supported open standards for media transfer. You can’t excuse Apple by saying vendor lock-in is standard practice.
Don’t get me wrong: I do see the appeal of tight integration between the iPod / iPhone and iTunes. But that could all be achieved within open standards. I don’t see any benefit to Apple’s choice of a closed, proprietary system, at least from the user’s perspective.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I thought your comments were quite reasoned until you put ‘well-designed’ and windows in the same sentence.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Only nine?
I quite like the new iPhone that Apple has lent me, but iTunes is a horrible weak link. I could list loads more than nine points, but the two biggies for me are a) that I have to transcode any DivX stuff I, ahem, ‘obtian via perfectly legal channels’. And that via USB it only exposes the camera files in mass-storage mode. If it was possible to simply dump MP£ files onto it you wouldn’t need iTunes at all (which, I guess, is why they don’t allow it).
Having said that, ActiveSync is extremely turdy, and BlackBerry Desktop is hardly the world’s most brilliant software.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Paul,
If you can “list loads more than nine points” I’m waiting… It’d be interesting to read I’m sure. Personally, having such a vast music library, I find iTunes perfectly adequate. I can make use of search and playlists. And out of the content I rate, smart playlists are generated too. In terms of RAM, my MBP hardly notices iTunes…
July 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
“Personally, having such a vast music library, I find iTunes perfectly adequate”
I have such a vast music library that it takes iTunes 3-4 minutes to start because of its retarded database format. (Yes, I have compressed my itunes folder and got it _down_ to 3-4 minutes).
Viable alternative is MediaMonkey. Not only can it load my library in seconds, it can sync with the iphone/ipod without itunes.
Now if only I could skip itunes when doing software upgrades, I would not have to deal with having my music deleted all the time. I have to say, I agree with point 9: When I carry a portable device that needs to be charged and can be charged by USB, I should be able to plug it in to an available computer (I use 4-5 regularly) without fear that all my music will be deleted yet again. What kind of retarded “sync” deletes the entire library?
As I write this I can’t believe how passionately I hate iTunes (and I only thought I was annoyed).
August 18th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I am a simple soul who has not yet succumbed to all things MyPod. I just like it to manage my library, which fits on a 40G portable drive that I plug into various PCs I work at at various clients, all using Windows XP. (That’s another story.) I often live behind net nannys that prevent access to ‘music/radio’ sites. So when I ‘MAKE THE MISTAKE’ of upgrading iTunes, the only location I can play my tunes now is THAT location. All the others come up with ‘Library created with newer version of iTunes.’ netnanny prevents access to upgrade, and I sit alone, in the quiet…unless I want to rebuild library. Which, without net access, creates alot of ‘Track 01′, ‘Track 02′ entries…
Don’t get me started on why I don’t buy at iTunes. WTF is m4u and why won’t it play anywhere unless I run through three converters and a ‘virtual CD burner’ to make it mp3 ??
My Mac buddy keeps telling me to ‘come over to the Mac side, Luke’ but I like making money writing software, and the only money I see over there is writing ‘AppStore’ showpieces that display a giant Ruby for $8000.
Thanks. I’ll pass…