“One of the most-used programs, regardless of platforms, is iTunes,” Dwight Silverman reports for Houston Chronicle.
“Given that the iPod is far and away the dominant media player, and that Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iOS devices, the application used to buy and manage audio, video, apps and books is ubiquitous,” Silverman reports. “It’s also, frankly, pretty bad. iTunes’ design hasn’t been updated since its initial 2001 release. It’s bloated and notoriously slow. It’s incredibly non-intuitive.”
Silverman reports, “On Windows, iTunes is prone to lockups and crashing. On the Mac, it’s more stable but still balky… Apple kicks hardware designs to the curb every few years, but it doesn’t seem inclined to redo software. Still, iTunes is long overdue for a do-over. Please fix it, Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: At this point, iTunes certainly could use some work.
My iMac is my iTunes server. It was purchased last year and has 16gb of ram and a 2.5ghz i5 processor. It is no slouch!
For those of you using raid arrays and NOT experiencing slow meta data updates I’d like to know which raid you are using. I have the four bay drobo.
I will say that the idea of iTunes match fixing the sync problem is completely ridiculous. There are so many problems with iTunes match that I could write an essay on it.
iTunes definitely carries its share of baggage. It’s no longer the little simple media player spawned from SoundJam!
I’ve used iTunes since day one also – never liked it. Somebody had to make things like Senuti to do what iTunes should do, etc., blah, blah, blah… iTunes is junk, in spite of the “We don’t make junque….” statement.
i have about 26,000 songs. i have been using iTunes since it first came out. it is slow when i start it up – i don’t know if this is attributable to the gradual increase in songs or just added stuff in iTunes that slows down startup. if i am importing music from a cd then it is pretty much impossible to do something else like go to a playlist and select a song to play even with a two-cpu laptop. if i change something in the comments then there is another big delay. the hidden option to use half-stars to rate music has been around for a long time but for some reason they haven’t added it to the normal user interface. since i use this option i have become sensitive to the fact that every release of iTunes (practically) changes by a little bit where you can click to get the right number of whole or half stars. why all of sudden did they decide to flash the line of the song that is playing 3 times when you do a cmd-L (or twice if that song is already selected)? i like iTunes but it seems that entropy is gradually seeping into it.
The iTunes interface looks like something designed by a committee. Fine if you are familiar with it, but horrible for a new user. I am not, have had it since day one, but it tries to be all things to all people all the time.
Simple functions should be simple, not complex with many steps in various windows. It seems like something Microsoft would have designed.
Yes I use it, but it could be a lot better.
Sounds a lot like an ID 10 T error
I see no issues on any of my devices.. Its a pretty basic software..
The other part is this:
* Apple sells content
* Apple doesn’t OWN the content
* To have said content available for purchase, there are certain things that Im guessing content creators (music and movie industry, etc) ask Apple to do to prevent piracy.
* Apple is between a brick and a hard place with their DEVICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE. Its not that its difficult, you just have to understand what it is doing, and why.. If Microsoft sold content, then Windows Media Player would be more constraining.
Backup your device. Transfer your purchases. Keep your apps updated in iTunes.. Issues all gone!! The issue is you have to divide and conquer. Know the separate areas (media on your computer, the store, device management, and media organization in the lower section). Each one serves a different purpose..
There. You just learned iTunes. Baffles my mind why people have so much trouble with it.
My problem has never been with the organization of iTunes. I have no trouble figuring out how to do just about anything with the software. I’ve been using iTunes since it was SoundJam.
My problem with iTunes is that I get the spinning beach ball when I do anything. ANYTHING. Play a song, change to a different playlist, even just scrolling. God forbid I add a track or a TV show. I have a pretty recent (2010) iMac with 8 Gb of RAM. Nothing on this computer is slow except iTunes. And iTunes is slow for everything.
I use iTunes on my Macs. No problems there.
I also use iTunes on a PC. It’s a nightmare.
The thing is, do we blame Apple? Do we blame sabotage from Microsoft? Only Zune knows for sure.
Strictly on the Mac, iTunes works pretty well for me. As a tool for managing files on iOS, and moving files between devices, I’m convinced it was designed by a committee of Rube Goldberg and Kim Jong Il. Illogical, counterintuitive, confusing, just plain maddening. But if its goal is simply to prevent me taking control of the files on my own iPod, then it succeeds admirably.
No problem with iTunes. I don’t know what changes I’d make. At this point I have 32,000 items. And still only have 1/2 my collection burned.
I am a heavy iTunes user, and all I can say is that iTunes has never crashed, never “balked” or failed in any other way to do exactly what I ask it to do in a timely fashion. I really don’t understand how some people can heap so much scorn on an app that I’m guessing works perfectly well for most users.
I’ve never had a problem with iTunes. Besides, it’s free. Why don’t we let Adobe rewrite it and charge $1500 for it?
A problem with iTunes?
Isn’t there some Mac malware out there or something? IS the news so boring that people are bashing iTunes?
iTunes is the least of my worries because it never has been.
Next!
I agree that iTunes is well overdue for a drastic overhaul. While iTunes works for me, it’s more because I have adjusted to how badly it works. I would love the ability to build different loads for my iPod/iPhone/iPad so I could tailor what’s on my device to where I will be. i.e. what I want when I am at work is different then what I want when I am traveling, is different from what I want when I am visiting with my family. Why can’t I create these different loads and recall them when necessary?
It’s also well past time for the ability to create folders in movies/apps to be part of iTunes.
Once these changes are made, then we can attack the bloat that has become the iTunes Store!
iTunes a great music jukebox, but syncing iOS devices with it is painful. It’s too slow, and sometimes it just wipes all your all your Apps from the device.
I THINK the problem is that there are two different App backup options – one that backups all the apps from iOS into iTunes (the good one) and one that backs up all the Apps from iTunes to the iOS devices (the one that deletes all the Apps you downloaded on the device for some god forsaken reason). When you go to backup your Apps, there is no clear indication of which kind of backup you are doing, and no indication if all your apps are about to deleted. It’s just like, are you sure you want to back up your apps, click ok, then after about an hour of “backing up” you discover all your Apps were deleted. You can then reinstall the Apps, if they are still available on the App store, but all the App’s data is gone.
The whole process is very confusing and there are way too many options, some of them really hidden, and I can’t trust the default settings from something with a history of deleting all my Apps.
I honestly pretty much just stopped using iTunes for syncing. I’m usually play music straight from iTunes because I’m near my home or work Mac most of the time, and I have enough music on my iPod and iPhone to listen to while I’m on the go. It’s just not worth the stress of attempting to sync – even if my data isn’t backed up and my music is getting stale. And now that newer iOS devices can backup to iCloud – all that’s really needed to fulfill a no-sync lifestyle is is a way to update music. And I’m sure Apple could easily make an App that just does that – transfers music wirelessly, no USB plug or screwing around with App data is necessary.
One of the great thing about iOS devices is that they can be self-sufficient autonomous computers in their own right. The concept of needing to sync them to a real computers to do certain things is rather archaic, not in step with iOS devices full potential. I say to hell with iTunes syncing.
Yup. Yes, the whole location of the Library for iTunes is a bit of a hassle, but the real problem I’ve always had with it is its interaction with the iOS devices, especially the Apps section. Impossibly slow and horribly organized and painfully altered.
OMG don’t get me started on iTunes and the pain and suffering it has caused me. Thanks to its poor design of certain features, my system disk ran out of free space several times (I had to re-size f-ing partition!) because iTunes stores its backups and iOS-update downloads in “hidden” system folders which can’t be configured in settings.
Download an iOS update. The original compressed archive and the uncompressed iOS files BOTH remain on the system disk in some deeply buried folder, after the update is applied. No way to manage, clean up and delete this crap, even though its no longer needed after the iOS update is applied to the devices. Just sitting there wasting GB’s of space on my system disk.
I have other beefs but no time to list right now…
When was the last time iTunes got a complete re-coding, ala Final Cut Pro X? I’ll venture never, and that it has obsolete code in there inherited from SoundJam. Hell, I was getting the “watch” icon rather than the spinning beach ball as recently as version 8, IIRC. That indicates Carbon coding, for goodness sake. That’s from what, the late Cretaceous in computer time?
Please tell me which free media program I should get to replace iTunes because all it does is everything I want it to do a little slower than I want without actually reading my mind.
Are you people for real? It’s free. It works. It does things no other software available does at all, let alone as well. And you’re bitching? Puh-leeze.
You can laugh at me please don’t call me names, I love Itunes. I’m so disorganized that I love being able to pull that up and have my music here, my apps whatever I use, nice and organized for me and easy to find. I thought of it as a file manager for the disorganized such as myself! LOL Also I’ve never had a problem with it. Thanks..