“There’s a collocation that’s been going around for a while: the proximity of the words ‘iTunes’ and ‘bloated,'” Kirk McElhearn writes for Kirkville. “Google those words and you’ll get about 370,000 results. As an author who specializes in explaining iTunes, I hear this often, yet many of the complaints I hear don’t go further than hurling that invective at the appFew people actually explain why they feel the program is bloated, and those who do have reasons that aren’t easily justifiable.”
“The first two points to examine are those of the size and speed of iTunes,” McElhearn writes. “To be honest, iTunes isn’t often criticized for these issues any more; In fact, I rarely hear criticisms of iTunes not being fast enough any more, nor do I hear complaints about the size of the app these days.”
“One comment I have seen often is that iTunes is bloated because it does so much: that Apple should separate it into different applications,” McElhearn writes. “I would call this a subjective feeling of bloat, because all those features you don’t use don’t affect performance; the program runs only the code you need when you need it. In fact, now that computers are faster, and hard disks larger, most of the criticism of iTunes focuses on its features, and the various types of media it manages.”
“As with any complex app, one user’s bloat is another user’s favorite feature,” McElhearn writes. “Perhaps people need to simply let go of these complaints and understand that Apple did not write iTunes for them, but for hundreds of millions of people. To become more comfortable with iTunes, therefore, may require learning a bit more about how it works in order to master those features you use every day and ignore those you don’t. And use the techniques I explained above to slim down some of what iTunes displays. Your anxiety about iTunes bloat may fade away.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wonder what people would think of the app if Apple had changed its name to “iMedia” or something years ago?
And we hear this “insult” all the time on this board. It is an empty insult with nothing to back it up. Even MDN has on some occasions joined this bandwagon. Some people hear this so often, that no matter what, for them it becomes true.
Paul is correct. We do hear it here from time to time.
I’m one of those guys. And it isn’t really the feature bloat that bothers most, but the fact that it is so much more than tunes, as originally designed. MDN’s approach of iMedia might help, but I’m one of those who would prefer some of it be split off into separate apps. But only on my desktop, where things are easier to get around and find/hide. On my phone, I like it all being in one app. Which makes it *have* to be one app on the desktop, too. So a single, “bloated” app is the best choice. (Except my phone now *does* have Music, Videos, App Store, and iTunes. Shouldn’t at least those divisions hit the desktop? Perhaps as sections within iTunes on the desktop? Oh, yeah, it is. Kinda. See why it is so confusing!?!?!?)
I think the name ‘iTunes’ is outdated. It should be named something more descriptive, something like Media Library, maybe then there would be fewer complaints of bloat, as the name would be more inline with expectations. 🖖😀⌚️
Any lie, if repeated often enough, will take on an air of truth.
Yeah. Benghazi!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. This technique is frequently used in political circles when the facts don’t support the assertion. Over time people forget the objections and just remember the assertion.
And an ambassador and several other Americans were left to die and the Obama administration covered it up and blamed a “video”. Are you the uniformed one here, or what?
I think you just made pdmarsh’s point… Here’s one for you… “9-11 is Bush’s fault since he was responsible for our security and failed”… I don’t really believe that because sometimes shit happens… Let’s move on… What’s more important is how you respond to it…
Hitler depended on that axiom.
Not an up or down votable post, just a historic fact. Some of you offended I take it are pro-Hitler? No doubt the Fandroid Trolls. They don’t understand pretty much anything else either.
not sure how he judges itunes not to be slow, but it is slow in a lot of ways. adding the first tune to up next when the list is empty often causes a noticealbe lag of several seconds. also, and this has been annoyingly true for quite a while, it is almost impossible to do something else, such as edit comments while importing a cd. it wasn’t like this for quite a while initially. finally, from a functional point of view, not being able to have multiple windows open makes it very slow when creating a new manual playlist. maybe this person never used the first few versions of itunes, because if he had he would know how slow it has gotten over the years.
I did prefer the old, trim iTunes. I even liked the interface better back then.
But, alas, it does so much more now than ever before. Should those be separate apps? Perhaps. But how would syncing to my phone then work? It is imperfect, but any other solution would be as well.
I wrote a comment on there explaining how Apple has transitioned from how it optimizes database use from memory to storage to be less resource intensive for modern Macs at the expense of hurting Macs that have slow disk speeds (even if they have lots of RAM).
Anyone judging iTunes on a Mac with a fast SSD and small library with few playlists is going to have a much different experience than someone with a Mac with a slower drive and a large library with lots of playlists.
Overall the article is very well written and spot-on. Much of what Apple has added to iTunes isn’t bloating it. What we’re adding to iTunes is bloating it. Apple is adapting to this, but it’s optimizing around newer Macs at the expense of older ones.
@MDN, brilliant.
I have never considered iTunes bloated, sluggish or overly-complicated; but I must say that the latest makeover of the iTunes interface (iTunes 12) is absolutely disgraceful—a shockingly bad hatchet job that makes iTunes clumsy and confusing in use even for very experienced users.
For what it does, iTunes is not bad. I have a library on a 5 year Mac Mini server that is over 3TB in size (on a Drobo). The software handles that well and does a good job streaming video to AppleTVs and laptops in the household. It does not seem to be slow to me and is very stable.
Damn-you got a Drobo to work, and work well?!
Never had good luck with them.
Yeah it’s not bad. I got the 5N which connects by Ethernet. I have 5 drives with 10+ TB space.
The setup isn’t a straightforward as it says and the system needs to mount properly.
I had 2 virtual drives. One is for iTunes and the other is for time machine. It’s worked well for the last 6 months. Not a speed demon but works for streaming and backup.
I only use iTunes for music organization for my iPods and some external uses for PLEX, Universal Media Server and Spotify which use iTunes services. I occasionally use it to listen to iTunes Radio. I never have any problems with it. Smart Playlists work fine for me. I’ve never had it crash or give any errors but always keep a backup just in case. I probably don’t use it to the max although I only have about 13,000 tracks so far, they seem to stay well-organized enough with metadata and artwork. I don’t use any video files with it because all my video files are MKV files.
So far, I’m happy with iTunes but then again, I’m not asking very much from it. For me it’s just a simple music database to keep track of my music files.
My large iTunes library ran like a dog—until I used PowerTunes to split it up into more manageable chunks. Switching libraries is a cinch and it’s much more responsive.
I also use StreamToMe to play stuff on my mobile devices. With one big library it was intolerably slow, now it runs like a champ.
YMMV.
=:~)
I find iTunes infuriating. The mental model of how it works is insane, and seems to change arbitrarily between versions.
I’ve mostly given up spending any time managing playlists, etc. because of how Apple has made this all confusing and/or annoying. I used to meticulously update meta-data, sort things into playlists that I used on different occasions, and so on. I just don’t have the time to invest in getting it all to work the way I want, only to have that yanked out from underneath me. Add in the fact that iTunes Match doesn’t seem to have a way to sync playlists, it throws out lyrics, and seems to fail inexplicably, and it’s all very annoying.
Yes. This. I have come to hate iTunes. It erased all of the Playlists from my phone a few updates ago, and it won’t let me sync or transfer them back on from my computer. Meanwhile, creating playlists on your phone is an exercise in frustration, it takes forever, especially if—God forbid—you don’t want your albums to have chronological order enforced on them.
It’s also a pain in the ass for playing music; if you finish a playlist, next time you start to play something it defaults to the alphabetical first song or first artist that starts with “A.” Given the billions in revenue this software has generated for Apple and the fact that virtually everyone who owns an Apple device uses it, one would think Apple would invest some time and effort into making it not a total POS.
“I would call [iTunes doing too much] a subjective feeling of bloat, because all those features you don’t use don’t affect performance.” That’s still bloat.
Calling it “subjective” doesn’t make it any less of a real problem. Having features so numerous and disorganized that it “feels” overwhelming (even if it is just a feeling) is still wasteful of the user’s time and mental energy. Apple usually understands this design principle and gets it right better than anyone else. That’s why Apple’s stuff feels easier and feels more enjoyable than the alternatives.
Apple’s whole thing can be summarized by they care how software makes people feel.
When Apple arrives at the correct design of iTunes, you’ll just know, largely because of how it you’ll feel when using it.
I still use iTunes a lot though. I think that it’s partly because of inertia from using iTunes for many years (including good old days when I really liked iTunes), and partly because every other music library app I’ve tried is somehow always worse than iTunes. That’s not really solid ground for iTunes future. Eventually, there’s going to be a music library app that’s better than iTunes. The “need” to syncing my iPhone isn’t even holding me to iTunes anymore. iOS has many other options for loading media now, and I already avoid syncing because of how annoying iTunes makes it.
Changing the name of iTunes is what a focus group who was overthinking the “problem” would do.
Okay, what else is it but ‘bloat’ if I want to organize the apps in iTunes alphabetically, and then need to go out, order dinner, have dessert, come back, and still find it hasn’t finished? Yes, I have over 1500 apps in the list, but, still. And, if there’s anyone out there who does not get frustrated trying to organize their apps on their iDevices, I’d like to know who you are. Dragging them around and trying to drop them into folders that move and sway, something like Alice at the croquet game, is infuriating, clumsy, and painfully inept.