“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?