Apple Why do people hate iTunes?

Jahjah440

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I recently got an iPod Nano 3rd Gen ($25!) 2 weeks ago. I plugged it in had the drivers installed, and went to Apple.com to download iTunes. I was expecting the worst from what I heard on the internet, but instead I was treated to a nice, friendly interface and snappy UI. Now, I will admit that boot up time is rediculous, and the iTunes store makes my computer lag, but it has so many nice features, and now it's my main MP3 Player.

I love the way how when I "acquire" new music, I simply fill in the ID3 tags, and press download Album Artwork, and 9 times out of 10, it gets it! It also synced my iTunes Library with 300 songs (1.32 GB) in less than 1 minute.

If you hate iTunes, please, tell me why. I'm not trying to fight anyone, I'm just wondering....

EDIT: I don't have a powerful computer either. I'm have a Lenovo netbook running Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel Atom 1.66GHz, 1GB Ram, 250GB 5400RPM HDD.
 

Wombo Combo

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I dislike it because on any Windows OS its runs like shit and on multiple PC with different Windows versions as time goes on it comes to a point where when I plug my ipod in it freezes itunes and no fucking matter what I do (reinstall itunes, restart pc/ipod, restart services, compatibility mode) it just doesnt work so I have to plug and unplug the damn thing to make it randomly work. I have searched this issue on google and itunes forums and none of the fixes work so that is honestly why I hate Itunes.
 

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Jahjah440 said:
Now, I will admit that boot up time is rediculous, and the iTunes store makes my computer lag,
Pretty much the entire reason why people hate it. It's a very complete music player, that's for sure, but it takes up quite a lot of memory.
 

Jahjah440

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Lacius said:
The quality of iTunes is great, but it's a memory hog. A lot of people prefer lighter music players.

I'm not sure, memory hog....

Right now, I'm syncing my iPod while listening to song, on Mozilla firefox, and dowloading a torrent, while downloading 100+mb of Windows Updates.
 

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I would say it is a combination of several things stemming from the way the ipod works leading all to the way to Apple's way of doing business- by all means have a custom database but not having a simple file system ability is not cool and well itunes pricing is a whole other game.

Anyhow it adds/runs services and requires them which is a big no no in my book, on occasion it adds scheduled tasks, to boot takes ages, it likes to tie the ipod in some regards to the user (other programs avoid this quite happily) for whatever reason, for what it needs to do it takes a lot of resources, the GUI is nice enough and pretty I guess but not what many who like to bitch on the internet care for, it has got better but it had a nasty habit of doing things like installing safari unless you told it not to and I could probably go on.
 

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A few problems include constant updates, installing lots of services, installing other Apple software like Safari during updates unless you opt out, lots of DRM music, and a music format that not all mp3 players can play in the store.

As for myself, I just find the whole program very restrictive and ugly. It doesn't play video files local on my PC, so it is useless as an all-in-one media program for me. I do like the visualizations, they look very nice on a 50" HD TV. I like the Zune software, it is very smooth, looks good, can play my videos in the same place I get my podcasts, get album information and pictures automatically and displays cool album information when playing full screen.
 

Jahjah440

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Wombo Combo said:
I dislike it because on any Windows OS its runs like shit and on multiple PC with different Windows versions as time goes on it comes to a point where when I plug my ipod in it freezes itunes and no fucking matter what I do (reinstall itunes, restart pc/ipod, restart services, compatibility mode) it just doesnt work so I have to plug and unplug the damn thing to make it randomly work. I have searched this issue on google and itunes forums and none of the fixes work so that is honestly why I hate Itunes.

Man, you got the bad luck!
rofl.gif
Hopefully this wont happen to me.
 

Jahjah440

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0ddity said:
A few problems include constant updates, installing lots of services, installing other Apple software like Safari during updates unless you opt out, lots of DRM music, and a music format that not all mp3 players can play in the store.

As for myself, I just find the whole program very restrictive and ugly. It doesn't play video files local on my PC, so it is useless as an all-in-one media program for me. I do like the visualizations, they look very nice on a 50" HD TV. I like the Zune software, it is very smooth, looks good, can play my videos in the same place I get my podcasts, get album information and pictures automatically and displays cool album information when playing full screen.

The update frequency is crazy. I just dont understand it!
 

jamesaa

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It's a memory hog
Frequent updates, which always try to stuff other apple software on your system, only takes one time to accidentally forget to uncheck a couple of boxes and bang you have safari and a bunch of unneeded services running.
It is forced upon anyone who owns an iphone, ipod or ipad.
It is currently "cool" and "in" to hate on apple.
Although not as bad as it once was there are some poor DRM implementations.

Do I use itunes? Yes, due to owning an ipod touch, and ipad.
Would I use itunes if I had a choice? Probably not.
 

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iTunes chews up a lot of resources. From my experience, Apple seems to have trouble when it comes to coding for Windows. (Boot Camp, iTunes, QuickTime, Safari… They've provided me an unsatisfactory experience.) Well, if they actually can code for Windows, this is their way of trying to get you to use Mac OS X. Seriously, iTunes behaves a lot nicer on Mac OS X.

Another gripe I have with iTunes (this time for Mac OS X) lies within its internals. Believe it or not, the Mac version of iTunes is actually a port at its roots. (It was ported from the original Mac OS, so it's written in Carbon.) Only iTunes on Lion is "native" in my opinion; for Lion, they rewrote iTunes in Cocoa to make it 64-bit.

For better or for worse, my eyes have been trained to pick out inconsistencies and ugliness (to an extent, anyways) in user interfaces. iTunes uses "non-standard" checkboxes (they look different from your operating system) and at least five different button styles. Prior to iTunes 10.4, Apple was also using a window gradient that didn't match the rest of Mac OS X. iTunes is actually rather notorious for being a guinea pig for Apple's UI experimenting.

Unfortunately, iTunes has also swollen up to a state where, in addition to music, it manages TV shows, movies, apps, podcasts, books, and syncing your device. It might be managing (or trying to manage, in some people's minds) too much. It's not exactly ideal for someone who just wants to play music, but it's nice to have everything in one if you're managing an iPhone or something.
 

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My bro bought an iPod. He installed iTunes. The iTunes program is like an infestation on a PC. It put .log files EVERYWHERE in that computer, even in our NAS storage (where our MP3 library is). Even after uninstalling the iTunes program, and trying to delete the log files, as soon as he rebooted, all those log files re-created themselves. (Except for the NAS storage) It's almost virus-like in how it did that. His iPod is now collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. He bought a $20 MP3 player from DX and it works MUCH better and with far less hassle than the stupid iPod ever did, and has MUCH more storage space. No having to go through some ridiculous program to add music or vids. You just plug it in to the USB and it looks like an SD card. Load up your stuff and go.

Why people bother with iPod's unnecessarily expensive and annoying way of doing things puzzles me, especially when you can get items that do essentially the same thing better and more easily, and for less money.

I swear, so many people are just sheep begging to be fleeced when it comes to Apple products. (where's the facepalm smiley when you need it)
 

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Dialexio said:
iTunes chews up a lot of resources. From my experience, Apple seems to have trouble when it comes to coding for Windows. (Boot Camp, iTunes, QuickTime, Safari… They've provided me an unsatisfactory experience.) Well, if they actually can code for Windows, this is their way of trying to get you to use Mac OS X. Seriously, iTunes behaves a lot nicer on Mac OS X.
Very true. iTunes on my Snow Leopard Hackintosh runs beautifully.
 

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Jahjah440 said:
I love the way how when I "acquire" new music, I simply fill in the ID3 tags, and press download Album Artwork, and 9 times out of 10, it gets it! It also synced my iTunes Library with 300 songs (1.32 GB) in less than 1 minute.
not for me

it was only able to get about 2% of my artwork
yet the zune software not only fills in missing or incorrect ID3 tags but also acquires artwork automatically for almost my whole collection
I just found that pretty funny
 

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MediaMonkey is much more reliable than iTunes when it comes to acquiring metadata for songs/albums, especially if the album is in other languages (e.g. Japanese kanji).

I've been forced to use iTunes in the past. It was big, slow, heavy, bulky, and not all that great in features either. Now when I get it again for use with my iPad 2, I've got a much more powerful computer to wrestle with it. The only things that have changed are that it is slightly faster and has more features. It's still not the best designed/most intuitive media management program. I stand by my opinion that it is the worst media management program I've ever used.
 

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