Who else dislikes iTunes?

Maybe make two threads ! those who hate iTunes under 50 years an those who hate iTunes over 50 !

 

I never paid a dime to/for iTunes (for my own use...I did buy a few songs from the iTunes Store for the kids), but I feel I've been forced to use it for my iPod and iPhone.

Always found it to be surprisingly unintuitive considering that Apple alleges to place such a high premium on the end-user experience.

 

Well it was pretty easy to NOT have that happen. You just set your phone to not accept automatic downloads or just delete the album.

I didn't think it was that big a deal.

 

So many of the comments in this thread seem like the old Woody Allen line: "The food at that restaurant was horrible. And the portions were soooo small!"

I've stuck with iTunes 10.7 because of unwanted changes in the user interface. I use it to rip and tag, rarely for playback (I use Squeezebox), and never use the store.

Performance while tagging (entering or updating metadata) is painfully slow. This is because Apple uses a flat file for the database; every time you make a change, it has to re-write the entire file. This works fine if you only have three or four hundred tracks, but once you go over 30,000 or so, performance goes down the crapper.

 

Ive found it to be a relatively easy system to use.

 

I have iTunes on my PC, but I don't use it as my music player. The only time I use it is to acquire the damned iTunes-exclusive bonus tracks that some artists insist on offering with their albums on iTunes. Lord, the music industry has gotten screwed up! If you're a collector of almost any artist today, you have to be on the lookout for iTunes exclusive tracks, Amazon.com exclusive tracks, Japanese-only exclusive tracks, vinyl-only exclusive tracks, etc. It's just about enough to make me give up on collecting!

 

This thread is reliably offering valid criticism of iTunes jacked up by an exaggeration factor of about ten. You'd think that the several hundred million people using it (in 23 languages) are all writhing in some agony of software dysfunction, which I'm fairly sure is not the case.

 

My music collection is all on our Mac and managed in iTunes. We use iPhones and AppleTV so it makes sense since we are, at this point, invested in the Apple ecosystem. However, I am not really a fan of iTunes. It's slow, its ugly and Apple is constantly adding features that are useless to me. I subscribe to iTunes Match so I can listen to my library on my iPod wherever I go. Somehow, they even screwed this since it mismatches my music with alarming regularity.

 

When I buy CD's, I use iTunes to rip them on to my computer and play them that way. For that purpose, it's worked great!

I've never bought any music from iTunes, and don't have any plans to do that in the future.

I don't use playlists or match or any of the fancy features, and so can't speak to those... but for just playing my album collection, I like it a lot.

 

For managing an iPhone, iPad or iPod I find the software unnecessarily complicated and not particularly intuitive (I use it on the Mac but just for sync'ing my pdf record inventory). Compared to other Apple software it seems to stick out as really needing (another) major overhaul/redesign/rewrite. That said, it has improved over time. However, for me it is a "no".

 

How hard is it to delete a folder?

 

I'd think there's a good chance that a great number of them have not explored any alternatives. Many are quite satisfied with something that performs a basic function, and don't look around for anything better.

 

No you wouldn't.

But you might think lots of people feel that Apple has sort of coerced millions of users into using an inferior, intrusive software package in their quest for global domination.

 

Why do I get this zero with a exclamation inside when I try and plat songs that I ripped off of cds? It says, "The song _____ could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
After I push locate. well trying to locate is a nightmare. Can you help me out here?

By the way, I don't like it.

 

If you've moved the file to a different location on your hard drive (or deleted it from your computer, iPod, etc.) after you added it to iTunes, the software won't know where it is. You'll have to know in which directory on your HD the song is before you can locate it through iTunes. If you deleted it, it's gone.

It is a pain, but there's no other way, I'm afraid.

 

It's a relatively easy product to use, has been very stable and consistent through several versions and generally meets my needs for how I use it. One complaint, I miss CoverFlow.

 

I don't like the newest version over some of the previous versions, but I've tried some of the alternatives and prefer it to any other music databases I've tried. That said I mostly rip CDs and never really buy anything from the store or sync with other devices. I just stream with Rdio on my phone when I'm out and about or driving or whatever.

 

Hate

 

I've tried other music players, but I've always come back to iTunes. I've bought maybe one album on the iTunes store, with the rest of my albums ripped from CD's.

 

It's fine for my basic requirements.

I have it on my PC and use it for buying mfit albums but no longer have any other Apple products to sync to it. Once downloaded I drag and drop the music to my Walkman.

 

I personnally don't have/use iTunes, and I don't know why it's used so much. There are many other
Windows apps that do the same thing and much better.
Regarding CoverFlow. I seem to remember that when they dropped it, users complained and were very
upset. But then they continued to use it anyway. Makes no sense.
As one or two others have mentioned, I too use Media Monkey. No headaches and the best Coverflow
plugin (MonkeyFlow) I've ever seen. Here's a screen grab from my 60" HD TV.

 

I don't dislike iTunes, but don't us it as my primary media player as there is no FLAC support.

I need to interact with it for my wife's iPhone, but have no problem with that.

I have downloaded some of the iTunes festival stuff (Jimmy Eat World) and Sticky Fingers live, and podcasts for the Missus

 

itunes takes too long with large libraries.... the playback lags when the program is updating it's .plist logs for metadata, etc

 

Sums it up for me although I love using my playlists! iPhones, iMacs, iPads, AppleTv, I'm happy.

 

it's the most rage-inducing, infuriating program I have ever encountered. Managed to slow down four different computers of mine over the years! I wouldn't ever have to deal with it if it wasn't for my wife and kids wanting to use iDevices.