Does iTunes Suck?
8:28 am, November 6th, 2008, Lonnie Lazar
Webmonkey thinks iTunes sucks. And gives 10 reasons to bolster the case for saying so, including serious gripes about the infelicity of its library management, slow performance and its demands on system resources.
We agree with the complaint that iTunes refuses to let you take music off your iPod and put it in the library while almost every other music app out there manages to handle that task. And we’re resigned to the inevitability of iTunes for iPhone and iPod updates, but maybe there are better apps for managing a collection of digital music, like Songbird and Amarok.
What do you think? We’re listening…
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in News | Comment on this article
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iTunes is the ONLY apple app that I really don’t like. I have large music collection, largely ripped from CDs over the last 10 years in addition to the many many tracks I like so many others obtained in the days of napster and the like. Much of the music I downloaded from napster was in fact stuff I owned, it was easier to let someone else rip it for me. The problem that artwork is missing, genre’s are messed up, and so are some track names. Editing any of this in itunes is hard, editing it on an album or multi album basis is impossible.
I am still having a hard time giving up control, itunes wants to have control of everything, where the songs are and all that. My library is part here on my laptop (which is not big enough for all my stuff) part locked away on my ipod, and then part on external drives. I think that having stuff scattered around is an increasing problem, yet itunes gets really cranky with things like that. Where and how itunes plays video is so strange, I can never figure it out.
Aaron, on November 6th, 2008 at 8:57 am
“manages to handle” copying music from iPod?
It’s no technical challenge.
Direct your complaints to RIAA policy-makers and negotiators.
Pete, on November 6th, 2008 at 9:13 am
do they mean iTunes on a PC? or iTunes on a Mac?
Peruchito, on November 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Another rant with questionable accuracy, as far as I can see. Although I agree with Apple’s irritating emphasis on its store, there are some strange comments in that piece:
“The library manager is prehistoric [...] Worse, why does iTunes try to reorganize the folder without asking?”
Well, tell it not to—the option’s in the prefs.
“And how is it that after seven and a half releases, iTunes still isn’t smart enough to automatically detect when we’ve dropped new music in our library folder?”
Which would sap further system resources—something this article complains about later. Also, is adding new music by dropping it on iTunes itself really so hard?
“No plug-in architecture [...] This is the best part of Songbird, where the sky’s the limit.”
Well, there has to be some ‘best bit’ to that laggy, buggy mutant offspring of iTunes and Firefox.
“No support for other music formats Ogg/FLAC/etc.”
Number of people I know using Ogg/FLAC: zero. Also, Apple would probably get slapped hard if integrating Ogg support, due to patent issues.
“Drag and Drop sucks — If you’ve got a lot of playlists, adding music to them is awkward. We’re not sure what the answer would be here, but this is one of those rare cases where drag-and-drop feels primitive.”
Then use the context menu.
“Can’t use iPod as a music transport with iTunes [...] record companies would freak out. But Apple is quite possibly more powerful than the labels at this point, and it would be great to see it give the proverbial finger to the industry.”
Yes, great. The last time Apple did this, most of the labels opened up DRM-free for everyone but Apple and left Apple with DRM crud. If Apple played this card, you can bet at least one major would jump ship entirely.
“iTunes is slow — [...] we have large libraries above the 200 gigabyte mark and iTunes still really can’t handle them.”
I can’t confirm this, since my library is approaching a ‘mere’ 90 GB (Lord only knows how you end up with 200 GB—we have hundreds and hundreds of CDs, but only half that amount), but speed isn’t an issue on my computer.
Overall, I’d say iTunes is a long way from being perfect, but most of the detractors bang the same old drums constantly, and it’s becoming a tiresome beat. Find something new to complain about, guys.
Craig Grannell, on November 6th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I’m quite liking iTunes. Let me get it straight: iTunes suck on PC but on Mac it rocks. Especially with You Control: Tunes application.
I tried the Songbird out, but… 70 meg download? 150 megs installed? A browser? Is it a player or a browser? Or a player in a browser? Can’t say. I would strip the browser out of it – everyone has a favorite browser nowadays and doesn’t want to use anything else…
I think I’ll wait for a year or so and check the Songbirg again. It’s looking good but I’m just loving the menu bar controls too much and there isn’t a similar add-on for Songbird, yet… And what’s most important, I haven’t noticed any performance issues with iTunes — working like a charm.
I’ll keep my iTunes for now but will get back to Songbird occasionally just to keep on track of the progress. Some day, it’ll be better than iTunes will ever be.
Jari, on November 6th, 2008 at 9:59 am
“Especially with You Control: Tunes application.”
Some great alternatives: iTunesMenu (for displaying the artist/track in the menu bar, system-wide hot-keys, and Growl notification), I Love Stars (for menu-bar-based iTunes rating), Spark (for more advanced hot-key shenanigans).
Craig Grannell, on November 6th, 2008 at 10:28 am
It felt to me like the Webmonkey article was speaking from a perspective of iTunes for Windows rather than iTunes on a Mac; there are some differences. Certainly the Software Updates issue doesn’t apply, and I think that their issues with the library manager would be easily resolved a.) by changing their settings in iTunes so that it doesn’t rearrange the folders and b.) setting up a folder action so that iTunes *does* register when you drop music into the library folder. (Automator could help with that.)
I don’t really feel the need to use iTunes for music discovery (particularly when Pandora has convenient links to buy in iTunes), so I can’t really speak to that.
I will say, however, that I no longer really feel the need to update iTunes. I don’t have the latest iPod or an iPhone — I just like the features I have. The last feature that really thrilled me was the ability to update information for multiple tracks at once (thereby negating the need for the elaborate AppleScript I had recently set up for that purpose). Nowadays, updates to iTunes don’t particularly excite me anymore– but I don’t think it sucks.
EJ, on November 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I’d need to have a better idea of what it means for something to suck. I have three questions regarding any app or service:
1. Does it do what I want it to?
2. Does it follow the best practices of its competitors?
3. Is it ideal?
Webmonkey seems to set the bar for “sucks” at question #3. For me, if iTunes does what I want it to, then it doesn’t suck. I’d like to see a more flexible interface so I can configure iTunes to work exactly like I want it to, something like Firefox and extensions. But even without that it works for me just fine and thus doesn’t suck.
Tom Wolper, on November 6th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Thanks for the tips, though You Control: Tunes handles all that besides for the hotkeys (only one hotkey setting there).
I took another look at the Songbird and wrote to my blog about it. I noticed that Songbird takes up approx 70 megs of RAM while iTunes takes up only 40 megs. So what is this talk about iTunes taking up too much system resources? (These numbers according to iStat widget, so they aren’t most accurate but there was a significant difference.)
And oh, the download was 40 megs but installation was 160 megs. My mistake there.
They had it quite right, I just can’t understand the integrated Firefox(?) there. Does it update hand-in-hand with Firefox (or whatever it is)? Does it have it’s own security flaws etc.?
Great software anyways, iTunes is currently little ahead but that might not be the case in a year or so – thanks to the open source.
Jari, on November 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Playlist management is a bit messed up. I have a gazillion playlists and I just want to be able to click on a track and see what playlists it’s in. That’s all.
Church of Apple, on November 6th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Hell no! Are you kidding me? Those who have a hard time not fully succumbing to Apple’s brilliance are the only ones complaining. I myself dont complain. I buy, I sync, I live a very full life to say the least. I want my life completely interconnected across all media. I have too many things I want to do and keep up with without worrying about trying to figure everything out fully. Just buy Apple and live life. Oh yeah, eat, drink, and be merry too!
John, on November 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Yes, Spark is excellent! I used to have some visual control apps, but shortcuts are the best. I use Ctrl+Option+Command+ Space(play/pause) and arrows (previous/next, volume up/down). That’s enough for me. Basic controls which I can use without switching to iTunes. With large libraries iTunes really is slow. Rip 400 CDs as Apple Lossless, add about 1000 podcasts and you’ll see what I mean.
Guntis, on November 6th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
all i want is an itunes server. i have a family library that is accesed by 2 iphones, 3 computers and an appletv. i would get a designated mac just for the media, if itunes allowed me a bit more control. like being able to sync my iphone from any mac that is connected to the itunes server etc.
besides that ‘want’, itunes has been great for me.
though i can’t seem to label anything i create as a ‘music video’.
Peruchito, on November 6th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
That article was infantile. They complained about iTunes being bloatware, then complained about it lacking features… Along with a seeming inability to manage it’s preferences.
They didn’t like the tie-in to the store, but you can turn that OFF. It’s in the parental preferences. Maybe they should ask their parents for some help.
ford, on November 6th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
@ Church of Apple
Right click on the song and choose ‘Show In Playlist’ from the contextual menu.
Camperton, on November 7th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Itunes does suck.
imyz, on November 7th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I’d love to ditch iTunes, but I’m too scared it’ll brick my iPhone. Look it does a good job at actually interfacing with the phone, but the whole store browsing experience is incredibly painful.
The iTunes store has a massive amount of data, and that’s a challenge in itself, but certainly far less than the challenge presented to Amazon or even eBay. They see no reason to take my browsing experience away from the Web environment we all use everyday and are comfortable with.
What is it about the iTunes store that requires me to change the way I browse — no context menu, no cut’n'paste, no address bar, no bookmarks, no tabs … and for what tangible benefit? We are browsing web-based data, here. Sounds like a job for a web browser.
Why can’t I launch podcast descriptions into 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th tabs while I read the first one? How hard would it be to suck webkit into a window and provide a faster, more familiar, more flexible experience for everyone — even users who don’t use Safari.
Alex, on December 23rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
STOP USING iTUNES!!!!! I use wermp3.com only 8 cents a songs or 99 cents in iTunes?? Didnt have to think long about this.
IMHO Steve Jobs himself is taking a leave of absence because of the pain iTunes has brought him. Sure hes making money, but he never really was about money. He is about simple perfection. iTunes is by no means simple perfection. I save all my music in my local music folder and drag songs to the Winmedia. I hate MicroSaft but at least they dont update every other day.
Stephe Joobes, on February 4th, 2009 at 9:11 am
1. Does it do what I want it to do?
a. Well partially. It doesn’t have advanced library management features that other fully baked alternatives on windows have. Unfortunately there aren’t any fully baked alternatives on mac os.
ITunes doesn’t watch folders for updates and every other competitor does. You should be able to configure iTunes to only scan the folder at startup if you are concerned about resources. simply saying “what is wrong with just dragging and dropping” misses the point. My answer would be “if a task has to be done more than once, it should be automated”.
iTunes doesn’t allow playing songs from another iPod. This is stupid and annoying. I have several laptops. I have one for work and one for home. I have a desktop. I don’t mind only being able to sync with one computer (this I understand may not be apple’s fault), but why not let me, at least, play songs FROM my iPod on other machines? Again, this is something competitors have that iTunes doesn’t.
2. Does it follow the best practices of it’s competitors?
a. iTunes library import feature is not multi-threaded (or at least the UI isn’t). Why can’t I use iTunes while music is being added to my library? This is a real pain in the ass. I do have a 390 GB library and when I set up a new computer it takes days to load the library in iTunes (on mac or windows), and yet on mediamonkey it allows me to start playing music immediately and the library is updated in realtime.
3 is it ideal?
a. maybe. If they fix the other issues.
So following this standard, I’d have to say on windows iTunes does indeed suck, and on a mac it still sucks, but since there aren’t as many competitors it sucks a bit less.
Troy, on March 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pm