Sunday, July 10, 2011

iTunes

I've been busy making playlists on my iPod Touch. I don't really use this thing anymore but have a specific need for a music playback device that isn't my phone. I have to ask all the iTunes users, how the hell do you live with this software? It is single handedly the slowest and most cumbersome music management software I have ever used. I agree the the end iOS iTunes interface is nice for playback, but it just doesn't seem worth it.

It is incredibly slow. Granted, I'm using iTunes on a Windows PC, which means I have a non-native performance penalty already, but I'm using a Core i7 3Ghz Quad Core PC with 12GB of RAM. It's not exactly a slow machine!

My Music collection is 140GBs. Maybe a bit on the large size? Scrolling through albums requires waiting several seconds to have the screen draw the user interaction.

I have to manually add music acquired outside of the iTunes music store into iTunes. Most of my music doesn't come from iTunes as it's the most expensive music store online. I'm sorry, but I have a computer to avoid doing tasks that can be easily automated! I guess this isn't an issue if you only buy music via iTunes. Maybe I'm too cheap, but I refuse to pay CD prices for digital media. On a related note, there is no way in iTunes to see where the file that represents that song is.

I could go on but I have to get back to banging my head against the wall here.

Update: I can't transfer the two newest playlists I created due to "unknown error". Thanks iTunes.

Update2: Went back to editing. iTunes up and deleted one of my playlists. POS.

Update3: I chatted with some Mac users over lunch. Apparently my problem were:
  1. I wasn't using a MAC
  2. I don't allow iTunes to manage my music
  3. I don't buy my music through iTunes
If I wanted to be locked into the Microsoft ecosystem of the 90s I'd be... oh wait...

4 comments:

Steve said...

I tend to think that point 1 from your Mac friends is the cause, not points 2 or 3. I remember from back in the day when I ran Windows that iTunes was embarrassingly slow, and I'm pretty certain I was using iTunes-purchased content and a few ripped CD's that I asked iTunes to organize for me.

(an aside: I actually liked iTunes managing the location of the files for me; I found it did a good job)

To find the location of a track, you right-click on the track and choose "Get Info". At the bottom of the first tab should be a "Where" section.

Amie said...

there's fully a way to see where the file representing the song is in itunes. gotta right click on the song n go to get info n it should be in there or something.

◄4Wa||z said...

iTunes sucks on the Mac too... it is a useless piece of software.

Trippers said...

Yes!
An unnecessarily cumbersome resource hog that seams to fall out with everything else running on my PC. And if you deny it server rights (which it doesn't need to run) it's still not happy.
I understand the apple quality h/w argument, and the fashion that drives its sales, but for me, iTunes is a deal breaker.
Uuugh!