
10 graphic examples of the abomination that is iTunes on Windows - troyhunt
http://www.troyhunt.com/2012/04/10-graphic-examples-of-abomination-that.html
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crazygringo
Or how about: _anything_ I do in iTunes makes it freeze for five seconds.

It's been explained to me that this is because my music collection is around
200GB, so my iTunes Library.xml file is around 60MB, and any action (playing a
song, renaming, etc.) rewrites the entire XML file on disk (incrementing play
count, renaming, etc.).

And this is on a MacBook Air with SSD under Lion!

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Whose idea was it to use an XML file for a non-human-readable library file?
SQLite would sing in this use case.

~~~
derefr
There's a regular (possibly SQLite-based) database format as well. The XML
file is the _backup_.

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ntkachov
I've always marveled at Apple. They have top notch Engineers working their
hardware. They have fantastic Designers.

But for some reason. Apple can't get a decent programmer. Their software
sucks. Plain down right sucks. I love using apple hardware but I can't stand
any software made by them. (See: Xcode, Itunes, Safari)

~~~
batista
_> But for some reason. Apple can't get a decent programmer. Their software
sucks. Plain down right sucks. I love using apple hardware but I can't stand
any software made by them. (See: Xcode, Itunes, Safari)_

If you prefer Emacs/Vim, OK, but I can't see a much better tool than XCode for
Objective-C (and arguably C/C++), plus UI building. Version 4 is buggy and
crashes, but then again it's a mostly complete rewrite of the old XCode
codebase. 4.3 is stabler than previous 4.x releases --it will get better.

As for iTunes, I can't see any problem with it, besides handling a lot of
different functionality in one app. Do you see many actual bugs in day to day
use? Because using it for almost 10 years, I don't remember any.

Safari, yes, tend to do some stupid things. Though, Chrome, to which I
migrated is also based on Apple code for the core engine.

Plus: the OS, Logic, Aperture, Pages, Keynote, all top notch apps.

~~~
alexeiz
> is also based on Apple code for the core engine.

Apple Safari uses WebKit - a free open source web browser engine. It's not
Apple's code, it existed way before Apple got into browser business.

~~~
batista
_> Apple Safari uses WebKit - a free open source web browser engine. It's not
Apple's code, it existed way before Apple got into browser business._

I used Konqueror long before Apple made Safari, so I am aware of the history.
It's hardly the whole story though.

Safari uses Webkit, but Apple made Webkit. Webkit did not exist before Apple
got into the browsing business. What did exist was khtml made by the KDE
project.

That engine was a nice stable base that Apple used to build Webkit upon but it
was lightyears behind the Webkit we know. Apple put TONS of work into Webkit
and made it into one of the rendering engines that it is today, long before
even Google got involved.

Most of Webkit buy the time was Apple's code, including tons of bugfixes, huge
performance improvements, all the HTML5 support (heck Canvas is Apple's
invention, before it become a standard), css tranformations and animation, and
the all-important Javascript engine, which was the first Javascript engine to
kick of the speedy javascript JIT race (Firefox followed suit and then come
V8).

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grecy
<conspiracy theory>

Apple is intentionally keeping iTunes on Windows a "sub-par" experience to
attract more users to move over to MacOS. I think the majority of non-power
don't understand the problem is with iTunes specifically, and would say
something like "The whole damn computer sucks".

</conspiracy>

~~~
jsankey
The biggest problem with this theory is that iTunes is hardly an enjoyable
experience on OSX either!

~~~
dazbradbury
It's only the comments in this thread that have made me realise iTunes is
infuriating for everyone.

Having never been an Mac OS user, I had always assumed they put all their
effort into the Mac version, and then did some kind of nasty port and hacked
away until a windows version worked. Not a conspiracy theory, so much as a
lack of interest from Apple to make a decent windows version.

On windows, I use winamp. It supports my iPod, and actually allows me to
listen to and manage my music collection.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
+1 million for using winamp. By far the thing I miss most from windows. (I'm
OSX and Linux all the way these days, but there are things I miss.)

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gjulianm
Another one for the collection: iTunes starts randomly. While doing some work,
it suddenly starts up and shows in my screen. With no reason. There's no
iPhone in my house. I didn't configure an iPhone with wireless sync with
iTunes, and my WiFi is secured (nobody else than me accesed through it). And
it still starts randomly, since the update that came with iOS5.

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hristov
Here is another example. Every time iTunes needs an update it brings up an
automatic updater. Fair enough. I click on update, and the iTunes updater
downloads the new version and every single time fails to install it with some
generic unhelpful error. Then I have to go and manually download the new
version from the website and manually install the new version.

And every time a new update comes, I click "update" on the automatic updater
hoping that this time they fixed it, but no such luck.

I was so happy when iOS started updating without a computer.

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alastairpat
To be fair, it's pretty horrid on OS X as well - several of these issues apply
cross-platform (iTunes WiFi sync error messages are presented to me on a daily
basis running Lion, for example.)

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navs
Examples 2, 3, and 7 are common for me on OSX. I just hate syncing my device.

Some of the other problems I've been having: iTunes gives me an alert saying
some tracks can not be synced and so the sync process hangs until I close the
prompt or manually stop the sync on my iPhone. If I remove a large app on my
phone (example: the 1Gb Max Payne game) and then attempt to sync the phone
after, iTunes decides to install the app again which means a lengthy transfer
of a 1Gb file. If I make a change to my playlist on the phone and sync, two
versions of the playlist are created (not always reproducible).

iTunes is a horrible horrible experience on either OS. I've given up using it
as a music player, in favor of Ecoute[1]. Pity I still need it for my iPhone.

[1] <http://www.pixiapps.com/ecoute/>

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JumpCrisscross
I actually find the iTunes store on the iPhone to be quite terrible as well.

It takes longer than any other app to power up and then greets you with a
"Loading..." routine. In case you get over this it will do it again every time
you switch to a different item on the menu, e.g. Search. It's like it's not
sure of itself and must phone home before displaying the UI to, I don't know,
show a user the "Purchased" screen. Same deal with the App Store and Mail
apps. All very clunky.

~~~
replax
Indeed!

It wouldn't be too much to ask to cache what has been loaded WHILE the app is
running, is it? Or even maybe keep it cached w/o the pictures. Hell, they
could maybe poll 50 entries instead of 25 and cache it with no problem
(excluding graphics).

While I am at this, WHY does mobile safari have to reload a page every time i
switch tabs/press the home button and instantly power it up again? It's not
only hugely annoying on a non 3g device, it also makes no sense, you should at
least be able to set an interval/turn it off...

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moe
At least on windows you have alternatives...

I'm still looking for a viable replacement on OSX.

Actually scratch that. More urgently I'm seeking a Finder-replacement that
doesn't lock up for seconds at a time _all the time_. In 2012. On a 2 GHz
computer. With a SSD. Truly magical!

~~~
shrike
Check out Path Finder - <http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/>. I've been using
for a while, it's light years beyond Finder. You can't completely kill Finder,
OS X won't allow it but Path Finder makes it a lot better.

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kprobst
The one I love is when I create a playlist, verify it has songs in it (on
iTunes), sync my iPod and the playlist is empty. Completely empty.

Then the duplicate playlists that appear out of nowhere for whatever reason.
But they're only duplicated on the device.

Then there's the need to use a third-party hack to detect and remove dead
tracks, or add new ones when I'm not purchasing musing from iTunes. As far as
Apple is concerned, I must purchase my music from them, not from Amazon. So
something so mundane as a folder watch isn't needed.

It's unfortunate that we love the devices but have no choice but to put up
with the horrid crap that is the software.

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rollypolly
If you use Windows, Apple secretly hates you.

~~~
sophacles
To be fair, MS Office on Mac has a tendency to fail in extremely frustrating
ways too... (Seriously, section references, picture captions/references, toc,
all just stop working at a certain document size, if at all, not to mention
the freeze at a 100pp thing).

~~~
gjulianm
I know that maybe you do work that is impossible to do in other suite than
Office, but, did you try LaTeX?

It manages all the references incredibly good, picture captions, TOC... it
requires more work than Office, but I think is more rewarding.

~~~
bitwize
Yeah, good luck getting LaTeX to be accepted for interdepartmental
correspondence, let alone inter-company.

Also, Word can track revision history on each document. What's the equivalent
for LaTeX? A git repo?

The upshot of network effects is that if you work for anybody but yourself, a
Windows PC with a moderately recent Microsoft Office is a requirement.

~~~
gjulianm
If the correspondence does not need to be editable, PDF is the best option,
with even less problems than Word or OpenOffice formats. And LaTeX has built-
in support for it.

I agree with revision history, Word probably manages it pretty good. But git
repos aren't a bad option if you are used to them. I personally use Dropbox,
so I have a simple revision history without problems.

Anyways, I didn't say LaTeX was the perfect solution, that's why I said that
he maybe had some impediment to use it instead of Office.

------
weff
Or the lack of the most basic elements of a media library: folder watching.
No, I don't want one folder, I want to watch any folder. Seriously, how
fucking complicated is that to implement?

~~~
evoxed
Do you mean just to add media/quickview playlists, or to index the entire
library? (assuming the latter)

Given the default behavior of organizing all of your media within the iTunes
directory, it makes perfect sense and would be a great feature. I'm sure there
are other people more qualified to comment, but my first impression of the
problem is that without some clever implementation there would be some major
speed issues with large libraries.

~~~
weff
By folder watching, I mean: when I put a multimedia file in in a folder (which
I've assigned to be 'watched'), iTunes updates the library. I'm very certain
Windows has APIs for exactly this kind of situation. In fact, if they can do
it for one folder, I'm having trouble seeing a reason why they wouldn't be
able to do it for several folders.

~~~
evoxed
You can do this with Applescript as a folder action. You can see how to do
this here: <http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/folderaction01.php>

I was thinking that you meant live monitoring, i.e. your library would be a
reflection of your directory structure with additional metadata stored in unit
sections so that it scales better.

~~~
weff
It's nice the Applescript exists (although I was talking more about Windows)
but again, it's very sad one has to use an Applescript to accomplish this, on
Mac.

I mean, a solution is out there: very good. Nevertheless, it doesn't justify
or excuse iTunes for not having this feature.

~~~
gkefalas
There's an "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder that'll do that, but it's
still annoying to have to use one special folder instead of just pointing it
at my regular download folder. I always forget that Apple added this. More
here: [http://lifehacker.com/5356619/itunes-finally-adds-watched-
fo...](http://lifehacker.com/5356619/itunes-finally-adds-watched-folder-to-
automatically-add-new-music)

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uslic001
Which is why I have been using MediaMonkey as much as I can with my iPhone,
iPad, and iPod. I hate when I am forced to use iTunes for an upgrade. It is
like going to the dentist.

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OzzyB
_6\. Reboot? But I don’t want to reboot!_

I never understood why it has to have a system reboot either, and I'm on a
Mac. I don't like rebooting, I just like to let my Mac sleep!

~~~
replax
Well, they are probably replacing a file which is currently in use on which
other files depend on. While there may be other solutions to that problem,
rebooting is the least error prone one and people are already used to having
to reboot their computer after updates.

~~~
weff
That's a shitty excuse to reboot; sounds more like they didn't want to bother.
If you do your job properly, errors can be handled. If you do your job
properly, errors aren't simply hex values.

Maybe people were used to reboot their computers 7 years ago but these days,
you can entirely work and reboot only for system patches.

~~~
replax
Yes, you are obviously right. They obviously didn't want to put up with error
handling, as you can tell by the crappy error messages they implemented.
Basically, they said "fck it, just reboot".

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vacri
I haven't used iTunes for quite a while, but my gripe (on Windows at the time)
was that it decided what your content was, presumably by file extension.
"Please class these files as TV episodes, for my iPod Video, iTunes", to which
iTunes would say "sorry, those are movies", and move them into the movie
folder... never found out how to stop it from doing that.

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bluedevil2k
The seemingly easiest UI concept is the most annoying. "Apply" != "Save and
Immediately Sync".

Why is there no way to simply change my settings without syncing??

Another annoying "feature" - iTunes handles syncing everything BUT pictures.
Why?? Why do I need to open Windows to drag/drop the files in a folder?

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beloch
I don't even like iTunes on OSX.

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jfb
People would be surprised at the size of the team that produces the iTunes
client.

~~~
weff
3 squirrels and 1 microbe?

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blhack
I guess I'm the only one that doesn't have any problems with iTunes on
windows, eh?

~~~
Karunamon
Came to say something like this. I know that iTunes is everyone's favorite
whipping boy, but with a 10,000 song library on a 5200RPM drive that's at
least 6 years old.. I don't seem to be having all of these issues that
everyone else does with the Windows iTunes.

The worst problem I've had is error codes when trying to wifi sync, and that
was solved by just disabling and reenabling the feature.

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icegreentea
I think that several of these problems more or less just apply to windows
programs in general. Its no excuse, but just something to keep in mind.
Microsoft loves its cryptic error codes too.

