So... what's so bad about iTunes anyway?

[dangel]

Ok grabbed it, unpacks to ~330mb so no big difference. Doesn't seem to complain about Windows 7 - good.

So, i'm going to choose the following options - seeing as I don't want it to update itself and I don't want a startup task doing so (let's see if they honour the selection):



And so i end up with some nice new startup entries:



I'll fix that later. Let's run iTunes.



So it's a bit of a mess - a mish-mash of different UI ideas in itself and certainly not particularly standard - OTOH it's not too hard to use and certainly more compliant than I expected (it being Apple). Uninstalling means a restart.. so back in a bit




OK - so a quick critique as a Windows developer, purely in terms of how 'Windows' it is:

Good:

- Can resize the app normally, unlike safari which was the last apple app i tried
- Has File etc. menus which are well known to users
- Controls are pretty clear
- Supports tool tips
- Has max/min/close buttons in correct position and style

Bad:

- Non standard controls (buttons, scrollbars, progress etc aren't Common Controls)
- Ignores Aero
- Ignores themeing (or colours as someone put)
- Doesn't effectively have a titlebar, doesn't change look therefore when max/restored, application title is also in non standard location
- Whole window changes shade when selected/deselected
- It's a chunky monkey no doubt, not just from install size but memory occupancy - thin and light it is not.
- Internal dialogs (e.g. preferences) look much more like standard windows dialogs which differs from the main application window. Interesting lack of consistency here. Examples:



(What's going on here? The close button is odd, as is the window, but the behaviour is really weird - click anywhere and the whole thing disappears!)



(this is very standard windows!)

[Terbinator]

Whats your take on the Zune software dangel ?

[dangel]

(Zune - not tried it!)

Just to finish off my 'experience' - I uninstalled 'iTunes' and i'm now left with:



I'm now manually uninstalling each and every one - I even have a mobile device + bonjour service running! This is pretty horrible - minus one for that Mr Jobs. Most users wouldn't know they needed to do this.

I'll do Zune next!

[dangel]

Zune then.


So first off, plus one to microsoft for the following:



Apple, learn from this! At least I didn't download the software twice!

So it's 57mb download, about half the size of iTunes. Good. Big, but still half as big

Pulling that apart:



And a stage further:



(this is the real meat, ignoring the small language packs which don't make much of a dent)

Overall, about 1/3 the size of iTunes thusfar. But wait it could be cheating:



...OTOH updating like this is reasonable - although why can't I just have the updated package to begin with? Back post install kids..

[dangel]

Ok Zune is much easier - nothing's standard

It's obviously a WPF app - presumably this is very like the Zune's interface itself because the nearest thing to it that i've used is Windows Media Center?

So..

Good:

- It's consistent more of the time overall
- Bloomin' eck it's a flash looking thing
- Haven't got a million bits of extra crap running
- No services
- Small 'helper' app on startup


Bad:

- TBH pretty much nothings standard anywhere to be seen
- It's hard work initially because of it
- My parents would need hand holding through the whole thing. Three hundred times.
- I feel like i either want a touchscreen or a remote control to use it
- Install needed a reboot

Yeah, gonna uninstall that one too. Good grief.

[Hicks12]

Oh man i think you should really just kick both of the players in the nuts by showing how much better AIMp2 is .

Go to russian website, click english then click download and click the big download link, wait for the 7MB Compressed folder to download and extract to 7.1MB , then install. Once installed open it and drag and drop any music in the play list and your done.

AIMP2 is the best Audio player, if you want to play music then this is the player for you because it doesnt have all the useless album art (useless as in if its in the background), theres a search feature at the bottom .

Also was my reason to change dangel, winamp was great but they kept adding more and more useless things like TV and it became a resource hog (much like firefox, its good when you can use the extra features+addons), so i looked for a simple player and this was it.

And another thing, AIMP2 uses only 7MB of ram while played 2000tracks on my system... thats pretty good.

[dangel]

Yup agreed, I quit winamp because it went lardy - saying that WMP is actually not half bad thesedays as compared to what it was. AIMP2 is great but it's interface requires effort and certainly isn't standard in any real sense (other than it's very much Winamp!). iTunes and Zune both eat memory and resources and therefore are definitely not my cup of proverbial.

[MSIC]

Just wanted to say thanks dangel for actually posting fact, rather than 'xyz suxx'

[Brucelles]

PLEASE, someone suggest a media player that looks like a windows app and has something equivilent to iTunes DJ!

Have you tried MediaMonkey? I was converted when I found out how easily it reorganised my 35Gb of music a into a directory path structure I defined in a few seconds, based on the ID3 tags. It has a DJ function, but I haven't played with it, or iTunes DJ. Seems OK though.

[Alex]

For me, what I hate so passionately about iTunes is not it's slowness or it's bloatware, it's the fact that so many people are thinking that iTunes is the only way to get music fron the 'net, and so propping up Apple's DRM-loaded store.

I suppose it's not Apple's fault (though one could argue they have a monopoly on Ipod management software unfairly) but I get really fed up - I know so many people who have an iPod and use iTunes 'because it just works' - not understanding that they can get better quality songs with no DRM and for less money from the likes of Amazon or Play. The way that the iPod and iTunes setup is run encourages people who don't know what they're doing to only buy from Apple (and I suppose who can blame Apple for this) and thus encourages low quality, expensive and DRM riddled music.

iTunes itself I can get along with OK, the iTunes store is the devil.

[Marcos]

For me, what I hate so passionately about iTunes is not it's slowness or it's bloatware, it's the fact that so many people are thinking that iTunes is the only way to get music fron the 'net, and so propping up Apple's DRM-loaded store.

I suppose it's not Apple's fault (though one could argue they have a monopoly on Ipod management software unfairly) but I get really fed up - I know so many people who have an iPod and use iTunes 'because it just works' - not understanding that they can get better quality songs with no DRM and for less money from the likes of Amazon or Play. The way that the iPod and iTunes setup is run encourages people who don't know what they're doing to only buy from Apple (and I suppose who can blame Apple for this) and thus encourages low quality, expensive and DRM riddled music.

iTunes itself I can get along with OK, the iTunes store is the devil.

Is that really still the case? I thought iTunes store was DRM free now?

Shows how much i buy music online

[unreal]

AIMP2 is a pretty ugly looking abomination.

My itunes alternative by choice on Windows is easily Foobar2000. Its highly customizable but even if you run it as it comes, it's so lightweight that it makes it a right pleasure to use. Make your own hotkeys and its pretty good to run in the background while playing games too.

Is that really still the case? I thought iTunes store was DRM free now?

Shows how much i buy music online

Yeah iTunes is DRM free now! I never bought from them until they did that. Amazon MP3 is pretty good too.

[finlay666]

Have you tried MediaMonkey? I was converted when I found out how easily it reorganised my 35Gb of music a into a directory path structure I defined in a few seconds, based on the ID3 tags. It has a DJ function, but I haven't played with it, or iTunes DJ. Seems OK though.

I used to use MM and thought it was pretty good, I liked the support for sites such as Amazon to get the album data (and allowing manual editing too) and the other features such as re-organising, dealing with missing metadata, renaming files to standard was really useful.

Only reason I switched was because the dlls in 3.0 (I think) were messed up so I couldn't use my ipod classic and touch to sync media

On the fly conversion in the premium version was good too if you have a library of ogg music and an ipod to sync to, also let you lower the bitrate so you can keep good quality music on your PC and lower the bitrate for a mobile device to fit more on

[sniperdude]

no way will i ever have Itunes on my rig

total bloatware also never want quicktime either

foobar2000 or mediamonkey all the way

and if you must have a apple mp3 player sharepod FTW


sadly I did own a Ipod at one time but in my own defence lol I ditched it for a
much better player in my opinion

16GB sony walkman only costs about £70
40 hours audio play back
headphones that don't fall out my ears (they are really good to be honest)

[format]

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

[Nikomus]

I've never had too much to do with iTunes, I don't have an iPod, so I objected to it running things in the background when I never ran it, and uninstalled it. The downside of this though, is that I have no idea how to work/fix it for other people. A while ago, my girlfriend's complete music collection disappeared from her computer, and iTunes was the suspected cause. Anyone know why this might have happened? She's got the music back from other devices now, but I'd rather it didn't happen again. I scoured the hdd with Sequoia View - they weren't just deleted fom iTunes, they'd just stopped existing!