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

There seems to be a certain ... animosity towards Apple's music management software.
For me, and based purely on my own experience, I dont mind it. Moreover, for managing my 30,000 + songs, the vast majority of which are imports from self-ripped CD's over at least 10 years, it seems to manage my collection fairly well. The 'genius' feature in particular, once i disable all the recommendations & links to the iTunes store, i really like, as i find that it re-introduces me to tunes i had long-since forgotten.

What is so wrong about iTunes?

From my experience it causes far more problems when you run it on Windows rather than Mac OS. On Windows I've seen problems with song database corruption, slow log in & boot up times and several more issues. (That's not to say it doesn't go wrong on Mac OSX - megah0 I'm looking at you!)

Many people have issues because it is a (unnecessarily) large piece of software where a smaller piece of software could do it better. Couple that with the fact that it is made by Apple seems to upset certain people!

For me, it works (on a Macbook, I don't run it on Windows).

When I used Windows and Itunes it does indeed seem like an unneccesarily big set of kit for track management. I guess it comes with a lot of functionality (and often extras that you really don't want, like Quicktime) but on OSX it runs really nice.

First of all i cant manually edit a playlist via the ipod touch or iphone. YOU MUST do this using itunes :(

Itunes is ok for most things but i think my issue is more down to the products that rely on itunes more than itunes itself.

Itunes doesnt always play nicely when you use it for more than one ipood/iphone device as it sometimes deletes your whole content attempting a sync :(

For me it does a really bad job at library management. I don't want to have 40 copies of an album listed under all the different artists on a compilation, I just want it under a single Various Artists banner.

Why are numbers sorted after letters?

And then there is the supposedly easy to use interface of the iPod, which is actually a complete pain to use, not at all user friendly and something I find pretty counter intuitive.

If there was anything else that gave me a proper interface on my car stereo over USB, then I would use that instead, but it's iPod all the way unfortunately (and even then it is horribly slow)

Problem be simple: Apple can't/won't write decent Windows apps. It's the lotus notes of music management.

Bloated, laggy, the 'get media info' is shockingly bad

if I wasnt forced to use it with my iPod touch (issues between touch/classic dlls) I would go back to using MediaMonkey

Because its sodding clumsy to use. Any of you tried the Zune player software (?) - that's what apple should be aiming for: looks good, isn't clumsy and 'just works' although you would need a Zune to get the most out of it ofc. The major downside to both of these though is the formats they support or don't as the case may be.

What I dispise is the fact that you have to have several processes open once this is installed for various updaters within itunes such as AppleMobileDeviceService, ituneshelper, ipodservices to name just 3. Why can't it all be done within 1 simple process is beyond me and why these have to be open all the time drinking and draining precious cycles?

It's also responds dead, dead slow when used with over 1.8 Tb of mp3 files, something that WMP11 does not even break out in a sweat when scanning through and checking folders.

It's synching with my iprawn is laughable at times. Sometimes it decides to wipe my entire mp3 collection on the phone for no reason. It's a good job all my music I want on the phone is rated as 5 stars so it's easy to synch up again.

Running on my Netbook was pretty much impossible. Scanning the library over my network would have taken hours and anything else was impossible at the same time, so I abandoned that and used my desktop instead. I didn't really want all the Apple guff on there, but I guess that was the only option.

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Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN

with over 1.8 Tb of mp3 files, something that WMP11 does not even break out in a sweat when scanning through and checking folders.

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:surprised:

:surprised:

:surprised:

Erm....

:crazy:

:surprised:
Wow. And i thought that i had a collection!

I dont like the resources it uses and for me it is just a waste of space, especially since you need to install like 3 programs with it and they CONSTANTLY RUN IN THE BACKGROUND.

I use AIMP2 and it uses so little resources, basic but feature rich program with only like 5mb ram used when playing my albums :P. It also lets you assign hotkeys to do specific jobs (if you have no media keys you could use anything on the keyboard).

Bonjour ?

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Originally Posted by Hicks12

I use AIMP2 and it uses so little resources, basic but feature rich program with only like 5mb ram used when playing my albums :P. It also lets you assign hotkeys to do specific jobs (if you have no media keys you could use anything on the keyboard).

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I'm a big fan of that too - it's like Winamp without all the suckage they added in the past 5 years :)

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Originally Posted by MSIC

Wow. And i thought that i had a collection!

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Funny thing is none of it is 'albums'.

I've been a horder of live DJ sets and mixes since the good old audiogalaxy and napster days and things have progressed from there really since I found themixingbowl to feed my mix session needs.

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Originally Posted by MSIC

:surprised:

:surprised:

:surprised:

Erm....

:crazy:

:surprised:
Wow. And i thought that i had a collection!

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He must store every single Music ever created since the dawn of time

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

He must store every single Music ever created since the dawn of time

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Maybe not

I have 70gb of music, only in 128kbps MP3, it would be a LOT more in terms of storage if it was stored in a lossy codec or even uncompressed such as WAV

I use iTunes as a media player because I like the interface.
@dangel, iTunes is the only media player I know of that actually looks like a windows app. Even if it does ignore the system colours.
@funkstar, if you mark all the tracks as part of a compilation then it will group them under the album instead of by artist then by album.
I don't own an iPod or an iPhone or anything else that starts i. I don't like the fact that iTunes always installs the iPod service or that I have to install a load of code that is for upgrading the firmware on an iPhone, but I live with it becuase I haven't found anything preferable yet.

If anyone can help with an alternative, my music is stored on a file server, everyone shares the same physical library but rate the tracks differently and use smart playlists to exclude stuff they don't like. I also use iTunes DJ. I haven't yet found another media player that has something equivilent.

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Originally Posted by pipTheGeek

@funkstar, if you mark all the tracks as part of a compilation then it will group them under the album instead of by artist then by album.

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So I have to go through all my correctly tagged MP3's manually then?

They all have the same album name and all tagged as being part of a compilation already. Why doesn't iTunes pay attention to the meta data already there?

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Originally Posted by pipTheGeek

@funkstar, if you mark all the tracks as part of a compilation then it will group them under the album

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I think that's his issue^

Fair enough. I had assumed that it would pay attention if the information is in the mp3 tag information, but I have only ever (seriously) used iTunes so I don't know how well it plays with correctly tagged files from other media players. Although downloads from Amazon always seem to be correctly located.

One thing that did annoy me recently was they removed the option for not using the track number in the filename, no warning or anything. I upgraded, all fine, my wife went to open iTunes and it couldn't find most of the tracks. I had to write a little app to fix the file paths in her library file.

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

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

So I have to go through all my correctly tagged MP3's manually then?

They all have the same album name and all tagged as being part of a compilation already. Why doesn't iTunes pay attention to the meta data already there?

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Check the artist field - what got me was tracks with the same album name but different artists, for example collaborations. Once edited to the same they work okay, but it's not as nice a way of grouping it as other programs (by default).

Edit - I guess you know that, reading page 1 of the thread :p

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Originally Posted by pipTheGeek

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

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In what sense ? i.e. : "file, tools, help" going across the top ?

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

He must store every single Music ever created since the dawn of time

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The sad fact is, knowing Lee, that's probably 5000 varients of the same song remixed by differnet DJ's :P

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Originally Posted by Lucio

The sad fact is, knowing Lee, that's probably 5000 varients of the same song remixed by differnet DJ's :P

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Isn't that what dance music is anyway...

I'll have you know my music collection is varied and spans from House, through all the dance and trance types, through to the dubstep and D&B genre with a bit of grime and then indie to throw a spanner in the works :)

My most used folder though is my collection of all the essential mixes from 1993 onwards and if I load that up on it's own in itunes this alone is enough to make my system crawl to a stutter. Personally, I've used WMP for quite a while now as it does the job (plays music when I need to) and it's management is good as well.

What get me is quite often when adding a ripped cd to iTunes it will duplicate every track for some reason. Also when I create ringtones despite them showing in Itunes that they are on the phone when I go to select them on the phone only is showing.

I'm sure if I knew all the tricks on how to use iturds properly I wouldn't hate it as much as I do but it is so unintuative and it shouldn't be!

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Originally Posted by Terbinator

In what sense ? i.e. : "file, tools, help" going across the top ?

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Yes. I expect windows applications to look and behave in a certain manner. It means I can work out how to use it easily.

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Originally Posted by jimborae

I'm sure if I knew all the tricks on how to use iturds properly I wouldn't hate it as much as I do but it is so unintuative and it shouldn't be!

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The reason I tolerate it is becuase I didn't need to learn any tricks. This is the advantage of it using standard conventions. I've always found it to be the most intuative media playing application. But I don't have to deal with syncing it with an iPod.

Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a fanboy. I'm not, but I am a programmer who is easily annoyed by any application that doesn't behave as I expect, and that includes all media playing applications I have tried to date.

PS - No, I'm not a fan of the office ribbon either, although I understand the reasoning behind it so I'm more tolerant of that than I am of how WMP looks/feels.

I didnt care for iTunes at all until i got an iPod, it did seem clunky, until you the 2 work very well together. When the Genius feature was added, iTunes became irreplaceable.

So here's a little investigation into iTunes - you got me interested.

So, 93mb download - which breaks into:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2nvcrqv.jpg

Half of that it actually iTunes, the other half is a mixture of stuff I don't want, Apple's (doubtless) emulation layer to allow their mac app to run on Windows (call it a framework) and various other bundles of joy including an ever-aggravating updater app. At this point we've 100mb+ of compressed files to install - how big is this thing exactly?

http://i43.tinypic.com/29g0o4.jpg

Well, ballpark that's 329mb.. TBH this isn't filling me with hope, but let's install this tarball..

Oh hang on..

http://i39.tinypic.com/14kbrlf.jpg

Argh, so where's the 64bit installer? Oh it's in the teeny tiny small print - and says it's for Vista.. But i'm running Windows 7. Ok i'll press on and hope it works.. back in a while..

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Originally Posted by pipTheGeek

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

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Foobar2k? It has a menu bar. I call it the 'tweakers' music player. Basically the basic install is so vanilla you might even wish it was more like iTunes, WMP or Winamp. But if you take time to learn, you can make exactly how you want it. Or you can check if what others have made suits you.

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Originally Posted by dangel

So here's a little investigation into iTunes - you got me interested.

So, 93mb download - which breaks into:

http://i43.tinypic.com/2nvcrqv.jpg



http://i43.tinypic.com/29g0o4.jpg

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Terbinator

Bonjour ?

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Kill me now, please.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dangel

Argh, so where's the 64bit installer? Oh it's in the teeny tiny small print - and says it's for Vista.. But i'm running Windows 7. Ok i'll press on and hope it works.. back in a while..

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It works fine - I'm using it with my ipod touch with no problems! (though I do only use itunes for syncing really - hardly ever use my ipod for listening to actual song files. It's either internet stuff, games, other apps or last.fm!)

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):

http://i43.tinypic.com/2qd0uuv.jpg

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

http://i40.tinypic.com/ymfeu.jpg

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 :)


http://i39.tinypic.com/1g09s.jpg

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:

http://i42.tinypic.com/1zxv0w4.jpg

(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!)

http://i42.tinypic.com/e63fqv.jpg

(this is very standard windows!)

Whats your take on the Zune software dangel ?

(Zune - not tried it!)

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

http://i42.tinypic.com/154x2z9.jpg

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!

Zune then.


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

http://i40.tinypic.com/dqta8m.jpg

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:

http://i43.tinypic.com/wi0p4m.jpg

And a stage further:

http://i40.tinypic.com/nfjtyp.jpg

(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:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2wgszyc.jpg

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

Ok Zune is much easier - nothing's standard:heckle:

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.

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

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 :D, 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 :D.

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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by pipTheGeek

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

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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

Shows how much i buy music online :p

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.

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Originally Posted by Marcos

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

Shows how much i buy music online :p

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

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Originally Posted by Brucelles

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.

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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

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)

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

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!

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Originally Posted by format

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

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Songbird is indeed very good - it was my default player on Ubuntu for 2 years (from about 0.3 onwards) however of course on Linux development has recently been halted to focus on Win and Mac development... shame, but I hope that it does well.

For those who havent used it, it's the 'Firefox' of media players, both in terms of what it aspires to be figuratively, but also that it's an open, modular-type structure with some very effective add-ons.

It's also worth pointing out that for those, who like myself, actually get on with the layout of iTunes, Songbird nearly mirrors the look and feel. It's a very easy switch to make, and you can even skin the theme (like i said, like firefox) to make it look visually even more like iTunes.

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Originally Posted by MSIC

Songbird is indeed very good

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Songbird currently seems to have a nasty habit of rewriting your file tags without so much as a by-your-leave, unless you're aware of its behaviour and take steps to prevent it before letting it anywhere near your music collection. It seems this is by design, and not a bug.

To my mind, this is totally unforgivable - no application should *ever* alter or delete your data unless you give it explicit instructions to do so.

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Originally Posted by unreal

AIMP2 is a pretty ugly looking abomination.

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Don't hold back love :mrgreen:

To be fair it's a fully skinnable abomination :D

I think it's fair to say unless you were a winamp fan of old then AIMP2 is hard going though! Shame, as functionality/footprint wise it's really great.

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m...h0/balls-1.png

apart from the size of itunes, and all the crap that it installs, which i can live with, as i just disable it all from running, and then restart it on the occasions (i only use it infrequently as it's such a PITA) i need to update my iphone, the main things i don't like are the lack of file format support such as flac, ape, shn, as i have a large amount of music stored as flac, and i can't put that on my iphone unless i use something else to convert it etc first (or media monkey can do it on the fly)

the other thing i hate is that my previous archos mp3 player needed no software, it was just drag and drop, as if i was using a flashdrive or external HD. it played music in alphanumeric order based on file name and supported folders, thus i had all my music ordered on my HD such as GENRE/ALBUM FOLDER/filename.mp3, and could just drag and drop the albums i wanted on. when i was ripping stuff since the 90s i never bothered with tags or proper filenames as i mostly ripped stuff with a pc that wasn't connected online, and in a lot of cases the filesnames were just 01_artist_albumname.mp3 without the real song names. as itunes doesn't support folders, you have to have stuff tagged at least semi properly in order to avoid songs not playing in order, and i want to listen to albums, not shuffle play. i don't want to hear part of the dark side of the moon abruptly end and then get a segue play from a rap album and then play an 80 minute dance mix. i have eclectic taste, but not like that

due to the large collection i have of already ripped music that isn't tagged properly, it means that any time i want to change my iphone music i have to sit and play around with tags and google up artwork first. and then it changes the files themselves so i can't look at my music folders and see what i last added, as any amended tags means the folder dates change

if it could play flac, ape, shn or do what media monkey does and convert on the fly to mp3 for the player, then it would be much better, but using folders instead of tags would be even better, as the problem with media monkey converting all my flacs to mp3 on the fly to my iphone is that i would have had to sit and tag the lot first, when they were already perfectly arranged in folders

i find it a bit ironic that people call itunes bloatware (i'm not disagreeing with them) as it takes 300mb+ when they have huge HD's full of media files. personally i prefer winamp over all over music players. foobar is also pretty good for some of the tagging and converting type stuff it can do, but i prefer the smaller screensize that winamp gives, that still lets me see the long list of files i have queued up, and i can move and delete and add files on the fly

what's also a bit annoying is that the ipod classic is pretty much the only large capacity mp3 player, as most other companies have either went the way of flash memory, with 64gb the largest size, and you are paying well over the odds for it, or alternatively the archos models are larger "media" players with bigger screens. i don't want to watch videos on a tiny 3.5" or 7" screen. they could stick a 500gb 2.5" drive in one of them things instead of an expensive 1.8" drive. considering the ipod shuffles and other usb stick size drives are so tiny, you would think someone could make a 2.5" HD based player that wasn't much bigger than a 2.5" caddy, and you could buy and install your own drive and let it play all the music formats and sort by folder and have a large capacity player for under £100

I find it ok, it can be a bit cumbersome sometimes (but i have 35k+ tracks), but i also use it on OS X on and old G4 iBook... so most of the slowness is down to the hardware often i find rather than the software.

It works well with my iPod (obviously), and generally just works how i want it to,apart perhaps from tag management, its a bit woeful at that. But the things it can't do usually can be done with applescripts (on OS X).

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Originally Posted by dangel

I think it's fair to say unless you were a winamp fan of old then AIMP2 is hard going though! Shame, as functionality/footprint wise it's really great.

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I was a fan of old school WinAmp (mainly 2.x), and having done a Google image search of AIMP2, I see the resemblance. But I am happy with my customised Foobar2k setup and don't think I'll be changing soon. Here's basic Foobar.

I've been looking for a new way of syncing with my iPod touch too because I'm getting cheesed off with iTunes and the way it installs 3 other programs that I don't want. I don't want quicktime, I hate it, its just another piece of useless software that I make certain I disable so that it doesn't bother me when I'm using my PC.

I used to like iTunes when I got my first iPod 5 years ago, but now I don't. I just want to be able to add my music to my device without any hassle.

Things that its done to my PC recently :

Crashed when syncing to my iPod
Crashed when pausing music
Crashed when quitting with music still playing
Crashed when I tried to access the iTunes store

I have to say however that I still use WinAmp to play my music and can't fault it, that said I always install it with a very basic layout no extra skins, no layout etc.

To be honest I quite like newer versions of Winamp and have been using it since the early days. If anyone can find me a better visualizer I'd be interested to see it. Milkdrop is definately one for the psychadelic lovers out there. I just find Itunes ugly and slow. And it comes with the added bonus of extra services for all those megs of ram you dont need :p.

i learnt about songbird now..gonna check it out !

I guess it's time that iTunes have some competition.
Hope this also brings the lower price of mp3.
Few months ago, I managed to purchase some songs from Amazon since they have a better deal on the mp3 albums..I hope Songbird is commercialized in moments to come, esp attracting people with the skinnable interface for user personalized.

I hate it because on Windows it feels like Apple intentionally made it godawful as just another reason to say "Oh, it's because Macs are better and faster etc."

It nom nom noms on my RAM, takes an age to start up, crashes when it does start up and decides to install three other equally bad programs whenever it wants to update!

That is why I don't like iTunes. But I still use it. Why do I do this to myself?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dangel

Problem be simple: Apple can't/won't write decent Windows apps. It's the lotus notes of music management.

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this made me lol muchly as ive just had the weekend from hell on a notes to exchange migration

Quote:

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Originally Posted by format

Can't believe no one has mentioned Songbird.

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+1

also metatogger is great for keeping things organised
http://www.luminescence-software.org...mid=53&lang=en

I find the most intuitive media player to be Rhythmbox, but sadly that's Linux only. I love the really slick way in which it lets you quickly search your library by narrowing down multiple parameters.

http://amarok.kde.org/ or http://www.getsongbird.com/ for me.