Can iTunes suck anymore than it already does?

[r0k]

I've never been a big fan of iTunes. I experienced that even on OSX it was bloated and I cringed at the thought of backing up my iPhone. Every. Single. Time. When iCloud finally allowed me to back up to something other than my Mac I rejoiced. I also loved that since .mac (or was it mobile me?) I've been able to have contacts, etc backed up wirelessly. I see these iTunes sucks threads come and go but this time I must reluctantly weigh in... in support of iTunes.

Normally I buy all my music on Amazon. That is to say, I search for it in iTunes which has a far superior music discovery interface, then I go over to Amazon and either buy a CD for less than the album price and let the tracks show up in autorip or I simply purchase the allegedly drm-free mp3 file direct from Amazon. Then I use Amazon cloud player on my iThings to carry my music around. I have a modest library of a few thousand songs but it's now reached 2 gig and I find that cramps my style a little bit so I started looking for alternatives and found... iTunes Match. For a mere 25 bucks a year, everything I own is mirrored on Apple's servers and downloads and plays on demand to all my Macs and iThings. But to take advantage of this feature I had to launch the dreaded iTunes. I launched it and pointed it at the NAS drive with all my music and let it import the stuff. I then flipped the switch for iTunes match. Not a glitch. Not a hiccup. All my stuff, even mp3 files I ripped from 78 rpm records are available on all my iThings all the time.

So while I agree iTunes is one of the more bloated "swiss army knife" apps Apple has foisted upon the world, I have found it useful. Initially I found it useful only for music discovery. Recently I have found it useful for iTunes Match. I still tend to buy mp3 files on Amazon because buying a CD for half price with free shipping then having all the mp3 files "just show up" is normally less expensive than buying the same album in iTunes.

I think most users in this thread have valid complaints but iTunes does work and is an admirable effort for such an ambitious piece of software.

By way of comparison, "back in the day" we would need:
1 - winamp (or vox)
2 - palm desktop or blackberry desktop manager or missing sync for backing up apps and data - trust me on this: all three of these programs were terrible to use.
3 - a web browser to actually buy apps and music and enter payment info every time
4 - a cd ripper (for owned music)
5 - an mp3 editor to fix album art and id3 tag issues

Today's alternative is a free or pay stream music service like Pandora or Spotify. These work fine if you don't mind chewing through data and battery. I tend to use Pandora when I'm at home but when I'm on the road, I like having stuff in the Music app on my iPhone. And yes the iPhone Music app is very mediocre but having thousands of tracks listed with little clouds next to the ones that haven't downloaded yet is very handy when I'm deciding what to listen to.

hope this helps...

 

[ixxx69]

hope this helps...

Not really.

I find iTunes useful as well. And I love iTunes Match when it works.

Yeah, iTunes is better than what we had 15 years ago. But IMO, the iTunes we have today is worse than the iTunes we had a few years ago.

Yeah, they've added some useful features over the last few years, but that didn't need to come at the expense of the overall experience going way down hill over the last few releases.

 

[JAT]

The Music app on iOS is terrible. Just barely usable with a large-sized music library, especially if you're also into classical music, or like to browse by composer or use playlists to organize and view your library! It wishes it was as useful as iTunes. I don't get all this complaining about iTunes on the Mac when Apple appears to be doing absolutely nothing about the lack of capabilities of its iOS counterpart. Why isn't there already an 'Up Next' list on the iPhone?! It's been how long since iTunes DJ was introduced on the Mac?

edit: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/using-party-shuffle-in-itunes/

Playlists, Composers, etc. is all right there in iOS. Pick your favorite 4 groupings and they are on the main screen for easy access. I have playlists, artists, composers, and songs.

iTunes 12 is clearly designed for people to use Playlists and little else. I guess I should make more playlists. But historically, my handpicked playlists have been trashed by new versions of the program. I had one with dozens of songs, it now shows 4. I didn't mention that in my OP, but it's another huge issue I have with the program, not exactly a great impetus to get me to make playlists. I need to find time to sit down and either switch to something else or remake everything it's trashed. When I first made my library, it took me 2 months of importing music most evenings.

My son recently got into music. He tried some playlist action, then Spotify. He never looked back, he's even happy with the free version. I offered to buy him some music, he didn't even want it.

 

[r0k]

Not really.

I find iTunes useful as well. And I love iTunes Match when it works.

Yeah, iTunes is better than what we had 15 years ago. But IMO, the iTunes we have today is worse than the iTunes we had a few years ago.

Yeah, they've added some useful features over the last few years, but that didn't need to come at the expense of the overall experience going way down hill over the last few releases.

Sorry you didn't find my post helpful but remember managing music is a timeless task, hence my example of ripping 78 rpm records to mp3 format so having software that works better than a gimpy setup from 1995 is worth something, especially when the rest of the Apple ecosystem works so well. And I'm not saying this as a joke. I'm very happy with backup of my contacts, memos, etc from the days of dot mac until today's icloud. And I'm delighted with icloud's automatic photo uploads from my iPhone 6 which is now my primary camera as it is more liable to be with me than my Canon DSLR when I see a semi erupt into a ball of fire.

I do have to agree with you that Apple has removed features. This is not only true in iTunes but also in mail.app, Airport Utility and other Apple software. The removal of features in Airport Utility bothered me so much I stopped using my Airport Extreme and went out and bought an Asus AC1750 router that can be configured with a plain old web browser rather than a proprietary app with a rapidly shrinking feature set (Airport Utility). So I'm not disagreeing with the spirit of this thread, I'm just saying that despite its shortcomings, I've found a new appreciation for iTunes because of a recently added feature: iTunes Match.

 

[westrock2000]

The Music app on iOS is terrible. Just barely usable with a large-sized music library, especially if you're also into classical music, or like to browse by composer or use playlists to organize and view your library!

I have 9800 songs in my library and use iTunes Match. I do not have any problems finding specific artists or albums. The composer thing is troublesome I guess, but I am assuming it's because you have multiple composers for a given file so it lumps them together. Which is a mess, but it's probably a low usage feature.

As far as playlists, to me playlists is iTunes strongest feature. I use them almost exclusively. I use Smart Playlists with a combination of genres, ratings and "key words" added to comment fields of songs to get the playlists exactly how I want them.

With iTunes Match, updating a playlist or song on any devices affects it on everything else, so it's perfect for me.

Now if you are talking about making playlists solely on iOS devices, yes it is bad. But I save myself the agony of ever doing that.

 

[Robisan]

Can iTunes suck anymore than it already does?

"I have development teams working on just that." Tim Cook, probably

 

[venom600]

But iTunes is an unmitigated disaster.t

Spoken like someone who has clearly never used the Windows version. It was so bad that I actually switched back to OS X just to avoid having to use it anymore.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

I have used only the Windows version.
In my opinion and experience it is an unbelievably awkward piece of software.

 

[keyhlar]

I would be hard pressed to express how much I detest iTunes. It's by far the worst piece of junk Apple has ever pushed on us, but as others have mentioned, they have a monopoly on this and prevent 3rd party developers from being able to build replacements for all it does. I started with it on Windows where all I needed it to do was back up my iPod, but even that seemed to be beyond it most of the time, constantly timing out and locking up. Now I have pretty much the same issue on my Mac, because it insists on loading the store when loading, and my internet service is kind of crappy, it almost always just locks up. So I have no way to manually backup my iPod and iPad, I think they crippled it even further to try and force users like me that would be fine with a minimal iCloud account to upgrade to their over-priced paid services (easily twice as much and more compared to pretty much ALL other cloud services out there). I'd be happy to back up only necessary elements and then use my computer to do full backups, but iTunes is virtually unusable for me. Even when it does start up *finally* which is rare, I've never yet gotten it to successfully back up one of my mobile devices. And that doesn't even cover what I think of it for media management. I personally am thinking of paying for the fantastic JR River software which I LOVED on Windows and is now finally ported over to Mac. No, it doesn't do everything that iTunes does by a long shot, and it does cost a fairly hefty $50 but just having media software that will open up INSTANTLY and is so excellent at organizing and managing all your media files, would be worth it to me. In the meantime, I'll just manually copying all my images and video off my iOS devices and will continue looking for some better option to try and do backups until such time as Apple might decide to actually give us a decent iTunes.

 

[tdale]

I would be hard pressed to express how much I detest iTunes. It's by far the worst piece of junk Apple has ever pushed on us, but as others have mentioned, they have a monopoly on this and prevent 3rd party developers from being able to build replacements for all it does. I started with it on Windows where all I needed it to do was back up my iPod, but even that seemed to be beyond it most of the time, constantly timing out and locking up. Now I have pretty much the same issue on my Mac, because it insists on loading the store when loading, and my internet service is kind of crappy, it almost always just locks up. So I have no way to manually backup my iPod and iPad, I think they crippled it even further to try and force users like me that would be fine with a minimal iCloud account to upgrade to their over-priced paid services (easily twice as much and more compared to pretty much ALL other cloud services out there). I'd be happy to back up only necessary elements and then use my computer to do full backups, but iTunes is virtually unusable for me. Even when it does start up *finally* which is rare, I've never yet gotten it to successfully back up one of my mobile devices. And that doesn't even cover what I think of it for media management. I personally am thinking of paying for the fantastic JR River software which I LOVED on Windows and is now finally ported over to Mac. No, it doesn't do everything that iTunes does by a long shot, and it does cost a fairly hefty $50 but just having media software that will open up INSTANTLY and is so excellent at organizing and managing all your media files, would be worth it to me. In the meantime, I'll just manually copying all my images and video off my iOS devices and will continue looking for some better option to try and do backups until such time as Apple might decide to actually give us a decent iTunes.

So, you can't use iTunes properly and/or your system is unstable. Is iTunes unusable and crippled for every user? No. Works fine for me and my 5 devices

 

[keyhlar]

So, you can't use iTunes properly and/or your system is unstable. Is iTunes unusable and crippled for every user? No. Works fine for me and my 5 devices

The fact that YOU don't have problems doesn't mean someone that does is doing anything wrong. iTunes typically locks up on both of my iMacs, one of which is virtually brand new. Both are running Mavericks with all the latest updates, and have 16 gig (or more) of RAM. Both have been scanned and cleaned of all viruses and malware, and have no issues with ANY other software. I work in web development so use a very wide variety of programs, including major memory and performance hogs like Photoshop. But iTunes is the only thing that routinely gives me problems.

 

[tdale]

The fact that YOU don't have problems doesn't mean someone that does is doing anything wrong. iTunes typically locks up on both of my iMacs, one of which is virtually brand new. Both are running Mavericks with all the latest updates, and have 16 gig (or more) of RAM. Both have been scanned and cleaned of all viruses and malware, and have no issues with ANY other software. I work in web development so use a very wide variety of programs, including major memory and performance hogs like Photoshop. But iTunes is the only thing that routinely gives me problems.

So do your problems exist on every install of iTunes globally?

 

[keyhlar]

So do your problems exist on every install of iTunes globally?

I don't remember having quite as many problems on my iMac running Lion, but I've never had much luck syncing my mobile devices. But I usually would at least be able to get a sync started, they just would always bomb halfway through, or take an eternity to complete if they did. This is a fairly new issue that iTunes is crashing so frequently, but I did figure out that it seems to be when I have any of my iOS devices plugged in. It does seem to start eventually if it's not trying to connect to them. Doesn't seem to matter though if I start iTunes and THEN plug in my iPhone or have the phone plugged in before I start it, it crashes every time. Both are fairly new too...iPhone 6 and iPad Air. I did try some of the tips I found for this issue like disabling the auto-sync for devices but have not found a solution yet.

 

[cynics]

I use iTunes to pretty much the extent of how it can be used. It runs 24/7 because I use home sharing that shares my 600gb media collection to an iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV. I use it to physically back up my iPhone and iPad. Transfer media using wifi sync, and wire for my iPod. Drag and drop my own media into it. Never had a crash or freeze.

However I feel it works and just fits better on OS X vs on Windows (that's my opinion). I also don't feel it's very intuitive. There have been quite a few times that I would need to Google search how to do something I feel should have been easier.

 

[mmomega]

I'm very similar to cynics as in I use iTunes for almost all media sharing.
It runs 24/7 on my headless Mac Mini server and serves up almost 6TB of music/movies/tv shows. The only time iTunes is restarted is if there is a power outtage and lasts long enough to drain my battery backup UPS.

I use Identify for 90+% of my metadata tagging and importing of movies and iFlicks2 for TV Shows. Everything has been great..so far. I don't think iTunes is the best thing since sliced bread but I don't have any other options out there that I've found. Ive tried but always came back.

It serves my 5 AppleTV's and any devices that get connected to my network with exception to the XboxOne which gets it's media from Plex from the same Mac Mini Server.

 

[JAT]

So, you can't use iTunes properly and/or your system is unstable. Is iTunes unusable and crippled for every user? No. Works fine for me and my 5 devices

Why don't you go into another thread and praise iTunes. Or yet another to praise some other software. This thread is about what it is about. Don't like it? Move on.

 

[cynics]

I use iTunes to pretty much the extent of how it can be used. It runs 24/7 because I use home sharing that shares my 600gb media collection to an iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV. I use it to physically back up my iPhone and iPad. Transfer media using wifi sync, and wire for my iPod. Drag and drop my own media into it. Never had a crash or freeze.

However I feel it works and just fits better on OS X vs on Windows (that's my opinion). I also don't feel it's very intuitive. There have been quite a few times that I would need to Google search how to do something I feel should have been easier.

I have to revise this.

Now with the omission of home sharing to iOS devices I like iTunes a lot less.

 

[ixxx69]

All the folks saying how they never have problems and never have crashes are as big exaggerators as the folks who say it crashes all the time and nothing ever works.

As usual, the "truth" is somewhere in between. iTunes works most of the time, but there are bugs that can go months (sometimes years) causing all sorts of issues that affect a significant percentage of users... and then they'll be fixed until something else goes wrong.

Then throw in frustrations of a ever-changing UX not for the better, and it can be a pretty frustrating experience for anyone, but especially the typical user who doesn't buy a computer to tinker with it but rather have it just work.

 

[CraigJ]

I'm just piling on because I'm SO frustrated with Apple lately. I use Macs at home and for business, iPhones and iPads. Anyway, there are so many things wrong with iTunes that I won't bother going into detail. I'm so fed up that I returned my Apple Watch last week (which I mostly liked, but a few areas still felt beta testy), because it only works with iPhone, and I just can't justify sinking more into an ecosystem that centers on iTunes. You know that angry irritated feeling that you get when you have to use Windows? iTunes is worse. Every release I keep thinking, OK they're gonna fix it this time, and every time since v 8 or 9 they've made it worse. So with heavy heart, for the first time in 8 years, my new phone will not be an iPhone. I've moved all my media to a Synology NAS, have been using Doubletwist to play music on my Macs (unlike iTunes and iOS, it has no issues with syncing music to my Nexus 7 from a network share) Retiring the Airport expresses and ordering some Denon Heos speakers, which work with the DLNA server in the Synology NAS.

I just don't understand how a company with Apple's historical track record and capital can't get this stuff to work properly. Actually I have a good idea... The guy that used to call managers at 3AM and ask them why the **** stuff doesn't work properly is gone.

 

[cynics]

All the folks saying how they never have problems and never have crashes are as big exaggerators as the folks who say it crashes all the time and nothing ever works.

As usual, the "truth" is somewhere in between. iTunes works most of the time, but there are bugs that can go months (sometimes years) causing all sorts of issues that affect a significant percentage of users... and then they'll be fixed until something else goes wrong.

Then throw in frustrations of a ever-changing UX not for the better, and it can be a pretty frustrating experience for anyone, but especially the typical user who doesn't buy a computer to tinker with it but rather have it just work.

When I mentioned I've never had it crash or had to close it and reopen it I wasn't exaggerating. I've literally never (zero times) had it crash or ever to close it and reopen it or reboot the Mac because of it.

I have had to log out of home sharing and back in to get that to work on very rare occasions. There is a difference between problems and crashing.

 

[chevybob20]

I converted my CD collection (600 + CD's) years ago using ITunes and stored them on a Buffalo Tech NAS in apple lossless format. The Buffalo Tech played to my Yamaha receiver via a Linksys Wireless Music Bridge wired to my network. It was wired only because the wireless mode was horrible. I performed all the functions with a HP laptop. The early days of this setup was great. ITunes had some flaws, but it was the best alternative to organize music at the time.
After changing to a windows 7 laptop from XP, the music bridge would not play so I switched to an Apple TV2 as a renderer. This was a bullet proof setup.....at first.

The drawbacks to this was that it took forever to use double twist to load music on a Droid or convert to inferior MP3 to use on my Ipod. Plus, I had to use Airfoil or Airparrot to stream Pandora or other sources to the ATV. I eventually payed for music match and carried an Ipod touch 5 with me tethered to my droid. At least I had access to my entire library.

I gave Apple a shot but, Apple fell well short of the task as time went on. The most frustrating problem was doubled up songs. I spend countless hours of my time undoing this. But, on every ITunes update, I was back at it again. Then, add music match to the mix and the problem became unbearable. Music match is a pay for service, I expect problems like this to be fixed. They were not.

Album art would be missing on my ATV or Ipod. It was random and took several work arounds to get the art to show up. Absolutely frustrating.

What happened to up next? ITunes updates took functionality away. It regressed, wtf? Why couldn't I create a playlist on an IOS device?

I started experiencing crashes, slow downs on loading, Ipod connection to the ATV disconnecting randomly. And, how many damn times do I have to select "Trust this computer" when charging my Ipod from my laptop before apple fixes the bug?
So, when my single drive NAS died, I bought a Synology 214 play and loaded two copies of each CD using dbpoweramp in flac and alac. I planed to tryout Jriver as a replacement to the cumbersome and ever failing Itunes.

Months have passed and I haven't had the need to even try Jriver. But more importantly, I haven't opened ITunes at all. In fact, I let my subscription to Match expire. The Synology NAS software is superior to Itunes in every way. I can use Droid and apple devices and stream simultaneously to Chromcast, apple airplay devices and DLNA TV's at the same time. Furthermore, I can create play lists on a mobile device. In fact, the Synology device streams over 4G better than music match. Did I mention that Synology has up next? I no longer have to carry a Ipod with me for music on the road. I won't switch to an IPhone until I can run foxfi without jailbreaking. I'll be deleting the ALAC copies soon. Useless waste of space.

Good by Itunes, "Free at last, free at last...."

 

[Norm G.]

It took Apple Censors less than 4 hours to remove two posts from the Apply Community Support Forums but in over a year, Apple has not been able to fix the iTunes "Waiting For Changes To Be Applied" bug. AppleCare was useless (over an hour at Level 1), going into the Apple Store a horrible experience with know-nothing 20 year olds and a three day wait to talk to a so-called Genius.

I updated to 8.4 and I cannot restore my backup. It goes through the process but get to the "Waiting For Changes To Be Applied" and simply halts. The iPhone is in an unusable state at this point with a startup screen frozen on top of my home screen which I can see a flash of. Disconnecting the iPhone and the iTunes software proceeds through the steps with no phone even connected! This piece of bloated garbage thinks there is a phone connected when there isn't.

The only way to have a phone is to do a restore from recovery mode. I have in effect a working factory default phone, more akin to a flip phone than a smart phone.

Cannot do a restore. I have never been so angry and disgusted with Apple as I am now. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs and I see the company culture changing to one of arrogance.

 

[Sedulous]

No idea how this ended up in wrong thread. Sorry.

Amazingly misplaced blame on iTunes. As others have indicated, the file Handbrake outputs is untagged. Other than being a video, iTunes has no way to identify what kind of video it might be. Open file with Subler, import metadata (you can even have it pull metadata directly from the iTunes Store), save the file. Drop it in to iTunes. If it is a movie, you will find it in movies. TV show? Guess where that can be found in iTunes? I have done this thousands of times without issue.

 

[Norm G.]

Sir, perhaps I am in the wrong thread. My problem has to do with restoring from a backup in iTunes after updating to 8.4.. It has nothing to do with transferring video via Handbrake to my iDevice.

 

[motulist]

With iTunes, history has taught us that, yes, iTunes can always get worse. With perhaps a couple of exceedingly rare exceptions, every single update to iTunes has made it worse. I avoid iTunes as much as possible and only open it when it's absolutely necessary.