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iTunes Windows - First Impressions

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Apr 12, 2001
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The first reviews of iTunes for Windows have been filtering in since its release. OSNews provides their first impressions of iTunes for Windows. Overall a favorable review, though the author has some significant issues with User Interface performance on her computer.

Other potential issues mentioned in discussion forums across the web include high memory and CPU utilization by the new Apple application. These complaints, however, are not universal -- with several users reporting excellent performance and unremarkable RAM utilization. Obviously, user experiences appear to be variable at this time.

Apple has already released a number of Knowledge Base articles to provide assistance/instruction for iTunes for Windows:


Music Does Not Play
Music Sharing with Windows Internet Connection Firewall
About Fast User Switching with Windows XP
How to move MusicMatch songs into your iTunes Library
Trouble burning a CD or DVD
Unable to burn a CD
Additional Troubleshooting for Burning Issues
About Where iTunes Audio files are stored
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2003/10/17/itunes-windows-first-impressions/
These knowledge base pages are another excellent part of the plan to spread the Mac experience to Windows users. The instructions just read so straightforwardly.

Plus the iTunes web pages are a springboard into the rest of the top dog Apple site. This will show plenty of Windows users that their future software and hardware supplier has made it easy to find their way easily through massive amounts of information. Good one Mr Jobs
 
sweeeeeet

Well what can we say. It is to bad these people haven't switched yet... NOTHING can ever work as well on a wintel machine as it does on a mac. Sad but true.
 
I played with it all afternoon, and let me say that Apple is the bomb!! I can have a little of Apple to satisfy me until I can afford to switch soon! :D

In all seriousness, I had no trouble with it. I didn't try to burn a CD, but I'm pretty sure it recognized my burner and I wouldnt have any trouble. The user interface was clean, fast, and quite functional. I almost was an expert within 30 seconds of seeing the interface, talk about simplistic and natural. I LOVE how the library works! I can see my whole list, and quickly narrow down what I want: very cool! The way it integrates with playlists and such is just so natural, WMP is just too clumsy. Speaking of WMP player, it is just so bloated (v9)! With just my Outlook, a browser or 2, and my CRM, it can become very sluggish! Whereas iTunes was very efficient, heck I had several Crystal reports open, my CRM, Outlook, couple Word docs, a web browser, MSN/AIM, all without skipping a beat. I was quite pleased!

I browsed around the music store for a while, I thought it was pretty nifty. I would like to see more contemporary christian selections (I just didn't see many).

My one and only complaint was I couldn't figure out how to make the smaller window be "always-on-top". Anyone know how?
 
Files renamed

Hi,

iTunes seems like a great music tool to me, but there's a thing I don't like about it.

When I import songs into iTunes, they're moved from their original folder and renamed!
Yes, they're re-arranged in a logical form, but after all that time renaming and organizing my files, I don't like to have that effort wasted...
... Maybe I will just give up and adapt to that new "folder has the album's name" structure.

What I haven't tried yet is creating AACs from a CD, and I certainly want to use that feature, Nero was not very comfortable to use for that task.
Hehe I believe my iPod is as excited about that as I am... :)
 
I already pointed out at OSNews forums that person who wrote review has some serious credibility issues when previewing/reviewing products. She came to conslusion that ITunes UI is so slow and unresponsive just because it didn't work well on her PC setup? After that there were around hundered responses from people who tested windows iTunes and found it to be snappy and responsive. I am not sure at this point if Apple has utilised openGL to draw some UI elements ,like in OSX version of iTunes. If this is the case indeed than reason her PC was slow is because of MatroxG400 graphic card. I know for sure (had one on my PC box years ago) it has crappy OpenGL drivers.Tried to play Medal of Honour on it and got 2-3 frames per sec or it wouldn't work at all .
Point here is that people really should take more care when writing previews/reviews and do their research and validate their facts propertly. It is just getting ridiculous lately with all this crappy internet journalism.
 
Hardware quality....

Obviously if you have a build-it-yourself, or any low-end box that is sabotaged for price you'll have %*#)@*! performance.

Dell's low-end box comes to mind with it's integrated memory, and sweat-shops at the expense of children to undecut the competition's price.

Well, actually all of them are made that way I suppose. :(
 
Re: Files renamed

Originally posted by ahe

When I import songs into iTunes, they're moved from their original folder and renamed!
Click to expand...

There's a preference to change this behavior.

Try unchecking "Advanced->Keep iTunes Music Folder organized"

arn
 
Originally posted by Gyroscope
She came to conslusion that ITunes UI is so slow and unresponsive just because it didn't work well on her PC setup? After that there were around hundered responses from people who tested windows iTunes and found it to be snappy and responsive.
Point here is that people really should take more care when writing previews/reviews and do their research and validate their facts propertly. It is just getting ridiculous lately with all this crappy internet journalism.
Click to expand...

Its good that a hundred people contradicted her in public. The problem is when some review gets published with no right of reply.

Reading the forums here and on Windows side, the vast vast majority are saying it works as it should. The few gripes I have read about iTunes reorganizing folders, or being a CPU hog or whatever else are thankfully being shot down by users who know how iTunes or Windows works. Hopefully these sort of "queries" will become public knowledge very soon and Windows centric journalists can just enjoy writing about a success. That´ll hurt.
 
40MB RAM

yepp, iTunes uses 40MB RAM, thats alot!

When i drag the iTunes window to the left so that the File-menu goes alittle out of the screen area and the click the File-menu the drop-down menu appears almost in the middle of the screeen. Wierd bug!
There's also the same problem as QuickTime has, when you press something very often a white little squere appears under the mouspointer.

Launchtime is also a little long!
 
Thank you arn...

Hey thank you arn,

I will give it a try as sson as I have the chance... I searched for that feature myself, but was in such a hurry I didn't even see it :)

... heheh that's what happens when you get to try a software you've been waiting for months but only have a few minutes to give it a shot.


Thanks again.
 
I installed iTunes on my PC late last night and a quick play around with it. I have to say for the most part it's seems excellent and have come across no real problems, although I would probably agree it's more resource hungry than it needs to be, but as RAM is so cheap these days what's 40mb matter?

My only suprise was that the visualistions frame rate wouldn't get above 15fps. No big deal and it doesn't affect sound quality but I'd have thought a PC with 512mb of RAM and XP2400 processer and a GeForce 4200ti would easily do more (this isn't really a complaint - more of an observation).

Just waiting for the iTunes store* to be available in the UK now - although browsing around the US version it looks good and works well and the samples play almost immediatley - v. nice.
 
Re: Hmmm, iSmile

No WMA-support though...
Click to expand...
Geez I hope not!!!!

Does it seem funny to anyone else how Apple is calling it "quit" instead of "exit" and I've only seen the term "Fast User Switching" on Panther. I don't think it is called that on WinXP, but could be wrong. Just a way to throw out Mac terms?
 
Re: Re: Hmmm, iSmile

Originally posted by Porshuh944turbo
Geez I hope not!!!!
Click to expand...

I really wonder why people don't want [X] support in iTunes... I personally would like to see iTunes have support for WMA, Real, Ogg, etc just so I don't have to either A) have other apps do it for me or B) waste my time trying to convert it to MP3 or whatever..
 
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm, iSmile

Originally posted by MasterMac
I really wonder why people don't want [X] support in iTunes... I personally would like to see iTunes have support for WMA, Real, Ogg, etc just so I don't have to either A) have other apps do it for me or B) waste my time trying to convert it to MP3 or whatever..
Click to expand...

I think it's a matter of Apple just saying that WMA wasn't important enough to include as they don't see it as a serious audio format. :p

also, look at Windows Media Player! They don't even include support for creating MP3 files unless you buy an expansion for it! What a joke.. They are trying to push WMA so much, but I don't know anyone that uses it over MP3.. it's simply something that you have in case the MP3 you thought you downloaded was WMA...

I'm glad Apple is going MP3 and AAC. WMA is a step backwards IMO
 
Would Apple be aloud to include WMA support without having to pay for the privledge?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmm, iSmile

Originally posted by Porshuh944turbo
I think it's a matter of Apple just saying that WMA wasn't important enough to include as they don't see it as a serious audio format. :p

also, look at Windows Media Player! They don't even include support for creating MP3 files unless you buy an expansion for it! What a joke.. They are trying to push WMA so much, but I don't know anyone that uses it over MP3.. it's simply something that you have in case the MP3 you thought you downloaded was WMA...

I'm glad Apple is going MP3 and AAC. WMA is a step backwards IMO
Click to expand...

The second paragraph illustrates exactly why iTunes needs at least WMA support ;). If you show this to a Windows user who is completely nieve (sp?) about differences between audio formats, and has all their music in WMA format since WMP doesn't allow importing as MP3 normally, would they want to use iTunes if it couldn't play all their music? I don't think so. Now I'm not saying that Apple has to add the option to convert to WMA or import as WMA...just the ability to play WMA.

Just today I advertised iTunes for Windows on another forum of mine and a lot of the people asked "Can it play WMA? Can it convert WMA to MP3 or other formats?" I had to say no to both, and in responce they said that they probably won't be using iTunes then. Yet another reason why the ability to at least play WMA files is needed.

Also, if iTunes included WMA support, then there would be less of a need to have WMP installed on one's computer, correct? ;)
 
iMWA

Compromises are not wrong when it comes to helping people out. ;)
When people have a lot of WMA and check out iTunes it's not gonna work.
De-install and never try it again (Jet-audio! Winamp!).
I'm not that happy with the other players on the Windows-platform at all and listen my music on the G4 because of the ease of iTunes.
If you (Apple) really feel like opening eyes, work along with (at least play) the formats (WMA) they (Window-users) are used to use.
Play the WMA and sneak them into AAC or iTunes-MP3.
Now isn't that a nice strategy? ;)
 
Actually, I found iTunes PC a bit sluggish too. Then again, it's nice to use an app that's actually faster on the Mac!

I also noticed how cluttered iTMS seems at lower resolutions, I'm using 1024x768 on the PC, it looks soo much better at 1440x900 on the 17" iMac at home.

There's no Maximise button, which is a bit annoying, instead they've made the "Restore" button act a little like the Mac's Zoom button, but not quite.

It'll be interesting to see the reaction of PC users to Mac controls on a Windows app (e.g. the scrollbars). I always hate it when anyone puts Windows controls in a Mac app!

Also, I noticed if you shrink the window to it's smallest size (just the buttons only), it's very difficult to stretch it back out again to reveal the display, the cursor just doesn't 'catch' the edge.

Mike.
 
I've been running it since yesterday, and everything seems exactly the same as the Mac version. Downloading was flawless, playing was flawless, and I had no problems burning a CD.

Launch time is a little long, but big deal.
 
Re: sweeeeeet

Originally posted by jaredbbauer
Well what can we say. It is to bad these people haven't switched yet... NOTHING can ever work as well on a wintel machine as it does on a mac. Sad but true.
Click to expand...

Maybe it should say this at the end of each Knowledge Base article.:D
 
"Obviously if you have a build-it-yourself, or any low-end box that is sabotaged for price you'll have %*#)@*! performance."

Not so obviously for the build-it-yourself. There really aren't many good, well-built, Windows systems with good components. You can build by far the best and fastest Windows systems, AND get a better price (though rarely do you get a better price if you're using better components). Of course, the OS still is really cruddy.... But if you want a Linux system, of course then you have no software compatibility.
 
Oh, and yeah, iTunes for Windows was slow for me at first (just the music store), but by nightfall it had improved dramatically. I think the server was taking a hard hit.
 
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