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iTunes should be taken out back and shot. They need to start fresh from the ground up. There are so many things wrong with it, it's not even funny. The 2 biggest things are, Ping is totally useless, and it's a memory and cpu HOG.
 
It shouldn't pause so often or run so slowly on an 8 core MacPro!!!

Runs nice and snappy on my quad core Windows machine with no complaints. Now that there is it's problem. I hate Windows. Why should Apple software run better on Windows, and not my mac? In fact, is uses little resources, stays in the background 24/7, never gives me trouble. What gives?

-John
 
Runs nice and snappy on my quad core Windows machine with no complaints. Now that there is it's problem. I hate Windows. Why should Apple software run better on Windows, and not my mac? In fact, is uses little resources, stays in the background 24/7, never gives me trouble. What gives?

-John

How big is your iTunes library? Mine is 820GB... 22000 songs.
 
And you paid for all of those?

Yes. :)

A lot are doubled up - since I have Apple lossless & mp3 versions of the same tunes... but I have well over a 1500 CDs that I've ripped them from. Still have the CDs in storage too! (Oh, just checked and I have 13000 podcasts too!).

I wasn't trying to make some show-off type point about library size though. It's just that library size IS a factor in slowdown... so it's just interesting to see how many files a completely fast system is dealing with.
 
How big is your iTunes library? Mine is 820GB... 22000 songs.

No, my iTunes Library is about 15GB (Mostly CD rips as well). I didn't think it would make that much of a difference. It's just as snappy on my 5 year old Windoze laptop. I've used it on a Mac, not the same experience, seems odd.

-John
 
Here goes-

New icon -> 5 year old who has just found clipart.

Ping -> Nobody uses it and we have enough social media rubbish.

Video -> Only plays a handful of formats/codecs. Really annoying when I have .avi files everywhere and want them on my iPhone (VLC app helps now)

Resource hog -> Takes ages to start up, uses lots of the system.

Syncing is complex -> To sync an iPhone is now a minefield of tick boxes and options. Just a total mess.

Does too much -> Obviously it started as just music. Now we have music, podcasts, radio, ringtones, video, photos to sync with iPods etc. Apple have added and added to the point where it is horrible to use.

Overall, it should be started again from scratch. Maybe split into different programs (like iWork). One for storing music (iTunes) and one for storing video (iVideo or whatever), and use iPhoto almost as is. This allows media to be enjoyed separately, or combined through FrontRow. Then make a small program dedicated to just syncing iPods/iPhones/iPads.

I love my iPhone 4 and think it is a great piece of tech, but I then have to sync it using one of the worst programs Apple produces.
 
It's a bloated piece of **** application that shouldn't come out of Cupertino. I expect things like this out of Redmond.
 
it should have more/better visualizers. and i wish there was a way to update multiple apps at once, instead of all of them. on my ipod touch i run very close to capacity, and i usually have about 140 updates. I never have room to update all, but it's a pain to have to go in and do one at a time.
 
The one thing I hate, or maybe I'm using it wrong...:confused:

But its the way iTunes manages manually imported music/albums.

Ok let me try and explain my problem from memory, since I'm at work. Hopefully it will make sense to you.


Problem/scenario: I just imported an album, but it doesnt create a new playlist in the category list on the left. Instead I have to manually create/name a new folder and drop imported songs into said folder!

and the other annoyance, is synching this newly created album playlist to my ipod. If like me, you have a large list of albums, you cant just drop the folder on the playlist, say its an album/artist beginning with Z and you have 200+ A-Z listings in the category. You then have to go through a cumbersome way of dragging the playlist folder up the list to drop it in the iPod music filed manager. Such a Pain!

Please, someone tell me there is another easier way to do this.
 
Problem/scenario: I just imported an album, but it doesnt create a new playlist in the category list on the left. Instead I have to manually create/name a new folder and drop imported songs into said folder!

Why do you need a playlist for your new album? Why not just play it from the main browser? Surely it would get mighty cluttered if every album had its own playlist?

If you want a playlist to help you find newly imported stuff, just set up a smart auto-updating playlist which shows stuff from say the last week.

and the other annoyance, is synching this newly created album playlist to my ipod. If like me, you have a large list of albums, you cant just drop the folder on the playlist, say its an album/artist beginning with Z and you have 200+ A-Z listings in the category. You then have to go through a cumbersome way of dragging the playlist folder up the list to drop it in the iPod music filed manager. Such a Pain!

Lots of ways to do this. The current iTunes lets you include albums by clicking a tick-boc in the music sync tab.

You can also sync smart playlists - so create a 'just added' playlist and sync that.

Sounds like you have manual iPod file management turned on. Switch to automatic, set up some smart playlists and let them do the work for you.
 
Country-specific iTunes store

I understand that it's all got to do with contracts and rights but I would like to see some warning or country-specific details regarding any new publications for iTunes, otherwise I get my hopes up too quick.

And even so, my local iTunes store disappoints me again and again.
 
Why do you need a playlist for your new album? Why not just play it from the main browser? Surely it would get mighty cluttered if every album had its own playlist?

Hmm, but if I just import the abum, iTunes will just dump it in the music library.
When I play albums, I like to select from the lefthand playlist. Isn't that how it works? thats how I've used it for many years... like I said maybe I'm using it wrong:eek:

I will look into the smart playlist you talk of.



Lots of ways to do this. The current iTunes lets you include albums by clicking a tick-boc in the music sync tab.

You can also sync smart playlists - so create a 'just added' playlist and sync that.

Sounds like you have manual iPod file management turned on. Switch to automatic, set up some smart playlists and let them do the work for you.

I use manual, because I don't want to always put the latest thing I downloaded/imported on my iPod when I synch.
 
Hmm, but if I just import the abum, iTunes will just dump it in the music library.
When I play albums, I like to select from the lefthand playlist. Isn't that how it works? thats how I've used it for many years... like I said maybe I'm using it wrong:eek:

Have you got the column browser turned on? (view menu)

All your albums are viewable there... everything can be sorted by three columns - Genre, Artist, Album

I use manual, because I don't want to always put the latest thing I downloaded/imported on my iPod when I synch.

You don't have to.

Set up a fixed playlist with all the albums you like.

Then set up a smart playlist with say latest added (live updating, limited to last 50 tracks, say).

Set up another smart playlist with your most played tracks (live updating, limited to 50)

Set up another smart playlist with tracks that you've played more than 10 times, but not in the last 6 months (favourites you're forgotten). Likit to 20, live updating.

Then sync just these playlists.

You can really do exactly what you want with auto-updating - it's as flexible as you need.
 
I'd like to have the ability to have multiple playlists active at one time and play multiple streams to different AirPlay devices in addition to the computer itself.
 
You know what is SO ironic about the smartphone syncing solutions? ActiveSync is the fastest, and least bloated, lol. Well, admittedly I haven't used Androids, but HotSync (for Palm OS may it rest in peace), iTunes, all much larger than ActiveSync. I thought Microsoft was king of bloatware?

That's because all it does it take data from other locations, it doesn't try to manage the data and be your source for purchased content too. It syncs from Outlook, folders on your PC, etc.

All in all, I don't mind iTunes, the one-stop-shop is kind of nice, but I think there should be an iTunes media player (or some sort of Quicktime add-in) to just play music from your library, and a sync tool to sync with settings pre-set in iTunes. It's like photoshop and a photo-viewer. Obviously there are times where you need photoshop, but when your showing pics to friends off of your computer, don't you use a simple image viewer, that opens quick, moves between pictures quick, and therefore offers great functionality even though it won't manipulate your pictures? Heck, I use MS Paint for screenshots (Prnt Scrn), on a Windoze PC, why not use the lightweight and fast program when no manipulation is needed?

I think if they kept iTunes the way it is, but then added auxillary programs (a media player, and a background sync tool, [a process in Windows, an Extension in Mac OS]), then I think it would be golden. It takes a while to open Photoshop too, but when you open Photoshop, you anticipate spending a little time to work on something, so it's a fair trade.

-John
 
The one thing I hate about iTunes?

iTunes. Originally a great idea, now as others have said it should be broken up and rebuilt from the very first line of code.
 
"determining gapless playback information"

4 songs out tens of thousands on the windows7 box, takes a minute to clear. 25K songs on Mac (library on a win7 home group), chokes after a couple of hours with 100 songs cleared. This is not an uncommon problem for those trying to get itunes to work off a server library. There is no way to get rid of this!
I would rather not have the music and video files local.
 
Strange... I like iTunes. Love the interface, cover flow, smart playlists, the syncing, the podcast integration and so on... .

The only thing I'd like to see to improve is the limited amount of formats that are supported. But maybe Apple considers that a feature...

Maybe what people don't like is that all Apple programs, just like its hardware and services, follow the "It's the Apple way or the highway" paradigm...
 
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