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