Why Do People Hate iTunes so Much?

[Consultant]

People earning their FUDster paycheck.

Or people running obsolete computers, pirating media using an obsolete format.

Doesn't play FLAC out of the box. Is slow and a resource hog. Clumsy interfaces to the App & Music Stores. Distorted bastardization of the original which kept things simple and did it's job well instead of doing "everything" (everything meaning "everything Apple wants you to do) in an over-par way.

This is a) incorrect and b) a poor argument to begin with.

 

[Dr McKay]

I'd imagine the vast majority of complainers are us 'Windows Folk' even on zippy fast PC's iTunes takes ages to load, is often slow to react to commands.

My PC has,

2.8Ghz i7Core Processor,
8GB of RAM
2GB Video Card.

And iTunes still takes about 30 seconds to open once clicked, is unusable for the first minute or so while it chugs away doing 'something'

 

[wywern209]

I'd imagine the vast majority of complainers are us 'Windows Folk' even on zippy fast PC's iTunes takes ages to load, is often slow to react to commands.

My PC has,

2.8Ghz i7Core Processor,
8GB of RAM
2GB Video Card.

And iTunes still takes about 30 seconds to open once clicked, is unusable for the first minute or so while it chugs away doing 'something'

it's funny. my 5 yr old dell with a pentium 4 3.4Ghz, an ATI x300 128mb card and 3gb of ram opens it about that fast.

 

[Anders Fischer]

What..

This discussion is kind of lame.
If it's such a big deal, just don't use iTunes.
My 3 year old little brother found out that he didn't like Shaun The Sheep in the TV. He simply turned it off...
Jesus, people these days.

 

[arjen92]

where do you really get your music in FLAC format? I've never heard of it before. I assume you can't get it from ripping from CD's Or from the internet.

So why would you want FLAC when you can't even get it through common (known to me) sources?

3. No support for FLAC
4. Cant manage anything else exept for iPod
5. No way to play SHOUTCAST Radio ( in built radio stations suck)

Apple should make iTunes simple, as they say "LESS IS MORE"

Isn't this contradicting? You want less, but you also want the extra stuff like FLAC support, manage anything else than an iOS device and play SHOUTCAST Radio.

 

[angelwatt]

where do you really get your music in FLAC format? I've never heard of it before. I assume you can't get it from ripping from CD's Or from the internet.

You assume incorrectly. It can easily be ripped to from a CD with a program like Max or XLD. There's also some web sites that use this format that you can download, which I've done a number of times.

 

[Stinkysteve]

I buy FLAC King Crimson concerts legally direct from https://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm
They sound quite nice through my real stereo or headphones...

 

[tkermit]

where do you really get your music in FLAC format? I've never heard of it before. I assume you can't get it from ripping from CD's Or from the internet.

Of course you can. Quite a few artists choose to distribute their albums in FLAC. It's a very well-known format among people who care about high-quality digital audio.

Personally I use "Apple lossless" whenever possible (instead of lossy file formats) and don't really mind that iTunes doesn't support FLAC, but I'm aware that I'm making myself dependent on Apple's ecosystem in the short term. I'm fine with that for now though, and it's not a lot of trouble for me to convert my music to other file formats when or if the need should arise in the future. That's also mostly why I like lossless file formats - quality-wise, as far as I can tell, I'm fine with 256kbit/s AACs on my current equipment.

For the record, I love iTunes (at least for music), even though it doesn't adhere to a lot of OS X conventions and could use an at least partial rewrite - I realize that that's not a trivial undertaking though

No comparison to the iTunes Store:

 

[derekamoss]

What I don't get is when people download Flac when there are other lossless options available for what they are downloading and complain iTunes doesn't play flac. Just download the one that does play well with itunes. I would much rather have Apple Lossless Codec anyways since I know it will easily sync with my iPod. Personally I don't think there is a reason for any type of multiple formats. AAC used to be good because same bit rate was smaller than mp3 but with how the music players have such big HD's now anyways it doesn't even mater. Its all for money in the long run anyways. Second cant you add Flac to itunes in the first plays. I remember adding Ogg Vorbis back in the day.

 

[nobunaga209]

Easy answer = DRM.

 

[QuarterSwede]

5. No way to play SHOUTCAST Radio ( in built radio stations suck)

You can add shoutcast stations to iTunes. I just did. Drag the URL to the Source List in iTunes and it shows up in the Library. Not hard.

I don't get the people who think the UI is bloated. You can hide just about everything in the side bar (save iTunes Store). As far as speed, I'll admit that prior to 10 it was slow even on OS X. However, 10 has sped up launching and running iTunes tremendously on OS X at least.

 

[JavierP]

I don't get the people who think the UI is bloated. You can hide just about everything in the side bar (save iTunes Store).

You can remove the store from the side bar using Preferences -> Parental -> Disable iTunes Store

 

[QuarterSwede]

You can remove the store from the side bar using Preferences -> Parental -> Disable iTunes Store

Oh Right, I forgot about that. Then that would leave only Ping as you can hide the Playlist header by mousing over the name Playlist and clicking on Hide.

 

[R94N]

I personally don't mind using it, but I can understand why people might think it's bloated. Also, most Windows users don't end up having the best experience with it, because that version isn't the best.

 

[JavierP]

Oh Right, I forgot about that. Then that would leave only Ping as you can hide the Playlist header by mousing over the name Playlist and clicking on Hide.

If you disable the store Ping goes away too. I just have Music/Radio/Playlists in my side bar

 

[QuarterSwede]

If you disable the store Ping goes away too. I just have Music/Radio/Playlists in my side bar

I didn't know that. Good to know. I think people could have a problem with that though as they may want the Store and not Ping.

 

[Abstract]

Same reason I dislike Windows Media Player........they're both bloated.


A music player that's 82 MB? Yeeesh!!

Despite all the things Apple has added to it, it only acts as a decent music player. It's not good at any of the other things it does. Movies, tv shows, social media (???)....why bother? It sucks at handling these things.

iTunes went completely downhill when Apple tried to catalogue everything through iTunes. It was never designed to handle everything, and even if it was, it would still be better if we had an app dedicated to handling our music. We don't need hundreds of features, most of which aren't useful.

 

[ValenR]

I don't really hate it but, I just wish I could take the pictures in my iPhone picture library and put it on my PC.
I can't find any decent software that would let me transfer pictures (not including Camera roll) to my PC without changing the photo name/quality.

 

[ascarda]

I used to love Winamp on windows, specially versions below 3.0, after that it became clumsy but that could be justified but all the good features it provided.

Apple should make iTunes simple, as they say "LESS IS MORE"

I totally agree

 

[gnasher729]

Seriously.

You're right, lots of people use them. But in percentage of the internet population, it must be less than 5%. I have no data here, and neither do you, but I am pretty sure that FLAC is used exclusively by audiophiles.

... and the audiophiles can of course use Apple Lossless. I don't think there is anybody legally selling any music in FLAC format, so the only people concerned are those ripping their own CDs, and they can just use Apple Lossless. Furthermore, iTunes supports _any_ audio format as long as someone writes a Quicktime plugin. And that, I think, is not Apple's job.

 

[gnasher729]

Probably the DUMBEST statement I've heard today. FLAC is the standard for Lossless. Betta recognize.

Reality check: I bet it is outnumbered by Apple Lossless 10 to 1. In my library, it is outnumbered about 280 to nil.

 

[iStudentUK]

So many reasons...

It takes ages to load and is a resource hog, and it tries to do too much. It started as playing and purchasing music. Now there are TV shows, movies, ping, ringtones...

I think Apple got themselves a bit stuck, they got good branding with iTunes and music and decided to use it to launch their movie/TV show side project, which quickly expanded. Now it is too late to split, I'd much prefer to see iTunes and an 'iVideo/Flim/etc' application.

I use iTunes to manage my music, only because I play all my music through my iPhone and speakers so I just use it to sync. I don't use it to manage my video collection as I don't want to convert them all (where are all the codecs?!), and refuse to buy any DRM ridden videos.

iTunes is becoming more and more bloated. It needs trimming or splitting, then I think the hate would subside.

 

[tkermit]

I don't think there is anybody legally selling any music in FLAC format

A list of some of the sites that sell FLAC files, that I'm aware of:

• Bandcamp (although they offer ALAC as well)
• Passionato
• Deutsche Grammophon (part of UMG)
• 7digital (at least they did at one point - I bought "In Rainbows" as FLAC files from them)

I'm sure you could find many more examples. Some artists and labels offer FLAC downloads directly from their sites as well.

 

[Stinkysteve]

A list of some of the sites that sell FLAC files, that I'm aware of:

• Bandcamp (although they offer ALAC as well)
• Passionato
• Deutsche Grammophon (part of UMG)
• 7digital (at least they did at one point - I bought "In Rainbows" as FLAC files from them)

I'm sure you could find many more examples. Some artists and labels offer FLAC downloads directly from their sites as well.

You can add https://www.dgmlive.com/archive.htm to that list.

 

[waynechriss]

Easy answer = DRM.

I never have the same issues as others; iTunes has never crashed on me ever. However yes, DRM would be my sole complaint so far and its specifically towards movies and television shows. I would buy movies on iTunes in a heart beat if I could take them and put them on an external hard drive, plug into my Xbox 360 and play on my HDTV. I can't afford to do the mac mini-to-tv set up.