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In addition, pirated music are often not encoded properly or not tagged properly and users blame itunes instead of themselves.

If you actually get music via itunes or buy cds and load it yourself, you won't have any problems.
When I load foobar2000 or mediaplayer classic by opening a random mp3, there is zero lag (with utorrent and antivirus in the background). The same cannot be said from iTunes.

Don't try to blame iTunes' lagginess on piracy.
 
When I load foobar2000 or mediaplayer classic by opening a random mp3, there is zero lag (with utorrent and antivirus in the background). The same cannot be said from iTunes.

Don't try to blame iTunes' lagginess on piracy.

Why would you compare the speed of a dedicated media player with a media manager such as iTunes? The more apt comparison would be Quicktime. Mediaplayer Classic would still win, but at least you are comparing Apples to Apples.
 
Problem with Windows or not, if Apple is writing software that performs poorly on Windows then I can't blame Windows users for not wanting Apple software on their PCs. And frankly, QuickTime for Windows sounds like the reanimated zombie corpse of late-'90s RealPlayer for Mac, and who didn't hate that miserable, system-stealing piece of junk?

If Microsoft software performs poorly on windows, how can Apple make software behave better on poorly made windows?

My boss's brand new $1700 vista laptop locked up yesterday and IT can't figure out why ctrl-alt-delete doesn't work.

His outlook is already lagging after a month.
 
lets be realistic

Hello,

Think about where we were 5 years ago. How about 10! Itunes is absolutely amazing. I have carefully converted my entire vinyl record collection, my tapes, and of course my cds, all to itunes. I have purchased thousands of songs as well.

It is incredible to me that I can instantly find any artist, any song, any album with about once click. I can listen to my songs anywhere in the world, easily. I love the add ons, the genious function and the others. Of course, I am lucky in that I have super high speed internet, and the very latest and best of computer equipment with high Ram, etc, so everything seems to work perfectly.

I have tried most of the other music softwar programs, and still am an emusic member. But, Itunes is simply the best.

One thing comes to mind, as I really rack my brain to think of a problem with itunes. In emusic, if I look at an album, it shows me with a clear check mark any songs I already bought at any point, so I know. Itunes does not do that. Also, on emusic, if I choose to re-buy a song, it is free, it knows I once paid for it.
 
In most cases it's lack of knowledge (i.e. soaking up your processors with torrents and blame itunes). In addition, pirated music are often not encoded properly or not tagged properly and users blame itunes instead of themselves.

If you actually get music via itunes or buy cds and load it yourself, you won't have any problems.

dumbest tip i have ever heard about 'pirated music' slowing down itunes. get real.

itunes is horrible. the only reason i have to use it is for apps on my iphone. what decent media player can't even monitor a folder for changes? that pretty much axes out itunes as a proper media manager. mediamonkey/songbird/etc etc are all better than itunes by far.
 
I'll explain why I left iTunes behind in favor of Mediamonkey (on Windows).

First of all, I will point out that iTunes does an excellent job of containing and maintaining the Apple ecosystem, and the interface itself is miles ahead of WMP.

However, here is why I dropped it:

-terrible, slow performance
-pushy updates w/ underhanded attempts to roll in Safari
-abysmal tagging support (missing 90% of ID3 info)
-useless & slow Genius functions
-doesn't write tagging information (rating, art, etc) to music file, only to iTunes database

That's just off the top of my head.
 
I'll explain why I left iTunes behind in favor of Mediamonkey (on Windows).

-terrible, slow performance

I'm assuming you have an extremely large library. That is not an excuse, I'm just saying that performance issues only approach "terrible" to me in extremely large libraries.

-pushy updates w/ underhanded attempts to roll in Safari

Yeah. That was a problem. They fixed it a couple weeks later.

-abysmal tagging support (missing 90% of ID3 info)

Seriously? I can't imagine using 10x as many tags as currently exist in iTunes.

-useless & slow Genius functions

If it is useless, why do you care if it is slow? You could turn it off and never use it. Personally, I use Genius and have never noticed any slowness. I hit the button, I get a playlist.
 
That's PROBLEM WITH WINDOWS. Read up on differences between windows and UNIX (aka OS X).

iTunes follows UNIX style multi-threading rules, which are not implemented in windows due to Microsoft incompetence. Keep in mind Microsoft have tried close to 10 years to include UNIX technology into windows, but ended up with Longhorn which is also known as the failed Vista.

In that case, I'd argue that it's Apple's fault for not making a good Windows version of iTunes by version 8 of the software, not Microsoft's for not supporting the way they want to do it. Windows' lack of UNIX technology is a "problem" but it's also Apple's problem for releasing a crappy slow version of iTunes for the world's most popular OS. It goes both ways.
 
The Windows version has had it's problems, but in my experience (on both Windows and OS X versions) it's decent software. I use it on my MacBook and HP all the time.

EDIT: Oh, and on the topic of Windows problems, trying to build a good Windows app is like trying to build a house on wet sand. On a beach. Next to the sea. Within a army base. In the middle of a shooting range.
 
If your blind the new version of itunes sucks. that's 8.2 they screwed up the windows version so the main screen reader software will not read most of it. not that it did a great job anyway)
so I move over to mac and get her a g4. but before I get it I find the newest version of itunes sucks with voiceover too. so when I installed leopard I left itunes at 8.02
 
In that case, I'd argue that it's Apple's fault for not making a good Windows version of iTunes by version 8 of the software, not Microsoft's for not supporting the way they want to do it. Windows' lack of UNIX technology is a "problem" but it's also Apple's problem for releasing a crappy slow version of iTunes for the world's most popular OS. It goes both ways.

I guess I wasn't clear. I meant Windows does not have multi-threading like UNIX.

As I said, ever try to search 10,000 emails in Microsoft outlook?

Microsoft windows makes it slow. There is not much Apple can do to optimize windows.

In addition, don't you have anti-virus for windows installed? That slows windows down even more.
 
I guess I wasn't clear. I meant Windows does not have multi-threading like UNIX.

As I said, ever try to search 10,000 emails in Microsoft outlook?

Microsoft windows makes it slow. There is not much Apple can do to optimize windows.

In addition, don't you have anti-virus for windows installed? That slows windows down even more.

Just a question. The same games run much faster in bootcamp than their native Mac counterparts. Is that a fault of Apple or the game developers?
 
Because people use the Windows version and think it's the same as the Mac version. Same thing as with QuickTime or Safari.


Just a question. The same games run much faster in bootcamp than their native Mac counterparts. Is that a fault of Apple or the game developers?

Perhaps the developers have more experience with Windows programming, or perhaps they're just using something like Cydia (emulation), which would obviously give less performance.
 
Hello,

Think about where we were 5 years ago. How about 10! Itunes is absolutely amazing. I have carefully converted my entire vinyl record collection, my tapes, and of course my cds, all to itunes. I have purchased thousands of songs as well.

It is incredible to me that I can instantly find any artist, any song, any album with about once click. I can listen to my songs anywhere in the world, easily. I love the add ons, the genious function and the others. Of course, I am lucky in that I have super high speed internet, and the very latest and best of computer equipment with high Ram, etc, so everything seems to work perfectly.

I have tried most of the other music softwar programs, and still am an emusic member. But, Itunes is simply the best.

One thing comes to mind, as I really rack my brain to think of a problem with itunes. In emusic, if I look at an album, it shows me with a clear check mark any songs I already bought at any point, so I know. Itunes does not do that. Also, on emusic, if I choose to re-buy a song, it is free, it knows I once paid for it.

I right click on the column titles and click on the 'kind' field. Any bought aac files appear as either Protected AAC or Purchased AAC, depending on if they are DRM free. I also setup a smart playlist with these 2 conditions so i can see all my purchased media at a glance.

M. :D
 
Because people use the Windows version and think it's the same as the Mac version. Same thing as with QuickTime or Safari.




Perhaps the developers have more experience with Windows programming, or perhaps they're just using something like Cydia (emulation), which would obviously give less performance.

I wanted to know what Consultant thought because he blames Windows for poor iTunes performance. Does he blame Apple for games being slower on Macs then?
 
iTunes does have it fair share of performance issues and could be really improved if some thought was put into it. The thing is that despite its flaws it is still the best music player out there by far. Songbird and other attempts are fine as far as they go, but they are very limited in their capabilities.

Lets hope Apple makes some big improvements in iTunes 9 :cool:
 
Just a question. The same games run much faster in bootcamp than their native Mac counterparts. Is that a fault of Apple or the game developers?

Games = running only one main app that gets almost all system resources.

That's different than running multiple apps at the same time, with windows managing multi-tasking.

If you assign iTunes your full system resources in windows, it'll run fast too.
 
Games = running only one main app that gets almost all system resources.

That's different than running multiple apps at the same time, with windows managing multi-tasking.

If you assign iTunes your full system resources in windows, it'll run fast too.

But games on Mac = "running only one main app that gets almost all system resources" as well. By your logic, it should run as fast or faster on a Mac than on Window, but it doesn't. So who's to blame for this? Apple for not allowing developers to use the full potential of the hardware due to sluggish OS?
 
But games on Mac = "running only one main app that gets almost all system resources" as well. By your logic, it should run as fast or faster on a Mac than on Window, but it doesn't. So who's to blame for this? Apple for not allowing developers to use the full potential of the hardware due to sluggish OS?

It seems like you are thinking, but you are trying to make wrong comparisons.

FACTS
iTunes =/= games
OSX =/= windows
OSX = UNIX, very capable if you know how to use it

Games don't run well on OSX because PORTING software made SPECIFICALLY to perform in windows is hard.

Note that many supercomputer clusters use Macs, because OSX = UNIX = high performance.

Very rarely do you see supercomputer clusters use windows.

Anyway, back on topic:

FACT
Even if you don't use iTunes, multitasking many programs, even microsoft programs will slow you down in windows.
 
It seems like you are thinking, but you are trying to make wrong comparisons.

FACTS
iTunes =/= games
OSX =/= windows
OSX = UNIX, very capable if you know how to use it

Games don't run well on OSX because PORTING software made SPECIFICALLY to perform in windows is hard.

Note that many supercomputer clusters use Macs, because OSX = UNIX = high performance.

Very rarely do you see supercomputer clusters use windows.

Anyway, back on topic:

FACT
Even if you don't use iTunes, multitasking many programs, even microsoft programs will slow you down in windows.

Let's switch OSX and Windows around.

"iTunes don't run well on Windows because PORTING software made SPECIFICALLY to perform in OSX is hard."

You can't just blame Windows for poor iTunes performance when every other media player does it well enough. I can multi task without any problems in Windows, as you can in OSX. You blaming MS for poor iTunes performance is like me blaming Apple for poor games performance.
 
@ Consultant:

I do search 10000 emails and I don't have any lag....with outlook

to me you are like a consultant with an agenda, and that is windows hate....

iTunes on Windows just sucks, I have nerver seen a player in my life that has crashed lagged and bugged up so many time like iTunes on Windows.

For a Music Manager Player you shouldnt have to have 4gb of ram and a quad just to run it without lag, sry this is not acceptable. I am talking for a lot of friends here.....

even winamp starts faster then iTunes and that is a waaaaaay over bloated piece of once good software..

Songbird is also nice

I do understand mocking windows but I find it funny the things you lay out^^
 
I love running iTunes on my 5 year old dell. It's impossible to watch videos within iTunes (with FPS around 15-20). Now quicktime runs them around 30-35 (if I'm lucky). It's a system hog..... then again, 1 gig of RAM and a 2.2 Ghz single core can't do much good either.
 
Itunes runs like crap on my 8-year-old laptop, but I don't really expect it to be that fast. Anyway, I need it for my iPhone.

I think feature crawl is the biggest thing for me. It started out as a really good manager for music and iPods. Apple added TV shows, Movies, applications, ringtones, contact and calendar syncing, photos, etc. Now instead of being a slick interface for music, it's a bloated, jack of all trades master of none.

I think they should rewrite iSync to be just like iTunes (look and feel). List all devices so you can manage them without having them connected. Add in applications and the app store and leave it at that. Or make something like doubleTwist into the new iSync. Call it "Mobile Device Manager" or something (MDM sounds Microsoft-ish, totally accurate, but uninspired).

Pull out everything but music, movies and tv shows from iTunes and rename it iMedia (or something like that).
 
It's due a rewrite. It has code left over from the SoundJam MP days.

Exactly! I've always considered itunes 'bad' since it took over and killed the SoundJam app, which ran soo smoothly, fast, lightweight, and useful. iTunes came in and just clunked it up. I now consider opening iTunes [only for a podcast or app purchase] to be like opening MS Word... Nevertheless I've found a great alternative that anyone out there who just wants the basic macAmp/winAmp approach should check out ToolPlayer - er wait, now it's called Voxplayer:

http://www.voxapp.net/

- I set it as my main mp3 + mp4 application.. and you simply find an mp3 you want to listen to, double click it.. and it automatically sees others in the folder to play next.
 
In most cases it's lack of knowledge (i.e. soaking up your processors with torrents and blame itunes). In addition, pirated music are often not encoded properly or not tagged properly and users blame itunes instead of themselves.

If you actually get music via itunes or buy cds and load it yourself, you won't have any problems.



That's PROBLEM WITH WINDOWS. Read up on differences between windows and UNIX (aka OS X).

iTunes follows UNIX style multi-threading rules, which are not implemented in windows due to Microsoft incompetence. Keep in mind Microsoft have tried close to 10 years to include UNIX technology into windows, but ended up with Longhorn which is also known as the failed Vista.

LMAO oh boy! Wow! :eek: No comment.

I pirate music, and I purchase music; I buy CDs, and I purchase downloadable music. iTunes still lags.
 
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