I used it when necessary, but when out of practice, it always seemed like it's default operation was to delete all my songs from my device. It's second most likely operation was to try to fill my device with my entire library. In short, it was always hard to use, impossible to trust, and generally useless for anyone with a collection of music files that existed prior to iTunes.
Agreed.. except it sucked on Mac too. If you had already existing large, well organized collection of digital music in various formats (mp3,flac, ape, etc) then iTunes was not the app for you. Actually it was was one of the worst applications I ever attempted to use. It's ridiculous default behaviors and counter intuitive interface were so frustrating. I even tried using a Mac for a year to see if buying into the whole ecosystem was needed. Nope. iTunes was an app designed with no care whatsoever for w
Foobar and later Songbird were definitely the way to go if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes. I
n the old days of iTunes, you couldn't even go directly to MP3 with your purchases. Many times I burned an RW disc with new music, then ripped it to MP3 and manually named things. I really don't miss that.
Foobar and later Songbird were definitely the way to go if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes. I
n the old days of iTunes, you couldn't even go directly to MP3 with your purchases. Many times I burned an RW disc with new music, then ripped it to MP3 and manually named things. I really don't miss that.
Who wants crappy MP3 when the sonically-superior AAC is available?
If your crappy car CD player can only handle MP3s, iTunes can easily convert them. Later versions even made that process transparent to the user.
Agreed.. except it sucked on Mac too. If you had already existing large, well organized collection of digital music in various formats (mp3,flac, ape, etc) then iTunes was not the app for you. Actually it was was one of the worst applications I ever attempted to use. It's ridiculous default behaviors and counter intuitive interface were so frustrating. I even tried using a Mac for a year to see if buying into the whole ecosystem was needed. Nope. iTunes was an app designed with no care whatsoever for what the customer wanted. This was many years ago but I was never able to find an app on the Mac that could easily manage a very large collection of digital music in various formats so after one year of trying gave the Mac to my wife (she still likes them) and went back to Foobar 2000 on the PC.
Your objections regarding flac, ape, (and ogg) are (or at least in the case of flac, were) duly noted.
However, all of iTunes "counter intuitive interface" issues are neatly negated by the use of "Column Browser" mode. Can't imagine a more intuitive interface; especially for large collections.
Agree - it's why I ditched it and used gpod (or whatever it was called back then) when I bought one of the earlyish ipods.
Back then, yeah, itunes would "cleverly" organise your stuff. It meant you had to have your music in the Music folder, and oh my goodness, if you foolishly wanted to keep it on your NAS, well, no problem, it would just move it all off the NAS and onto your hard drive. It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes i
Back then, yeah, itunes would "cleverly" organise your stuff. It meant you had to have your music in the Music folder, and oh my goodness, if you foolishly wanted to keep it on your NAS, well, no problem, it would just move it all off the NAS and onto your hard drive. It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes instead of artist/album/track name (or whatever).
Sorry, wrong!
You could have taken 5 minutes and found that there was a simple GUI checkbox that eliminated that behavior completely. You can have iTunes "Libraries" anywhere you can reach on your local network. You can even have multiple Libraries.
It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes instead of artist/album/track name (or whatever).
Only the copy on the iDevice got the weird filenames. The copy iTunes made was in an organized, structured folder under/User/Music/iTunes Music (unless you had only filenames and no tags - I don't know what it did then).
They were crappy 128K MP3s too
The DRM-laden files from iTunes early days were at least 128-bit AAC. Which is closer to a 160Kbps MP3 in quality. You could strip the DRM without re-encoding, even if not legally.
I used it when necessary, but when out of practice, it always seemed like it's default operation was to delete all my songs from my device. It's second most likely operation was to try to fill my device with my entire library. In short, it was always hard to use, impossible to trust, and generally useless for anyone with a collection of music files that existed prior to iTunes.
That's because you were too arrogant to take 5 minutes to learn how to use it correctly.
None of the "issues" you mention are actually there. You just need to take one second to look up the answer.
Nah, making bad proprietary software work the way you want is sometimes just easier than finding an open source alternative. I haven't owned an Apple device in years and I still use iTunes for music playback on the PC. It points to the same directory on my NAS that every other device or server uses.
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
-- The Wall Street Journal
It was never intuitive on Windows (Score:2)
I used it when necessary, but when out of practice, it always seemed like it's default operation was to delete all my songs from my device. It's second most likely operation was to try to fill my device with my entire library. In short, it was always hard to use, impossible to trust, and generally useless for anyone with a collection of music files that existed prior to iTunes.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed .. except it sucked on Mac too. If you had already existing large, well organized collection of digital music in various formats (mp3,flac, ape, etc) then iTunes was not the app for you. Actually it was was one of the worst applications I ever attempted to use. It's ridiculous default behaviors and counter intuitive interface were so frustrating. I even tried using a Mac for a year to see if buying into the whole ecosystem was needed. Nope. iTunes was an app designed with no care whatsoever for w
Re: It was never intuitive on Windows (Score:2)
Foobar and later Songbird were definitely the way to go if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes. I
n the old days of iTunes, you couldn't even go directly to MP3 with your purchases. Many times I burned an RW disc with new music, then ripped it to MP3 and manually named things. I really don't miss that.
Re: (Score:2)
if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes.
There's the problem right there. Apple regularly assumes there was nothing before them.
Re: (Score:1)
if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes.
There's the problem right there. Apple regularly assumes there was nothing before them.
Bullshit.
Re: (Score:1)
Foobar and later Songbird were definitely the way to go if you had music outside of what you purchased from iTunes. I
n the old days of iTunes, you couldn't even go directly to MP3 with your purchases. Many times I burned an RW disc with new music, then ripped it to MP3 and manually named things. I really don't miss that.
Who wants crappy MP3 when the sonically-superior AAC is available?
If your crappy car CD player can only handle MP3s, iTunes can easily convert them. Later versions even made that process transparent to the user.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed .. except it sucked on Mac too. If you had already existing large, well organized collection of digital music in various formats (mp3,flac, ape, etc) then iTunes was not the app for you. Actually it was was one of the worst applications I ever attempted to use. It's ridiculous default behaviors and counter intuitive interface were so frustrating. I even tried using a Mac for a year to see if buying into the whole ecosystem was needed. Nope. iTunes was an app designed with no care whatsoever for what the customer wanted. This was many years ago but I was never able to find an app on the Mac that could easily manage a very large collection of digital music in various formats so after one year of trying gave the Mac to my wife (she still likes them) and went back to Foobar 2000 on the PC.
Your objections regarding flac, ape, (and ogg) are (or at least in the case of flac, were) duly noted.
However, all of iTunes "counter intuitive interface" issues are neatly negated by the use of "Column Browser" mode. Can't imagine a more intuitive interface; especially for large collections.
Re: (Score:2)
Agree - it's why I ditched it and used gpod (or whatever it was called back then) when I bought one of the earlyish ipods.
Back then, yeah, itunes would "cleverly" organise your stuff. It meant you had to have your music in the Music folder, and oh my goodness, if you foolishly wanted to keep it on your NAS, well, no problem, it would just move it all off the NAS and onto your hard drive. It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes i
Re: (Score:1)
Back then, yeah, itunes would "cleverly" organise your stuff. It meant you had to have your music in the Music folder, and oh my goodness, if you foolishly wanted to keep it on your NAS, well, no problem, it would just move it all off the NAS and onto your hard drive. It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes instead of artist/album/track name (or whatever).
Sorry, wrong!
You could have taken 5 minutes and found that there was a simple GUI checkbox that eliminated that behavior completely. You can have iTunes "Libraries" anywhere you can reach on your local network. You can even have multiple Libraries.
People need to learn to learn.
Re: (Score:2)
It would also get rid of any folder organisation you had, so you're now left with a load of files named by their hashes instead of artist/album/track name (or whatever).
Only the copy on the iDevice got the weird filenames. The copy iTunes made was in an organized, structured folder under /User/Music/iTunes Music (unless you had only filenames and no tags - I don't know what it did then).
They were crappy 128K MP3s too
The DRM-laden files from iTunes early days were at least 128-bit AAC. Which is closer to a 160Kbps MP3 in quality. You could strip the DRM without re-encoding, even if not legally.
Re: (Score:1)
I used it when necessary, but when out of practice, it always seemed like it's default operation was to delete all my songs from my device. It's second most likely operation was to try to fill my device with my entire library. In short, it was always hard to use, impossible to trust, and generally useless for anyone with a collection of music files that existed prior to iTunes.
That's because you were too arrogant to take 5 minutes to learn how to use it correctly.
None of the "issues" you mention are actually there. You just need to take one second to look up the answer.
Re: It was never intuitive on Windows (Score:2)
We found the Apple fanboy!
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, making bad proprietary software work the way you want is sometimes just easier than finding an open source alternative. I haven't owned an Apple device in years and I still use iTunes for music playback on the PC. It points to the same directory on my NAS that every other device or server uses.