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Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

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Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#31

Post by chubot »

Wow I thought I was an outlier, because I've never been able to get the hang of iTunes. I occasionally touch it with a 10 foot pole when I have to get something off my phone.

But I had assumed that almost everyone uses it now. Or maybe it's less popular than in the iPod days, because the phones/ipads are more independent.

My friend just recommended a podcast, and I didn't even realize that iTunes is where you get a lot of podcasts! I've never even tried.

Anyway, for buying music, I use Amazon's MP3 service and recommend it. You just download the album as a .zip file. Then I put it on my own music server. (I guess this is another reason I'm a dinosaur; I prefer listening to an entire album over streaming individual songs.

I switched to Spotify for awhile, but the quality was noticeably bad on my speakers. I use Sonos and when hooked up to good speakers, you can really tell. Amazon MP3s sound indistinguishable from the original recordings. And even streaming Amazon music, but not Spotify.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#32

Post by crankylinuxuser »

epistasis wrote: post #12

After 15 years on iTunes, and much devotion towards keeping a clean library of music that I ripped or purchased, Apple Music ruined it for me. Especially in iOS, where it did not understand the concept of not having a constant internet connection, like it was implemented by some 21 year-old newb that had never made any production code in their life. This made Apple Music completely useless for my primary use case; dr…

Everything you said also applies to closed source software, along with SaaS offerings.

We are only 1 change from having our house of cards toppled, if we depend on their being consistent. And that can change for them, say, if making X change makes them a fistfull of dollars, they will to the detriment of users.

Sure, in your case, Spotify makes sense. Cool. Unfortunately, they are 1 or 2 major changes that alienate their user base. Id rather have control and ownership of my data. And yes, that does mean some growing pains in how to do that effectively. But it also means some arbitrary choice in a boardroom doesn't affect me.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#33

Post by cfadvan »

NoahTheDuke wrote: post #25
cfadvan wrote: post #10

I admire your goal, but my first question is, have you tried Foobar2000? You could create a theme that has most of your features, and at heart it is nicely minimalist.

Foobar for interface, beats[ http://beets.io/ ] for library organization. It's the perfect combination for any tech-savvy Windows user.

First I’ve heard about Beets, and omg thank you! I’m just what it says, An “obsessive-compulsive music geek...” I’m going to have some real fun with this baby.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#34

Post by 013a »

All signs point to Apple revamping iTunes in the coming year/s, likely by splitting out the Music and TV portions into their own apps. This could come as soon as WWDC with the expected announcement of the unified app development framework; I seem to remember there being evidence that Apple Music on iOS is already using some of this technology, though I can't find a source right off.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#36

Post by SnowingXIV »

epistasis wrote: post #12

After 15 years on iTunes, and much devotion towards keeping a clean library of music that I ripped or purchased, Apple Music ruined it for me. Especially in iOS, where it did not understand the concept of not having a constant internet connection, like it was implemented by some 21 year-old newb that had never made any production code in their life. This made Apple Music completely useless for my primary use case; dr…

Spotify has also made me completely abandoned any type of local music library (it even offers to save for offline use which I do often for road trips or flights). I do buy vinyl and spend money there but can't imagine ever going back to any other structure besides paying a streaming service for digital music. It's been great not having to constantly configure foobar or figure out syncing between devices.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#39

Post by egze »

You probably meant it in a good way, but it is much better to say "Who knows a good alternative to iTunes?" or "How would you design a perfect music player?".

You wouldn't want to see a post "Who else hates dzohrob's music player?" would you?

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#40

Post by cletus »

I think hatred for iTunes is pretty much universal, particularly with tech-savvy folks. But... it just doesn't matter. It seems like one of those siren projects like online dating or a better travel site.

The real problem you have is that actually owning and having mp3s (or whatever lossless alternative grabs your fancy) is (IMHO) only going to decrease and become increasingly niche.

Streaming will be the majority solution. Combine this with offline playlists on Spotify (which I've been paying for for years) and I just don't have any need for the mp3s I spent years collecting and curating.

The only problem with Spotify and the like (including iTunes) is content that holds out on streaming (thankfully this is becoming less common) and content that simply isn't on any digital format whatsoever. Sadly this includes a lot of Australian music. Oh and you also have crappy remasters rather than the originals.

The other thing that happened is we stopped backing up our iPhones by opening up iTunes and connecting the phone to a computer via a cable. Well, most people did. It's all iCloud backups now.

So what exactly do we need iTunes for? That's your problem.

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