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Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

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Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#51

Post by michaelsbradley »

butterfi wrote: post #48

I think an easier question is "Who likes iTunes and why?" I don't mean that to sound snarky, but exactly what is iTune's value proposition? I only use it to buy media from Apple, and even then I don't buy much media from Apple because I hate using iTunes.

As a part-time group fitness instructor (full-time software dev), I use iTunes to create and organize playlists of varying lengths for the classes I teach, and to make variants of some of the playlists, i.e. for a little more variety when revisiting past material. I find it to be both a useful and frustrating tool for that purpose. On the whole, I feel the interface has gotten more clunky over the years. However, I no longer have to worry about syncing devices as I (finally) figured out the iCloud Music Library feature; now, I just create/alter/delete a playlist on my laptop and then my iPhone, iPad, and iPod automatically pick up the changes. If there's a tool with a better interface that will seamlessly integrate playlist curation across my iOS devices and macOS laptop, I'd seriously love to hear about it.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#52

Post by kmbriedis »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #51
butterfi wrote: post #48

I think an easier question is "Who likes iTunes and why?" I don't mean that to sound snarky, but exactly what is iTune's value proposition? I only use it to buy media from Apple, and even then I don't buy much media from Apple because I hate using iTunes.

As a part-time group fitness instructor (full-time software dev), I use iTunes to create and organize playlists of varying lengths for the classes I teach, and to make variants of some of the playlists, i.e. for a little more variety when revisiting past material. I find it to be both a useful and frustrating tool for that purpose. On the whole, I feel the interface has gotten more clunky over the years. However, I n…

Not that ideal when you want a diversity and one of your devices is not from the same company

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#53

Post by timrichard »

I've had a long aversion to iTunes, as well. I've been a happy Spotify subscriber for nearly 10 years now, but I've also been using Audirvana on the Mac recently to play FLAC files. It's a very lightweight player in comparison to iTunes, but still based around the album thumbnails you mention. Not stuffed with features, but a lot of attention is given to codec and playback options to get the best audio quality possible from your gear. Handles your material regardless of sample rate (44.1 to 192) and bit depth.

If you've got a collection of CDs, I'd recommend XLD [1] to rip them to FLAC.

I still use Spotify, mostly for discovery, but also have sessions with Audirvana where I listen to classic albums from beginning to end. Through some A/B testing, I noticed a modest improvement in depth and clarity over 320kbps MP3. The tradeoff is storage of course, and the growing album collection can start to take a chunk of your HD.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/xld/

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#54

Post by dzohrob »

egze wrote: post #39

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?

Totally fair feedback, thanks. I thought about phrasing it in a different way, but ended up letting my emotions get the better of me.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#55

Post by michaelsbradley »

kmbriedis wrote: post #52
michaelsbradley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a part-time group fitness instructor (full-time software dev), I use iTunes to create and organize playlists of varying lengths for the classes I teach, and to make variants of some of the playlists, i.e. for a little more variety when revisiting past material. I find it to be both a useful and frustrating tool for that purpose. On the whole, I feel the interface has gotten more clunky over the years. However, I n…

Not that ideal when you want a diversity and one of your devices is not from the same company

Indeed, and I would love to know about an alternative to iTunes. I wasn't offering it high praise, simply describing my use case.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#58

Post by dzohrob »

thought_alarm wrote: post #38

I love iTunes. For more than a decade it has been the most important non-work-related software I have. 11,300 songs 800 music videos 50 movies 1100 TV episodes 80+ playlists I would be hopelessly lost without it.

Thanks for the counterpoint, I appreciate it. FWIW I've generally stuck with it since 2003, but I've been more and more frustrated with it recently.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#59

Post by dzohrob »

always_good wrote: post #41
egze wrote: post #39

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?

Agreed. It also anchors all the comments in the same hostility instead of a more positive, collaborative frame of mind. Pitchforks out. It's also funny when software developers assume that other software is somehow the result of an organization's or developer's idea of perfection and immortality instead of the result of a long line of trade-offs and suboptimal resources. We don't want anyone to assume that about our…

I agree that I should've framed my post better and I appreciate that feedback.

I do understand that iTunes is dealing with a long history of development, and that it has to support lots of use cases that probably explain a lot of the rough edges — I even allude to that in my post.

It's amazing that I can still use my decade-old iPod Shuffle with iTunes at all -- that must be a lot of work. But so much has changed since then, and iTunes as an Apple Music client is a genuinely frustrating experience.

I don't expect software to be perfect. But I want iTunes to be better than it is. I'm paying $10/mo for Apple Music, which actually has an incredible library and editorial playlists... they're just nearly impossible to find.

I'd love to have an amazing Apple Music experience that doesn't also need to manage podcasts, TV shows, audiobooks, and almost 2 decades of music players.

Re: Ask HN: Who else hates iTunes?

#60

Post by dzohrob »

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.

Never heard of it, but looks interesting - thanks for sharing. I probably should've been more clear that after decades of curating my MP3 collection, I've moved towards streaming and rarely dig deep into my library for the ripped tracks that aren't available to stream.
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