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iTunes will never work well

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Re: iTunes will never work well

#81

Post by untog »

altitudinous wrote: post #75

You missed the point. iTunes is a old product holding together well. * No doubt if iTunes was designed today it would be completely different. But as a legacy product it has to satisfy legacy users that are familiar with the UI, and legacy products (this iTunes still supports 10 year old iPods and older?!!) * Say iTunes failed today. No doubt the writer would say it deserved it, and the product was a failure from the…

> as a legacy product it has to satisfy legacy users that are familiar with the UI

I cannot think of an application with a less consistent UI than iTunes. Every major version seems to present a total rethink and re-engineering of the entire UI layer.

If consistency is a goal for iTunes then it has failed dramatically.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#82

Post by krisdol »

Alex3917 wrote: post #62
jheriko wrote: post #11

i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible. the main problem: zero discoverablity - i need to google how to do things, then get some snotty fanboy answer about how easy and obvious it is, but there is literally no way to infer the functionality from the design. they do love to steal context too... and interrupt your flow... ... i could go on and on, but having zero-di…

I'm surprised they haven't been hit with a class action lawsuit for the iTunes UX yet, since it seems designed to needlessly fill up space on your computer / phone in order to get you to upgrade to larger models. E.g. with the podcasts sync feature, you can only decide how many episodes you want stored for every podcast at a global level, not per podcast. So e.g. you can either store the most recent ten episodes of e…

The podcast thing is not true. You can create "stations" with different retention settings, and put the podcasts inside.

Archiving is redundant. You can have manual update and update the app as needed, you can have auto update and update all installed apps, or you can just remove the app from your device and install it again later when you need it. If you don't use an app, just remove it. You can redownload it later. Why keep things you admit you don't use?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#83

Post by krisdol »

madeofpalk wrote: post #65
Alex3917 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they haven't been hit with a class action lawsuit for the iTunes UX yet, since it seems designed to needlessly fill up space on your computer / phone in order to get you to upgrade to larger models. E.g. with the podcasts sync feature, you can only decide how many episodes you want stored for every podcast at a global level, not per podcast. So e.g. you can either store the most recent ten episodes of e…

> it seems like pretty much every features of iTunes is designed to force you to buy more stuff from Apple that you don't actually need. I actually highly doubt this. Apple has done a lot of work (starting in iOS 4 IIRC) to actually remove the need for iTunes. From my personal experience, and that of working at the Genius Bar, most people don't use iTunes at all. With regular backups and sync happening over iCloud, w…

iTunes is not necessary at this point. I have never agreed to the terms of service in iTunes desktop and thus have never used it. I don't know if there are any terms to agree to on the phone because it also never gets used there. iTunes for me lives in a folder called "other" that I never open. (Spotify is my music player)

Re: iTunes will never work well

#85

Post by kovrik »

astrange wrote: post #60
kovrik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I really love Apple, but I always find myself Googling for "Can I do that in iTunes?" (the answer is usually No) or "How to do this?". And I can't say that I want something weird. Some workflows look so simple and obvious to me (and I think most people have the same workflows), but they are literally impossible with iTunes and other Apple stuff. For example, I have a 2TB AirPort Time Capsule, but it looks impo…

Have you found Time Machine?

How does it help? Can I use Time Machine to backup my iPod to AirPort Time Capsule?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#86

Post by somedangedname »

icebraining wrote: post #36
askafriend wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, even Google has terrible UI/UX these days. Just look at Google Maps or Gmail. Material design isn't that great for discoverability either.

What's wrong with Google Maps? I've just been watching a non-technical friend use it and the only thing that wasn't intuitive was adding an extra stop to her trip (and even then, she discovered it without needing to search for help).

Lack of quality control - the last two-ish months, the search feature on maps has been completely broken for me.

They rolled out a feature to limit search results to locations within your current zoom. Great! Problem is, they reloaded the entire page (not just the results partial) on every change.

The constant flickering made it very difficult to orient yourself around the map. Was infuriating to use and I'm very glad that they've now fixed it.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#88

Post by Twisell »

Well to be fair the title might be: iTunes will never work well ON WINDOWS.

I was always wondering why I can read so much rants about a good product I've been using on a daily basis for years... Well it seams that the Windows version sucks, and what is described is really a world away from the native cocoa version on macOS.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#89

Post by dmart »

kovrik wrote: post #85
astrange wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you found Time Machine?

How does it help? Can I use Time Machine to backup my iPod to AirPort Time Capsule?

You can use Time Machine to automatically back up your MacBook to the Time Capsule, and as .../MobileSync/Backup/ will obviously be a part of that backup, your iPod backups will come along for the ride as well.
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