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iTunes will never work well

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Re: iTunes will never work well

#171

I spent almost two days trying to resync my music after iTunes deleted it for no reason. It's the worst software on the planet.

I feel your pain. Same thing happened to me twice(!) and then it tried to delete all my Google contacts.

iTunes is now second from the top on my list of software-I-will-never-use-again[0], so that means no shiny Apple devices for me. Which is a shame, because otherwise I quite like Apple stuff.

[0] Of course, Lotus Notes is top of the list

Re: iTunes will never work well

#172
post #110
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could be wrong, but my impression is kovrik wants to back up the iPod to the Time Capsule directly. In other words, the backup shouldn't go through the MacBook at all (or, speculating based on my experience, kovrik wants to avoid storing the entire iPod backup on the MacBook as a step in the process).

Yes. That is what I mean. My wife and I both have 6 Apple devices, 624GB in total (well, yes, they are not full yet, but still) + 1 2TB AirPort Time Capsule, which could store all these GBs easily. All devices (except for old iPod) have WiFi and can connect to the capsule.

Do you know how I transferred my photos to the capsule last time?

I had to:

1) Connect iPhone to Macbook (via USB cable, not wifi)

2) Run shitty Photos app

3) Copy all pictures to the capsule...well, NO! Select 50% of pictures (because I don't have enough space on Macbook), press Import all selected pictures (don't forget to check Delete after import!)

4) Wait, wait, wait

5) Then drag all imported pictures to the capsule

6) Wait, wait, wait

7) Then Google where Photos stores all photos

8) Delete them

9) Repeat for the rest pictures

It is even more difficult if you want to transfer YOUR music from iPod to the capsule. I had to make a backup, then google backup location, then copy everything manually (bad thing is that all files have cryptic names).

Apple loves to say that all their devices are integrated with each other. What I want is, for example, to press 'Transfer all pictures/music/whatever to Time Capsule' and just wait until it is done (via WiFi).

Re: iTunes will never work well

#173
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 don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible."

All you need to know about Apple UI is this:

Sometimes you click the green (maximize) button and the window gets smaller.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#174
It must be really hard to maintain and add features to such a huge old application. Platforms have changed underneath it, the devices and services it connects to have come and gone, Objective C has changed a lot as well. And then there's the Windows version...

Still, iTunes is crap. I hated it so much that I wrote my own music player for iOS, just to avoid using iTunes for putting music on my phone [1].

My guess is that sooner or later, iTunes will be dismantled and the features will be split into multiple smaller apps. There will be a music app that JUST plays music from the Apple Music account, a podcast app that JUST plays podcasts, a sync app that JUST helps you manage stuff on your phone etc. Some features will be removed (Internet radio, ripping & burning CDs). And of those that remain, only a few will need to keep a Windows counterpart. That way, things will be easier to maintain.

[1] Tiny Player: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1140849233

Re: iTunes will never work well

#175

As far as I have used iTunes the only problem I see with it is trying to do EVERYTHING in a single package. It tries to be - music player - content manager (music & video) - sync manager - update manager - Apple Music client and these are the five things I can name on top of my head, without opening up the app. This is fine, but they are not honoring their boundaries. When I am listening to my music, don't mess me wi…

The problem is, they can never satify everybody. I bet you that if they ever split iTunes up in separate apps like you suggested there will also be a lot of people who dislike that approach and rant along the lines of "Why did they split it up? It was so convenient to have everything in one place. Now I have to open a multitude of apps" No matter how much sense that may make, there will be people like that. The question is, how many compared to people who want things to be plit up. Apple would be best served to conduct some polls or maybe even a nice beta programm where you can use separate apps and then give feedback if it works as intended.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#176
post #40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because of said company's well-deserved reputation for overall OS and UI quality? Everyone admits iTunes is not the greatest thing ever to spring from the mind of Steve. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

> Perhaps because of said company's well-deserved reputation for overall OS and UI quality? Why would I go off reputation and not my own experience with apple software?

Because a reputation is the result of the experience of many different people who communicate with each other. Your experience with Apple software is a very small sample.

Your position is a bit like saying: "Although everyone else thinks the earth is round, it looks flat to me!". Of course, you're free to disagree with the consensus opinion, but you'd probably need a better argument than personal experience.

If the consensus differs from your personal experience, it's worth taking a second look.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all of their stuff is terrible. As a PC-only user since the days of DOS up till Windows 8, and having used Windows 10 after jumping ship to Macs a few hours ago, macOS has demonstrably more discoverability than Windows. One example: Just click on the Help menu, in any app, and type something like "show" or "find" or any other operation, and it will show you all the menu items which have that word in their name. Tha…

> "zero discoverability" is an undeserved hyperbole. Actually, it's a deserved hyperbole. It's not like Apple haven't realized their mistakes... They wrote a book in the late 80s about UI and it's still one of the best works. But they've abandoned many of their most-important guidelines, and almost always for the worse. They threw out the discoverability baby with the skeuomorphic bathwater.

Which book are you referring to?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#179
post #5

People always bash iTunes, but I actually use it quite often and I like it. Maybe it's just me though? The only thing that bugs me, is on iOS, when I load the music app (that's basically iTunes for iOS, right?) it shows a blank page until it can connect to the their servers to grab some data. It doesn't have a problem if I'm on wifi or a fast connection, but I'm often in places where my service is shit, and I get a w…

"People always bash iTunes, but I actually use it quite often and I like it. Maybe it's just me though?"

I'm really picky about OSX annoyances and confusing fake-ease-of-use from Apple, but I do use iTunes fairly regularly just to listen to music and podcasts and I have never had any issues.

Here's why:

I only use iTunes to just play tracks. I don't use it for anything else.

All of my file org and maintenance and backups and transfer - all of that is done from the command line with cp/mv/rsync/etc.

For me, iTunes is just a play button and nothing else. I use command-o to open files and then click play and that's it.

That's why I still use OSX even though I hate it. No matter what the OS refuses to let me do (or figure out to do) I can always just force the issue with the command line - and that wasn't an option always in Windows ...

That is also why this weird "you're root but not actually root" in the newest versions of OSX has me worried.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#180
post #173
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 don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible." All you need to know about Apple UI is this: Sometimes you click the green (maximize) button and the window gets smaller .

Yeah, that's because it's not a maximise button. It's the button that adjusts the window size to the content size.

At least, that's what it used to be. They changed the default behavior to 'fullscreen' because all the people coming from Windows thought that's what the button should do...

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