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iTunes will never work well

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Re: iTunes will never work well

#321

Post by [deleted] »

asveikau wrote: post #265
massysett wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple would have split up iTunes long ago if it were only a Mac application, but they don't want to distribute a bunch of smaller Windows apps.

Is that so? Some years ago I remember some rando's blog post that seemed to completely invent this narrative from thin air, and it got repeated a lot by Apple fans who have never built Windows applications and probably grossly overestimate its cost. This seems like a pretty lame excuse for one of the world's most powerful companies to not do something it would otherwise want to do.

[deleted]

Re: iTunes will never work well

#322

Post by rawrmaan »

strange_quark wrote: post #61
hhsnopek wrote: post #48

"Spotify" just switch now and never look back

Spotify has just as bad if not worse UX as iTunes/Apple Music. Spotify kept taking away useful features from their desktop app and promised to return them, but never did, even years later. Plus, I don't need to run another instance of Chrome and Adobe Flash which constantly consumes 5% of my CPU and a few hundred MB of RAM just to listen to some music. While still not perfect, I'm pretty happy with the newest release…

Completely disagree. Spotify has nailed the desktop/mobile music app UX like nobody ever has, and it is an absolute joy to use. Yes it's missing a few features, but nothing that's actually truly essential to just listening to music.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#323

Post by Bartweiss »

__derek__ wrote: post #96
icebraining wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

They added the feature that used to bug me the most: when I search, my saved locations now get preferential treatment. And, yet, the maps themselves are worse: they changed the algorithm for which labels are displayed, making it impossible to cause some street names to appear.

That's by far my biggest complaint. Driving in a dense and disorganized city, street names are sometimes the only way to sort out which of several connected (or vertically-overlapping) streets Maps actually wants me to take.

But with the labelling change, it's impossible to coax out the needed information. Combine that with Google's exotic definitions of "sharp" and "small" turns and it's surprisingly inconvenient.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#324

Post by golemotron »

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…

Steve Jobs balanced aesthetics and usability. Jony Ive is 100% aesthetics. That's the trap they are in now.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#325

Post by coredog64 »

majewsky wrote: post #204
labster wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fdupes is your friend in cases like these — it finds duplicate files fast. As usual, the CLI tools are much better at solving problems than a terrible GUI like iTunes.

You don't even need a separate tool for that: find -type f -name \*.mp3 -exec md5sum {} + \ | uniq -dDw 32

Wouldn't the play count metadata embedded in the file lead to different md5sums?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#326

Post by Raphmedia »

knodi123 wrote: post #293
majewsky wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need a separate tool for that: find -type f -name \*.mp3 -exec md5sum {} + \ | uniq -dDw 32

The problem isn't duplicate files , it's that iTunes has an internal list of songs, and it allows the same file to appear in the list twice. I can manage a directory of files, I just can't manage iTunes' indexing of them. I understand why you would have assumed this was a file issue, though, because the real problem is the most idiotically stupid thing ever.

Isn't the library simply a big .xml file? I wonder if you could parse it yourself to get rid of the duplicate.

I would try but I have a 20k+ songs itunes library and it takes hours to reindex whenever I move anything...

Re: iTunes will never work well

#327

Post by MereKatMoves »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #98

iTunes is the worst piece of software I've come across in a long time. I banned it from my computer until I upgraded to my iPhone 7. Now, the only computer with enough disk space to accommodate my backups of 256GB is my personal desktop, so I was forced to install iTunes. It's infuriating and in the 4 years that I haven't used iTunes, it hasn't gotten any better. I would love to blacklist whoever is responsible for i…

iTunes is actually SoundJamMP under the hood. That app was (if memory serves) released 16 years ago and subsequently bought by Apple. AFAIK the core of iTunes is still unchanged from then and all Apple have done is simply bloat the UI and bolt on additional functionality (eg AAC playback, videos and iCloud etc) without ever re-examining the underlying engine.

SoundJam was great for me in 2001 playing mp3s and as most of the tone of this thread seems to confirm, everything else since then has simply given users extra grief to cope with when wishing to play a simple music file in a simple manner.

I've stuck at OSX 10.6.8 and iTunes 10.6.1 (which is still 239MB of bloat) rather than upgrade. That's where I'm staying as Apple only ever seem to make stuff worse these days.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#329

Post by izacus »

newscracker wrote: post #310

Apple needs to allow importing songs into the Music app on iOS from any source, not just iTunes and its own store. This has been a long standing pain point. Not everybody wants Apple Music and not everybody wants to buy music from Apple. But there are people with existing music collections who want to add them to iOS devices easily without having to use iTunes. This procedure works for iBooks, where you can add books…

Isn't that what iTunes Match did (does?) for a fee?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#330

Post by marmshallow »

pfranz wrote: post #66
lukevers wrote: 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…

The lack of async and modal dialogs drive me nuts with iTunes. My main gripe is syncing my ipod or phone interrupts music playback--they should be completely separate things. Ideally separate applications.

Which dialogs?

I don't seem to have the same issue with playback and syncing.

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