iTunes®

For a long time I have had a problem with iTunes®. I just don’t like it and I know that I am not alone. I have thought about this for a long time but after a quick few tweets between myself and westhamprocess tonight on twitter I felt the need to write something.

As far as media management software goes there are far far better options available to us out there and yet Apple force us to use iTunes. Now this wouldn’t be such a problem if it was a well designed and slick piece of software but lest be honest, it’s not.  Only the most ardent of Apple fanboys would argue with me that it’s good.

Apple as a company are the masters of media hype and it works for them, just look at the products they have launched and the storm they create amongst the masses.  People queue for days and would do almost anything to get their hands on the latest and greatest Apple product, just look at the iPhone® and iPad® for example.  I am not going to argue that these products are not great, those days are long gone for me as it’s like fighting a losing battle.  I am still not over enamoured with the products but as an owner of two iPods® and an iPhone along with an iPod for my missus I would be a hypocrite to criticise the products too much.

Herein lies the problem though, iTunes!!!!!

for want of a better phrase, I have sat here for a while writing and re-writing what I was going to say but it still comes back to the same stock phrase that is going round and round in my head:

IT’S UTTER SHITE!!!!!

From the very start of booting up iTunes the problems start.  As I have previously mentioned there are a couple of Apple products that rely on iTunes in this house and yet you still can’t get the bloody software to auto detect what product has been connected and load up the right iTunes library, what’s that all about? Once connected you know the individual serial number and can even show a picture of the right product and even the colour but you can’t tie that into an individual library? I still have to keep my finger on the shift key when clicking the iTunes icon and then manually select the library I want.  Seriously this is schoolboy stuff and it really does make you look like amateurs.

The software is a resource hog, I’m not kidding does it really need to hog so much of a computers power just to fire up and browse the store? And the controls and just general layout and feel are so tired now it really need a major overhaul.

I don’t understand a company that puts so much effort into it’s media hype and design of their hardware products but can’t sort out one of their most used and main pieces of software.  It’s one of the main reasons I still will not buy one of the Mac range of pc’s (apart from still being way too overpriced for what they are of course) I have this feeling that if they are so blaise about something as important as iTunes then how do they treat the rest of their software? it’s a reasonable question I think.

I could look elsewhere for software to manage my iPods and iPhone as it is out there and does a good job but you still need iTunes in the initial set up process and yes, I buy my music so it’s convenient to do it all in the one place although I do buy from play.com and Amazon more now and then just import in as well as buy traditional CD’s .  My iPhone needs the app store so again it’s kind of difficult to ditch iTunes altogether even though I tend to browse the store from the phone more than I do the pc for this reason.

This is not an Apple bash post so I am not going to over rant and start picking up on every single thing that needles me about iTunes but I am being honest when I say that Apples attitude towards iTunes does stop me from making the final step over to the darkside and try out a Mac in whatever guise I choose.

How about it Mr Jobs, how about you stop focusing on the hardware just for a while and get one of your most important pieces of software sorted out.  you have pulled it off with the iPhone and by the looks of it you have done it again with the iPad so why not get a team together and really overhaul iTunes from the top to the bottom and give us a piece of media management software that resembles the rest of the Apple portfolio and not what seems to be an afterthought these days.  We get updates from time to time but an educated guess tells me that its more about stopping jailbreakers than sorting out iTunes.

Sort out iTunes Mr Jobs, I am not alone in my hatred for it.

I will leave you with a quote that I wholeheartedly agree with.  Charlie Brooker is a TV Personality who also writes a newspaper column for The Guardian newspaper.  Now I don’t know how tech savvy Charlie is but that is not the important thing here, he recognises just how woeful iTunes is and when someone writes it in a newspaper column then others will take note.

You’re required to use iTunes during the setup process, which is like being forced to eat a handful of mud. iTunes is twice as awful as any software crime Microsoft ever inflicted on the world.