[Faxmonkey]

I love my iPhone, don't get me wrong -- but I just absolutely cannot stand iTunes. It's feature-poor, heavily-bloated, and has a bad UI. Every feature seems calculated specifically to help Apple find a way to get their hands in your pocket.

Plenty of other players can download Album art, get Podcasts, or use "smart" playlists. Why is Apple the only one who requires you to have a credit card on file with them in order to do so? Does that seem a bit ridiculous to anyone else? Is it really necessary that Apple know who I am before sending me some Abulm Art or making a playlist for me?

And what about video conversion? It's bad enough that ipods/iphones are one of the few players on the market that don't support hard-drive mode and MUST be synced via iTunes, but how does Apple justify not support conversions between some of the most standardized formats in the industry? Great, it'll convert one resolution of quicktime into another. Now why can't it convert my DivX? Every other media player on the market comes with software that will convert DivX into whatever format that player supports. Apple is the only exception (actually, most players these days will just play DivX with no transcoding necessary).

Am I the only one that suspects that Apple intentionally denies this core functionality in a crass attempt to get you to simply buy iTunes store versions of your music/videos in order to avoid the hassle of buying/using a third party conversion software?

I could rant for days, but suffice to say that iTunes just really burns my butter. I don't know what I'd do without my iPhone but I just can't imagine how iTunes could have been made by the same company -- or even how it could have been made on the same planet.

Am I the only one? Really?

[plaxo]

Ok...first thats what we call trade globally and capitalism is the system
and
YES you are right
Apple is pushing us to use its own software and its own standarts even they are limited and out of standarts..
Have a look at bluetooth and mms ..
and many features that iphone has and we don't ..
Its what Apple and other firms have in common ...
but i guess Apple does this in a smoother way than the other firms like microsoft ..it ....us gently ..not raping style i mean ..it polishes shines softens and then asks us for possible positions it can ..... us..
it has a style of gently ...ing ..LOL
Enjoy it !!!

[reeko]

by your rant its clear that you use windows?

apples os and hardware is geared around locking you into everything apple. its the way apple work.

however, i find itunes easy to use and it helps me organise all my music.

i didnt like syncing my iphone with it but i like it now because i use my iphone for on the go music listening, obviously, and if i notice a track is misnamed or spelt etc. i can make a note and sort it out in itunes when i get home.

the whole trying to sell you stuff - hide the mini store + genius sidebar, and all you have in the music section is your tracks, whether bought or imported.

in a nutshell, itunes simply makes organising your music easier, imo, when you learn how to use it properly. however, i can understand that some people don't get along with it.

[boe_dye]

yes itunes is slow and annoying to use on windows. I myself loathe everytime i turn it on.

I have sort of found a solution, but it hasnt caught up to the iphone yet, and its called sharepod.

Its a self contained app so no installation required. Its great cause you can just drag and drop your music and video without itunes.

However, as i said he is still working on iphone compatability, which doesnt really do much now, but in time...

I also hate how itunes 'organizes' and takes over my music. I dont need them to get drm for me in order to play my library.

Im old school, just give me winamp any day!

One more thing about sharepod, you can extract music/video from any computer from your ipod. So say your at your friends house and he liked you movies, just run sharepod and he can have it!

So its sorta disk mode-ish.

[mrgermy]

I know a few people who hate iTunes but I've never had an issue with it. I used to hate how sluggish it was to search but now its instant.

I use it on my Macbook so I don't know how it is in Windows but yeah... no complaints here.

[djfantom]

i love itunes. i use 2 different softwares to dj with (serato and virtual dj) , along with turntables , cd players and midi controllers) and both read itunes library. itunes is the center of my music organization. playlists and folders in itunes i can easily organize my myusic then just open the playlists in my dj software and mix no hassles. i can easily sync my iphone . get new tracks just throw em into my itunes playlists and im good. no hassle no fuss. i love itunes its the best thing since sliced bread

[sziklassy]

I too hate itunes. All I want is a damn drag and drop onto my player. I don't use playlists much (and if I do genius is good enough for me). Have a windows and a mac computer so there is no bias here. The fact that i don;t even BUY anything off of iTunes makes me hate the fact that I have to use it that much more!

[CaptainChaos]

Hopefully Songbird will release an iPhone compatible update soon so I can ditch iTunes. It is as bad a Windows Media Player.

[boxxa]

Ya iTunes is pretty bad and I wish there was something else out there to do some of the same things or better but I have grown to like it. One thing was buying a faster computer caused it to run better.

Still can't wait for an alternative.

[Eurisko]

It always amuses me that Windows users expect every other company out there to conform to Windows standards. Ah Bill, what a substandard world you've created, and even convincing your users to have substandard expectations.

Through iTunes I have been downloading Album Artwork, getting Podcasts and using smart playlists for years, and I've never been asked for my credit card number. Not sure what world you're living in. And movies... feed your Divx movies into iTunes, right-click on them and select "Convert Selection for iPhone". Simple as that.

You should really investigate what features a program has before flaming it.

[soulthoughts]

Originally Posted by Eurisko

And movies... feed your Divx movies into iTunes, right-click on them and select "Convert Selection for iPhone". Simple as that.

I did not know that!

[CaptainChaos]

Originally Posted by soulthoughts

I did not know that!

+1 I didn't know this either.

[Faxmonkey]

It will NOT convert DivX to iPhone formats. It will not even play them. I've used its converter a few times and its VERY selective and limited as to what it will take as an input file. It will not recognize tons of major formats. If "Convert Selection for iPhone" works with DivX files for you, then you've done some amazing voodoo magic that you need to share with me.

I've investigated the hell out of it, and I've found nothing but forums of agreement that iTunes cannot convert divx and that you need a 3rd party solution.

And you honestly think the ability to playback FLAC, and OGG are merely just "windows" standards? DivX? These are standards EVERYWHERE but apple intentionally does not support them because they think by making it inconvenient enough for you to play the stuff you bought off someone else's music store, you'll just give up and buy it a second time off iTunes. I mean, maybe not support WMV/WMA I could almost see, but there's actually very few formats that iTunes *does* support.

Through iTunes I have been downloading Album Artwork, getting Podcasts and using smart playlists for years, and I've never been asked for my credit card number.

All of those features I listed require you to have an iTunes account. You may not recall creating your iTunes account, but trust me, it required a credit card to verify your identity. So, yes they do require a credit card. They do not ask you for the number each time, but if you've not supplied your iTunes login/password at some point, then they do not work.

I have no doubt that the reason for this is that they've done some study that says that people who already have an iTunes account but have never purchased anything are 4 times more likely to make a purchase someday than someone who doesn't have one -- and thus, even if they are not charging you for those iTunes features, by leaving the software crippled unless you have an account, they hope to force you to make an account in order to ensure some sort of future income.

And again, if you've seriously got a way to make iTunes even playback DivX, let alone convert it, then you need to share that with me. If there's some sort special place to put a codec to get iTunes to recognize that is not where you normally put them or something, then please share. I'd love to know how to do that. As it stands now, you can't drag and drop a DivX file into your library, let alone click it to even try to tell it to convert. It'll just reject the file outright as something unrecognizable.

[Eurisko]

The only features in which an iTunes Store account is required is for purchases. That is the first and only time I was asked for my credit card info. But just to clear things up, I'll download and install a fresh copy of iTunes on my PC tonight, and see what it says when I try to do any of the functions you mentioned.

iTunes will also recognize, play and convert from any codec currently installed on your computer (excluding WMV because of licensing) to M4V. Are you using XP or Vista?

[Faxmonkey]

Currently Vista, but iTunes didn't recognize any of my installed codecs under XP either on my other system. If I try to drag and drop a divx file into my iTunes library it does not recognize the file, every other media player installed on my system (and I have quite a few) has no problem finding all my codecs.

Also you don't have to re-install to see that Cover Art Downloading requires a iTunes account (despite the fact that this is a common feature in other programs that have no such requirement -- I personally use Picard for all my coverflow tagging). To see it, simply go to Advanced --> Get Album Artwork and it'll bring up a little dialog box telling you so (unless you were already logged in when you selected it).

I'm told genius playlists have the same requirement, but I have avoided upgrading to 8.X.X versions of iTunes simply because it fails to add any new features I'm interested in (at least not according to the release notes). I do not need a new visualizer or genius playlists.

Also, somehow, the Winamp Install file (which I think is a much more fully-featured player, even if it is a bit bloated itself) clocks in at about 8 megabytes while itunes is a whopping 80. The actual iTunes install is 82, while the winamp install is 25. Still, iTunes seems fairly . . . large. Unless all the iTunes store artwork is stored client-side, I can't really figure out why it is that iTunes takes up so much space or why it runes 4 separate background processes instead of just 1.

Sorry, it's really hard for me to talk about iTunes without it turning into a rant. That said, I really do love my iPhone and I just wish the two weren't married together.

Edit: Oh, for the sake of fairness, I suppose I should clarify: It's the podcasts that you get through the iTunes store that require an iTunes account. It effectively makes you "pay" $0.0 for them, so you need to have the account made to get any of the free ones. You can still get podcasts directly without an iTunes account if you have a URL linking directly to them.

It's the same thing with Appstore apps that are free still requiring you to have an account. No free apps for people without credit cards (I have one of course, but I wonder what all the people using pre-paid because they failed their credit check do).

So, not to be misleading, you can do podcasts without an itunes account, just not any of the ones hosted on the iTunes store . . . Cover Art and (afaik) Genius Playlists also require the account.