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Dan the Man
05-04-2008, 07:25 AM
I've never been more infuriated by a single piece of software as I have with iTunes. If it isn't the fact that there is no information available regarding what bug fixes and improvements have been implemented into a new patch, it's the fact that there's absolutely no logic to the way the software behaves!

These are my current issues with the software:


At the moment there is a discrepancy of 42 songs between the iTunes library on my PC and what's on my iPod Classic. After so many damn updates to the software you would think that by now there'd be some kind of verification that the song lists match between the two, but no. I managed to find an album on my iPod that's missing tracks, and tried changing the track info in iTunes so that the next time I synched my iPod those missing tracks would be transferred, but after doing this only 1 out of 6 actually copied across!
I spent a while deleting composer information from my music, and in order to check that it had all gone I enabled the composer column in the music view. What then happened was that, while I was online, if ever I played a track, its composer information would be updated automatically. To stop iTunes from doing this I had to delete all the composer information again and disable viewing that column.
There's a podcast I downloaded that for some reason is in my iTunes library three times, and I can't get rid of the two extra copies without iTunes warning me that it's trying to copy them to my iPod the next time I sync it. It only shows up once in both iTunes and on my iPod, but if I remove that one then the others are still there taking up disk space.
iTunes lets you view your music by album, with artwork, but for some reason some of my albums would have the first track separate from the rest. To solve this I had to highlight all the tracks in an album and edit the track info so that it all matched up. However, after doing this I still have two albums that are split up randomly, one of which is split three ways. No matter what I do to the song info I cannot get the tracks to sit within the one album.
Changing file information within iTunes is supposed to update the iTunes Music folder automatically if you have that option selected, but many times I end up with my music or TV episodes sitting in separate folders on my PC. Also, the fact that iTunes doesn't delete empty folders is really annoying if ever I'm browsing my music library through Windows Explorer, as I find myself having to check that all these weirdly named folders are actually empty of files!
I have a series of about 14 free video podcasts that play fine in iTunes, but the first five of them do not play on my iPod. They're already in iPod format, and if I use iTunes to convert them to the right format, the audio becomes corrupted. (I think this is something to do with the generation of iPod Classic).


Anyway, that's my rant over. Do other people have similar problems? It must be mainly to do with the database format that Apple use to organise libraries. What's so good about the database system anyway - it's probably the main reason why people find it so hard to transfer music from iPod to PC. (Well, that and the fact that Apple don't want people to be able to do it in the first place. Question: if all this third party software is legal, then why don't Apple just implement iPod-to-PC functionality into iTunes themselves?).

Oh yeah, and Apple's telephone support sucks.

Daveman
05-04-2008, 12:42 PM
www.yamipod.com

Drag and drop files from your PC to your iPod. You can get music from other PCs as well. It's not a media player, but you probably have a better program for that anyway. Ever since iTunes wiped my iPod when I specifically told it not to synch, I haven't been able to force myself to use it. I don't care if it's hard to get podcasts or videos without it, that program gives me headaches.

Usurper
05-06-2008, 12:16 AM
Winamp can load up your ipod nowadays.

I hate iTunes, and am glad I can get my Battlestar on Hulu now.

Daveman
05-06-2008, 12:55 AM
Well, my hard drive space is limited since I'm on a laptop, so Yamipod is good in that it allows me to add or remove music from my iPod without synching, which means I can delete stuff after it's on there. I don't listen to music on my computer anyway, because my iPod is always right on hand and my headphones are a hell of a lot better than my speakers. :D

Dan the Man
05-08-2008, 07:19 PM
I may have been a bit hasty with my first (and most major) complaint - turns out that although I was on automatic sync, I had it set to 'all music and selected playlists', and even though every single playlist was checked, there were those 40-something tracks not being synched across. Still, it's hard to fathom why iTunes would do that.

Water12356
05-09-2008, 01:14 AM
The only major issue that I ever had, was that it didnt wana burn CD's in an earlier version. But thats been fixed for a while. Itunes isnt anything heaven sent, but it loads up my ipod and allows me to buy more music at reasonable prices, so im content. :)

FireFly
05-09-2008, 06:45 AM
I've had problems with duplicate artists and albums, but for me it's always solved by selecting the songs concerned and editing them as one item. And I haven't had any problems deleting multiple copies of the same podcast (although they always show up in iTunes itself, for me).

The problems I have had (iTunes not recognising my iPod, the disc filling up with unrecognisable data) were fixed by doing a full restore.

Xonic
05-16-2008, 08:45 AM
Never used iTunes, never will. Winamp does it for me.

Joe Siegler
05-16-2008, 10:09 AM
Never used iTunes, never will. Winamp does it for me.

I used to think that way. Except I've bought a decent amount of tunes from them, and those play in iTunes. Yeah, I could burn 'em, re-rip to remove the DRM.

But iTunes is nowhere near as bad as most of the haters make it out to be. It's pretty decent software. And I did pay for Winamp. Twice (v2 series, & v5 series).

Xonic
05-16-2008, 10:38 AM
I used to think that way. Except I've bought a decent amount of tunes from them, and those play in iTunes. Yeah, I could burn 'em, re-rip to remove the DRM.

But iTunes is nowhere near as bad as most of the haters make it out to be. It's pretty decent software. And I did pay for Winamp. Twice (v2 series, & v5 series).

Well, I'm not saying using iTunes is wrong. Actually I just said I've never used it and never will, so I don't care if you use it or not. Whatever works for you. And Winamp does it for me.

Usurper
05-16-2008, 11:40 AM
I used the Itunes store for music a couple times. I'll never make that mistake again.

The Amazon mp3 store is better (omg previews), usually cheaper, and uses drm-free mp3.

fast-1
05-16-2008, 11:59 AM
I notice with windows Media Player and Itunes you can rip cd's to your PC, then you cannot find the folder that Itunes stores the music, another thing about burning music to CDR from direct download. I got a Prey music to download how do you set it up to play from cd I got a key.

Joe Siegler
05-16-2008, 01:33 PM
The Amazon mp3 store is better (omg previews), usually cheaper, and uses drm-free mp3.

Actually, itunes does DRM free as well. It's not Apple that decides that, it's the record labels. Amazon's store doesn't have the selection that iTunes does, that's because of the DRM issue. The stuff that Amazon has as DRM free iTunes does as well, they call that stuff "iTunes plus".

Usurper
05-16-2008, 02:12 PM
Do they still charge extra for DRM-free? I vaguely remember hearing that they brought it down to the same price, but wasn't sure if that was store-wide or certain titles or something they planned to do later.

ADM
05-16-2008, 03:11 PM
I love iTunes, everything about it. I love the media management and how it handles track counts and everything. I mainly use it for my iPod Touch and I use that everywhere I go so I like the fact that it merges with iTunes and keeps all data.

Also podcasts are really easy to get with iTunes.

I used to use winamp all the time but since switching over to iTunes haven't looked back. Plus I even bought Winamp.

iTunes + FoxyTunes Firefox app = :love:

peoplessi
05-16-2008, 05:15 PM
It certainly is good if you only use apple products in conjuction, as it messes tags.

Xonic
05-16-2008, 06:53 PM
I actually prefer to buy hardcopies of music, even if it's more expensive.

Daveman
05-16-2008, 07:22 PM
I actually prefer to buy hardcopies of music, even if it's more expensive.

Me too. And since my hard drive can't handle all my music once I've put it on my iPod, iTunes isn't an option at all.

Dan the Man
05-17-2008, 08:34 AM
I actually prefer to buy hardcopies of music, even if it's more expensive.

I still buy CDs as well. Not only do you get the packaging, and a reliable backup of your music, but you don't have to worry about compatibility issues like you do with downloads. (Music from the iTunes Store didn't work with my old Creative MP3 player, and a WMV that I downloaded recently won't go onto my iPod). Also, unless the music you're after is rare or brand new, a CD can often be cheaper than downloading the album, in my experience.

shiranui
05-28-2008, 11:56 PM
www.yamipod.com

Drag and drop files from your PC to your iPod. You can get music from other PCs as well. It's not a media player, but you probably have a better program for that anyway. Ever since iTunes wiped my iPod when I specifically told it not to synch, I haven't been able to force myself to use it. I don't care if it's hard to get podcasts or videos without it, that program gives me headaches.

I remember when my wife went into hospital for a week, to have the baby.
I decided to fill her ipod mini with her favourite songs to keep her occupied. itunes was driving me crazy so I ditched it and looked for an alternative.
I found Yamipod and it worked beautifully! It put me in such a good mood, after itunes had pissed me off, that I promptly paypalled the bugger who made it, $30.....:insomnia: