I don’t understand why iTunes is so bad. Is it because I am using it under Vista or is it just because Apple doesn’t actually care much past selling the hardware?
I have a simple set of requirements for iTunes – I don’t use it for managing a music library – I use it because it is the only piece of software that does a half decent job of putting podcasts onto my iPod shuffle. I say ‘half-decent job’ – because that’s all it seems to do really – half a job. Basically – without it I can’t really use the iPod. But which one is free and which one is crap?
So I have some ‘functional’ issues:
If it fails or loses an episode of some podcast (which can happen frequently!) it puts a little explanation mark next to it helpfully telling me it doesn’t know where the audio is. IS THERE A BUTTON TO RE-DOWNLOAD? NO! One has to delete the entry, collapse the menu, re-open the menu with pressed which not only restores the one I just deleted but ALL of the deleted ones – so I have to remember which ones I haven’t listened to – and then I can re-download. Argh!
It seems to forget which podcasts go on the iPod (I want ALL of them) – and if I choose the podcast and select ‘add to Ronnie’s iPod’ I get duplicates of the ones already there (admittedly this has only happened recently since v8 – things getting better?). Argh!
Most of the time it works out which ones I have played and deletes them – but I would like to be able to set a threshold for how much I have to listen to so that I don’t have to listen to all of the credits at the end of the podcasts just so that it automatically gets deleted – this is about the most reliable feature at the moment - when I first started using the shuffle it was the worst – so there are improvements…
My biggest beef (and only because I have to do far too much clicking about in the UI – if it just sync’d up my podcasts without touching like it ought to then this wouldn’t be an issue) is the complete sluggishness of the UI. I have never seen a piece of software that takes so looooooong for something to happen when I click the mouse button – is iTunes this crap on a mac? I hope not! I put this one down to Apple just not caring too much about the PC market.
But for some reason I still love walking around the Apple store – they do make some sexy stuff! Just go fix bloody iTunes – I don’t actually care how sexy the UI is – I just want podcasts on my iPod – how hard can that be?
Ronnie, you are so right the program in essence is great but has so many bugs & glitches… My library is currently 11815 in one and nearly 20000 in another and I darent combine them as I know there are duplicates and then it will take me days on end to go through them, then I have to redo all the playlists – why cant it detect duplicates and optional delete and why cant it retain your playlists?! Doesnt seem so hard to me! Also if you try to do an iPod sync with this many tunes and some films and photos it totally takes over your system and if you try to do any work the whole thing hangs and you have to start again. Why? It’s not such a big program and the function is just uploading to another hard drive so why does it need to hog all the resources! Perhaps you’re right Ronnie – they just dont care about us PC users, however it doesnt inspire me to want to go the Mac route, just maybe another MP3 player!! cheers
By: Chrisrolph on November 23, 2008
at 1:28 pm