Most of you probably know I dislike Apple. I’ve always been a PC guy, and feel that Apple develops without consideration for function, focusing strictly on form and being different just for the sole purpose of being different. This doesn’t sit well with me since I consider myself a function > form type of techie.
But I’m not without experience. I have used iPods before, and even had an OSX boot on VMWare on my PC. Not quite extensive use, but enough for me to get pissed at Apple.
Let’s backtrack a little. Apple came out of left field and ate Sony for breakfast during the previous portable wars, holding over 70% of marketshare by 2007. Goodbye Walkman. Currently they even have 95% of the tablet marketshare with the iPad. Pretty impressive numbers. They adapted after struggling vs Microsoft, and slowly grew in the tech industry to spread from the niche iMac market to blowing out the competition in peripherals. Nice.
So flash forward a few years (4?) since my last iPod Nano that Samsuke gave me. I now have an iPhone 3GS, and so far iOS is fairly sleek and impressive compared to all the other phones I have touched. BUT. I hated iTunes then, and I realized now I hate it even more. Why? WHERE IS THE INNOVATION? Innovate or die? I think not.
How is such a crucial component of their backbone so terrible? Did they not learn anything from the years of competing development which came before them? Winamp & MediaMonkey, two prime examples of proper audio software. So where are the problems with iTunes?
Functionality is terrible.
1 – When adding music folders to your library, you lose control of iTunes. I.e., I had a song playing. I added a folder to library. A large folder, thousands of files. I basically had to wait half an hour for iTunes to add all the music. WHY does this not process in the background??? Winamp Media Library has been running in the background ever since I can remember it’s introduction.
2 – Most of my mp3s which display album artwork properly in Winamp, do not in iTunes. Even the ID3 tag compatibility with iTunes is terrible. Manually editing this type of crap sucks. Can’t get album artwork for mp3s not purchased from iTunes Store? Fail.
3 – Playlists don’t sync to your devices the way they should. You have a playlist on your local PC. You add it to your iPod/iPhone/etc. You edit the playlist, add more songs, whatever. Changes are made. You drag and drop the same playlist to your device. Instead of updating the changes, IT ADDS EVERYTHING AGAIN. Mass duplicates.
4 – There is no ‘remove duplicates’ feature? You can though, click to ‘view duplicates’ and then proceed to manually delete them. What an amazing feature. AMAZING AT WASTING MY TIME.
5 – If you drag and drop files/folders onto iTunes, it doesn’t immediately play. It only gets added to your library, then you have to search for it. I had to make a temporary playlist for drag&drop purposes, just to more easily browse through songs I just downloaded.
The real bad part? This is just off the top of my head from using iTunes for a few days. On top of that, it’s ridiculous that they proprietize all their devices and software…these days it’s all about cross-compatibility. But nah, Apple would rather screw their user-base and force them to pay exorbitant premiums. You can’t replace your own battery? No external memory? Can’t wait till the competitors take over.
As much as Apple is about refining the user experience, at the core they are pretty bad at it…damn good at making money though!!! Kinda sad, such a large user base and most of them probably don’t know how much better things could be. /endrant.