Why do people hate iTunes?

[KillyKillall]

I've used iTunes ever since I purchased my iPod about 1.5 years ago. It catalogs my music, plays my music, doesn't give me any problems, is very easy to use and works well.

Why do people hate it so much? I don't get it. Is it just because Apple puts it out or is it something I'm missing here? I understand why people like WinAmp because of all the equalizers and such, but as far as a basic app, what the hell is wrong with iTunes?

Please help me understand because people always bitch about it, but never give specific factual reasons for disliking it.

FYI - I don't own a mac and never have. So please don't pull that mac vs. pc stuff.

 

[JetBlack69]

I don't "hate" it, but I don't use it. I don't use it because it doesn't support FLAC, which is what I use. However, I have an iPod 3G and an iPod Shuffle, so I only use iTunes to transfer music to them. I use foobar2000 to convert FLAC to AAC.

 

[1Cheap2Crazy]

I hate that iTunes feels it always needs to call home. I just want to play a song, I don't see a reason to connect to the internet. If I'm not buying a song, leave me alone Apple. I use an old version of winamp. If I have to search for a song I use Copernic.

 

[xtknight]

It's cool to hate Apple stuff. Personally I think it's fine but all I've used it for is one free song from a Pepsi bottle cap. The fact they release a version for a UNIX-based OS like Mac OS X and just forget about Linux doesn't really make me happy though.

I do have a place where they can shove their copy-protection (not just Apple, everybody) but I think the program is fine. Either they should make every media playback device support every copy-protection or not implement it at all.

 

[fs5]

I love iTunes, but it's not w/o faults. Here's common reasons why people don't use it.

1) It re-organizes your library if you're not smart enough to uncheck the option during install.
2) People have very meticulous ways of organizing their music library (ie c:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album\Song) so they use explorer as their organizer.
3) If I just downloaded a song and I just want to play it. Not add it to my library or open up the resource hog that is iTunes
4) It doesn't follow standard windows UI. Like shift down to select songs, which annoys me to no end.
5) Trendy to hate Apple stuff.
6) No FLAC/Ogg support.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: fs5
I love iTunes, but it's not w/o faults. Here's common reasons why people don't use it.

1) It re-organizes your library if you're not smart enough to uncheck the option during install.
2) People have very meticulous ways of organizing their music library (ie c:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album\Song) so they use explorer as their organizer.
3) If I just downloaded a song and I just want to play it. Not add it to my library or open up the resource hog that is iTunes
4) It doesn't follow standard windows UI. Like shift down to select songs, which annoys me to no end.
5) Trendy to hate Apple stuff.
6) No FLAC/Ogg support.

7) It puts itself in the system tray, Run, desktop, and every other place it can find (Real Player wannabe stylin for intrusiveness)

 

[corkyg]

I don't hate it at all. It's just not something I need, mainly because they don't have much in the way ofmain stream jazz.

 

[Thyme]

8) In addition to not supporting FLAC and Ogg, it doesn't support other codecs just because they won't play on an iPod
9) It encourages cross-encoding WMA. Even if it's inferior, there's no reason to cross-encode
10) No SDK to improve upon it
11) Interface can be clunky for doing certain things, especially with keyboard (no Jump To like Winamp has)

 

[CKent]

I don't hate it, it just does things I don't need my music playing solution to do, creating bloat, and doesn't do things I do need. I've suggested it to family and friends who aren't very into computing and they all love it; they're its target demographic and the feature set is perfect for them.

 

[fs5]

Originally posted by: Thyme
8) In addition to not supporting FLAC and Ogg, it doesn't support other codecs just because they won't play on an iPod
9) It encourages cross-encoding WMA. Even if it's inferior, there's no reason to cross-encode
10) No SDK to improve upon it
11) Interface can be clunky for doing certain things, especially with keyboard (no Jump To like Winamp has)

10) not completely true: http://developer.apple.com/sdk/

 

[DaveSimmons]

I have my entire collection ripped with EAC to lossless FLAC, so it's annoying that the arrogant unprintables at Apple won't take 10 minutes away from swimming in their money piles to use the royalty free open source for FLAC decoding to add an importer to AAC that would preserve the ID tags.

 

[gorcorps]

Bloated and ruins my tags so they only work right w/ ipods and no other mp3 player. Plus foobar2000 sounds a lot better.

 

[0roo0roo]

good functionality
bad bloat

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: fs5
> 10) No SDK to improve upon it
10) not completely true: http://developer.apple.com/sdk/

Hmm, tagging! I may have to take a stab at writing a FLAC-to-WAV-to-AAC-with-tags applet since I have 1,000+ CDs in FLAC format.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

i use itunes but it installs mess like ipodhelper and ituneshelper or some nonsense like that.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I do have a place where they can shove their copy-protection (not just Apple, everybody) but I think the program is fine. Either they should make every media playback device support every copy-protection or not implement it at all.

Blame Apple for that one.

 

[Fenixgoon]

because itunes installs with quicktime, quicktime sucks, and itunes sucks compared to winamp

edit: winamp 2.9X was the best version ever. if they could just update it to include newer media support and skin support, it'd be amazing. still, winamp 5.X is a good compromise of versions 3 and 2 (3 had better skin support, slow as balls)

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
because itunes installs with quicktime, quicktime sucks, and itunes sucks compared to winamp

I think you can get itunes without quicktime.

 

[Drakkon]

i just got an ipod this week and am using itunes for the first time after using WMP for my old H10....all i have to say is this prog is a SLOW piece of crap, every time i connect and try to move songs around it gets lost and if i try and do movies it practically locks up. I cant drag music around i have to wait for it to "Automatically" import. This has happend on the two comps and 1 laptop i tried it on and for others around me ive noticed it as well.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

because iTunes is just one of the carriers of Apple's grand agenda (enforcing their technologies and promoting their products). iTunes does several things, it pushes Apple's version of AAC in an attempt to have the "next mp3" (vs. - say - Microsoft's WMA, or Sony's ATRAC). Provided that AAC should be the best lossy format that iTunes supports, users opting for a lossy format don't really have alternative choices.

iPod. iPods are decent, (and considering there aren't very many alternatives that are any better...) but the easiest way to support them by far is with iTunes.

Of course there's all the bloat (and it can also start up process services that aren't necessary to be on all the time)


iTunes is great for only a few reasons I can think of.

1. User friendly (it isn't hard to get music playing and finding the music you want to play is easy)
2. Looks decent by default (also helping it to be user friendly, because you can find your way around it without any pain)


Foobar2000 is the best player I've used thus far.

1. So many options and bells and whistles - all in a low foot print
2. Customizable, it can play just about any format under the sun, and you can get it to look the way you want.

Although because its better/more advanced, it?s a lot harder to use and get setup the way you want to.

Winamp is flawed because it was and still is largely based on the assumption that you're going be using small play lists. Messing with the media library in winamp 3/5 is a pain because I'd rather just have the library up all the time instead of opening and closing it all the time - instead you're just forced to have several messy player windows open and cluttering things up. Winamp 2 is just too old. I guess if you handled your music strictly through explorer and played it that way, or set up several (SEVERAL) small play lists, it would definitely be the best player for the job ? but that?s just too much work for me.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I use it on my Macs, but no where else. If it played ogg and ran on everything I use I'd consider it.

 

[JackBurton]

I :heart: iTunes.

 

[yosuke188]

No FLAC = :brokenheart:

 

[ockky]

i like itunes, but maybe because it has never run slow for me. it's easy to browse and most importantly, it's visualizer is top-notch!

the only thing i hate about it, is while playing through my entire playlist, it likes to lockup on some songs eventhough later i can play that same song with no problems...oh well, it doesn't happen enough to make me change.

ps: i used winamp back in the day before i got my ipod

 

[Smilin]

Not a big DRM fan. I like MP3s better even if the compression quality (at same sound quality) isn't as good.