What is Digg?Sponsored by Sony Pictures
Watch a scene from 2012, in theaters November 13 view!
whowillsurvive2012.com - Get ready for the biggest event in history – the end of time. How will you survive? 2012- opening 11/13
180 Comments
- hawksfan03, on 10/07/2008, -1/+18611. Allow an update from 9.0 to 9.0.1 by downloading a 2 MB file instead of the entire iTunes installer
- ElBeh, on 10/08/2008, -2/+58How about not taking up a ***** of RAM on a Windows computer?
- Scott2, on 10/07/2008, -11/+62A reasonable article, although somewhat redundant at times, and shortsided in others. A few thoughts:
2. Don't like it? Turn it off. No one is forcing you to look at it.
3. I suspect the one size fits all approach works for 95% of people, but again, there does exist the capability for imported media to be scaled to fit different formats (Apple TV, iPod, etc).
4. Effective use of playlists, filtering, and metadata completely eliminate the need for multiple libraries.
5. Let iTunes organize your files instead of leaving them spread out all over your hard drive, where files and paths change regularly.
6. I've only ever had difficulty on a PC - the Mac iTunes Library file is XML and easily searched.
9. I suspect iTunes quality music is fine for 95% of people. Having higher quality songs would significantly decrease the already razor thin profit line by adding costs (bandwidth, storage, etc), even if there was a premium.
10. You and about 5 other people would pay for that. Besides, what would be so different between the two versions? There's a world of difference between Garageband and Logic, iMovie and Final Cut. - mytCbumps, on 10/08/2008, -5/+46How about not including all the other crap inside the installer?! I could care less for QuickTime, AppleSoftwareUpdate, Bonjour and MobileMe. All this garbage is inside the installer archive.
- bawpcwpn, on 10/07/2008, -8/+40Put it on one page idiots! Nobody likes clicking! From the article.
1. Clean up the user interface
Once upon a time iTunes UI was one of the best things about it. True, it looked a little bland, but the old List and Grid views at least made it easy to find your way around.
We still have List view, luckily, but last year's Cover Flow was always more novelty than genuinely useful addition. We can't forgive its inclusion in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's Finder either.
The new Grid view in iTunes 8 presents you with even more ways to slice the same content, adding more layers of complication and frustration at every turn. Don't believe us?
Check out the Artists tab. Here you'll see a Grid view of the all the Artists in your library. Move the cursor over the icon and you can side-scroll through the album art, just like you can in iPhoto '08.
Not only is the whole idea of being able to do this rubbish, but clicking on a piece of album art presents you with another version of the UI, this time the old style Grid complete with track listing and album artwork. Confusing? Gimmicky? Useless. Yes, yes and yes again.
2. Bar the Genius
OK, so it's a fairly easy way to auto-generate playlists, but at the expense of what? Your musical tastes get automatically submitted to Apple, which then hits you back with money-gouging recommendations based on content found in the iTunes Store.
This is the kind of hardcore sell we expect from pile-'em-high-sell-it-cheap merchants. We thought Apple thought differently.
And what about the iTunes Store arrows that sit next to every track in your library? You used to be able to turn them off. Now you can't. Grrr.
3. Better file handling
Like the little plastic donkey in Buckaroo, iTunes' burden keeps getting heavier and heavier - it has to be able to handle music, movies and TV shows for enjoying on your computer; ditto for your iPod, iPod touch and iPhone; and ditto again for Apple TV. Oh, and let's not forget about HD content, audiobooks, PDFs, applications and artwork. Plus the whole shopping thing. Sheesh.
The problem is, iTunes isn't very good at handling this at all. Ideally you want lean, mean versions of your music, movies, and so on for toting around on your iPod or whatever; and then full-fat alternatives for enjoyment at home.
In a sensible world, iTunes would enable you to seamlessly convert from the full-fat version to the skinny version as needed, and not leave your hard drive or your library in a confusing jumble afterwards. iTunes isn't sensible, it's downright moronic - it either has to separate versions for every device you own in your library; or you have to plump for a one-size-fits-all file that doesn't work particularly well anywhere. This needs to change.
4. Better handling for multiple libraries
One of the biggest features of iTunes 7 was the ability to create multiple iTunes libraries - handy if you want to keep high quality Apple TV files separate from your iPod-compatible ones, and so on. Unfortunately, Apple's implementation sucks. Here's why:
a) You have to remember to hold down the Alt [Option] key every time you click on the iTunes icon;
b) It's easy to forget which library you're in and add content to wrong place;
c) It doesn't matter anyway because iTunes quickly gets its Library Preferences in a knot and files you were expecting to appear in iTunes Library A suddenly turn up in Library B, and so on.
Third-party solutions like Doug Adam's iTunes Library Manager work better.
5. Better file tracking
iTunes is rubbish at keeping track of your files. Proof comes in the form of the growing number of third-party apps that try to take the pain out of managing thousands of files on your hard drive.
iTunes music and movie files seem to go missing at a whim: sometimes they disappear from the library, but not your iTunes Music folder; sometimes they get moved to a different location - particularly if you're using multiple libraries - and sometimes they go missing completely.
The only way to discover whether or not everything in the library is as it should be is to re-scan your entire iTunes Music folder using the Add To Library command on a regular basis. iTunes doesn't keep do this automatically. It should.
6. Better database handling
A lot of the problems we've hit on so far are due to way that iTunes handles the contents of your iTunes Music library (which, confusingly, also includes Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, and so on).
That's because iTunes stores all the information about the iTunes Music folder's content in the iTunes Library (.itl file on Windows) - an encrypted file that could be a glorified spreadsheet for all we know. It's certainly not a proper database.
Proof comes in the way iTunes works. Every time you fire it up, iTunes has to load the entire iTunes Library file into memory. Although Apple doesn't specify the maximum number of files iTunes can contain, it certainly gets slower and slower the more you stuff it with content - especially given the drawbacks we've mentioned above.
7. Better codec support
Given our concerns about iTunes' ability to handle different kind of media files, adding support for more codec sounds like a recipe for disaster. It needn't be.
iTunes currently supports Apple Lossless, AAC, AIFF, and MP3 audio, while also enabling you to convert DRM-free WMA tracks, as well as WAV. Video support is limited to H.264 and MPEG-4 video files. But what about Ogg Vorbis? True WMA and WMV support? DivX, MKV, FLV and the rest?
We suspect Apple doesn't support these - and never will - because it's not in its interest to do so. If Apple were to support protected WMA files, for example, it would not only have to pay royalties to Microsoft, but could also see iTunes Store customers leach away to online rivals. iTunes doesn't even support codecs like HD-AAC - a high definition audio codec for 24-bit recordings.
8. Multi-room for the rest of us
When Apple introduced the first AirPort Express in 2004, one if its selling points was that it enabled you to stream music to your Hi-Fi using AirTunes - a part of iTunes.
The drawback then was that Apple couldn't / wouldn't sell you a remote to help you control it without sitting in front of your laptop or desktop. Four years later, it still doesn't. We've had to rely on third-party solutions instead.
Apple TV has gone some way to address these shortcomings, but Apple could take iTunes much, much further - just look at what Sonos has done for a start. Apple could easily do for multi-room music and video what it's arguably done for the MP3 player and phone. Apple already has most of the pieces in place, now it just needs a killer solution to top it all off.
9. A better, cheaper iTunes Store
Buying online from the iTunes Store may be better than trudging down to HMV in the rain, but does that mean we should put up with sky high prices and shonky download quality? We say not.
If Apple can serve up 1GB+ movies on iTunes, there's no reason why it shouldn't also be able to sell true CD-quality audio downloads either - even if they were in Apple Lossless format instead of CDDA or AIFF.
That would finally put an end to the grumbles about sound quality / pricing, especially if we could also say goodbye to DRM too. Of course, we'd expect to pay a slight premium - we do so already with iTunes Plus.
10. iTunes Pro
And what better way to wrap all these improvements up, but to create a new version of iTunes for those of us who take our music and movies seriously. Apple already offers consumer and Pro versions of many of its apps - iPhoto versus Aperture; iMovie versus Final Cut, and so on - so why not do the same with iTunes? We're not the first people to think it, but iTunes Pro certainly sounds like a great idea and, if it was up to the standard of other Apple Pro apps, you can be sure many of us would be happy to pay for it. How about it, Apple?
------------
11. I'd like to see Album playcount for when you play an album in its entirety.
12. The Genius Bar goes where the Ministore was for those who don't have large screens, but still want to see it.
Yeah that's about all from me. - paulney, on 10/08/2008, -3/+35Wow.
I love genius. With 6000 songs (all *cough* purchased, of course) it regularly comes up with amazing playlists of songs I've never even heard before! (What happens when you get an entire CD just for one song..)
Also, like everyone else commenting (on a Mac at least), it runs great!
And you honestly expect it to stream HD to iPhone or iPod sizes on the fly? But not create a new file. But have that resolution available for you whenever you want? OK... I'd like iTunes to do my laundry and clean my dishes too, but...
I'm one of them, but I still recognize that the demographic that requires "multi-room music" isn't even comparable to the market for iPod and cell-phone users! What a ridiculous comparison to make! Get an iPod touch or an iPhone, the remote app is amazing!
Anyways. This is a very poorly written article. Definite bury. - baldgye, on 10/08/2008, -1/+28I just want it faster on a windows machine. My friends little macbook can run itunes better than my gaming rig. That annoys me.
- Superperson, on 10/07/2008, -14/+41Half these "problems" can be fixed by TURNING THEM OFF, jackass.
- usuallyjusta, on 10/08/2008, -4/+2811. Last.fm integration
- Rudegar, on 10/08/2008, -0/+22itune use quicktime for all media playback it's pretty much just a media db tool
quicktime engine does all the playing - flickerbrain, on 10/08/2008, -3/+18Last.fm has a plugin for iTunes.
It's downloadable from Last.fm's website. - Speed, on 10/08/2008, -2/+16No more asking me to install Safari when I update iTunes.
- MrJagil, on 10/08/2008, -1/+14I tunes is so freaking heavy. Can't wait for Snow Leopard to slim it down...
- ThePenrod, on 10/08/2008, -1/+12Getting upset about Apple making suggestions to you based the Genius information you send is ridiculous when it can be turned off without having to open up any menus.
- gospe1337, on 10/08/2008, -2/+12HINT: Make it a real media organizer? Or, just dish out iPod/iPhone sync API to 3rd party devs like MediaMonkey. As it stands now, iTunes is just a clunky Safari layered over a crappy media library in order to have a proprietary application for the crapple store.
- Kelmon, on 10/08/2008, -0/+10Rather pathetic whining that missed an obvious update that Apple should consider adding in the future. With media libraries ever increasing in size it seems unlikely that anyone will have a single hard drive to hold it all. Given that other media management applications allow the library to contain media stored in multiple locations (Apple supports this in Aperture, for example, which is my primary source of comparison) I think iTunes needs to start doing this as well.
Cover Flow may be a novelty in iTunes but it's damned useful in the Finder. Leave it alone and don't use it if you really don't like it. - rhinofinger, on 10/08/2008, -1/+10Just... make it faster.
- PrincePickle, on 10/08/2008, -0/+9How about better/easier external hard drive support....
- GothAlice, on 10/08/2008, -1/+10Hear hear.
6. The PC version, admittedly, isn't that good of a port. It's a bit too resource-heavy for my liking.
9. 256kBit iTunes+ files are fine for 98% of people. The original 128kBit would be 95%. Even I am happy for my casual musical needs with 256kBit, and I'm a quality freak (one step down from audiophile because I'm unwilling to spend ludicrous amounts of money on hardware). And besides, for things I really care about, I purchase, then download FLAC. :P I legally own a copy, don't I?
10. iMovie gained much more of a difference in the '08 refresh. '06 was much, much better, IMO. Now I just use FinalCut Express, which is like iMovie '06 on crack. - ericdano, on 10/08/2008, -4/+11TechRadar posting this is like Steve Ballmer talking about how Windows Mobile is going to kill the iPhone. Both don't have a clue.
- atgmac, on 10/08/2008, -0/+71. Meh, UI is fine for me. There's four views: List, List with artwork, Grid, Cover Flow. Just use the ones you like and ignore the ones you don't.
2. Why the ***** would apple take away a feature they just added? I happen to like the genius bar. If you don't want it, turn it off.
3. Not going to happen. It would really slow down syncing. Maybe in a few years when CPUs are more advanced.
6. It should be sqlite on both platforms. Although that would be a very big change, so not going to happen.
7. I'm not sure, but we will probably get more codecs with snow leopard and QuickTime X.
9. I don't want higher quality audio. The quality is fine at the moment, but if the file sizes doubled as the result of a bitrate increase, I'd run out of room on my iPod.
10. A branch of iTunes. What an idiotic idea. Why not just improve the consumer version? - GothAlice, on 10/08/2008, -0/+7I love Genius, probably because I'm in a very similar boat. I have 12,103 songs in my library, and Genius does a remarkable job of catering to my moods. "Okay, iTunes. A little Rammstein and suggest some other angry music for me to listen to… cool."
And with AirPort Express tiny laptop-transformer-sized wireless stations, I already use my iTunes in multiple rooms. Optical out, even, which is awesome. - inactive, on 10/08/2008, -1/+7'couldn't care less'
*fixed* - aussieNickuss, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6"Your musical tastes get automatically submitted to Apple, which then hits you back with money-gouging recommendations based on content found in the iTunes Store."
That is entirely optional. You can still use the Genius auto-playlist creation without it shoving advertising down your throat. - rdas7, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6Buried for the author of the article being a jackass. Seriously. Suggesting that iTunes should magically transcode on the fly for mobile devices. Yeah, great idea genius.
- GothAlice, on 10/08/2008, -4/+10QuickTime is the underlying media playback engine. Like, say, Windows Media codecs are for the Windows Media Player. Software update is useful, and I prefer having an application to an Active X control any day. Bonjour is used for iTunes library discovery and sharing, and, frankly, is tiny and useful. I use it daily on test rigs to visit in-development sites on my in-house server. MobileMe they've removed from the package; you now have to download it separately. Despite iTunes being the management interface for MobileMe synchronization.
Valid complaints? Not really. - GothAlice, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6@fsweep: Several points.
1. Only if you enable it.
2. And only for a long time if you've never done it before. When adding new albums it's trivially quick. - 2Bnor2B, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6It would be nice to see iTunes support FLAC files.
- Nightlurker, on 10/08/2008, -0/+68. Ipod touch and the Iphone can controll itunes libraries over wlan with the Remote app downloaded free from apple
- aliguana, on 10/08/2008, -2/+7yeah, and very often, you install an iTunes update and the LastFM plugin stops scrobbling, or can't find your iPod, or whatever. It's a kludge. If LastFM was integrated into iTunes, you wouldn't have this problem, plus iPod scrobbling would be more reliable (probably... although I wouldn't hold my breath lol)
- CyrusG, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5This is less of a problem with iTunes and more of a problem with ID3 tags, but support for timestamped play counts and labels would be great.
I'd love to create an auto playlist of my top 10 most played songs in the last 30 days or a playlist with every song produced by a certain record label. - aliguana, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5I don't know about paying for an "iTunes Pro". I already paid for it when I bought my iPod, I'm not paying AGAIN. I just want iTunes to work, not some two-tier thing.
- aliguana, on 10/08/2008, -4/+9yup. iTunes needs ticky-boxes to opt in/out of installing that stuff. Why not just bundle OSX in with it while they're at it?
Reliance on Quicktime (on Windows) definately needs to go. It's pointless. Using the native audio/graphic system instead would also open up the player for Linux. It's about time Apple did a complete re-write, from scratch. Lightweight, native, optional extras (Applemobile, AppleTV, Bonjour etc) : that's what your (paying) Windows customers want. - MtheoryX, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5YES!!!
Drive spanning, please!
And I'm not talking about multiple libraries...I want a single library over multiple drives! - se7en11, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5Works great. I use it every day. The cool thing is that if I listen to music on my iPod, when I sync it in iTunes, it scrobbles it to last.fm. Very sweet!!
Link to download it: http://www.last.fm/download - Kelmon, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4Silly question, but are they in a format that the iPod Touch can play? I don't mean the file format itself but rather things like the video size and bit rate. You might want to look for an application that specifically converts video files into a format acceptable to the Touch. I seem to recall having the same problem with my iPod.
- LambZero, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4itunes does what it does for me, 3% cpu usage as a background player and i like the list view. Why don't we change the view of text in books to so we have to read downwards and then in circles.
- davidswan89, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4yeah itunes is pretty expensive, at $0
- peterredding, on 10/08/2008, -2/+6How about not forcing Windows users to use the Apple Grey theme and let it use the current Windows theme?
Or fix the problem where I select a file, hold down shift and press the down arrow to select more, go one too far and press the up arrow and it starts selecting files above where I started!!! - Kelmon, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4No, we don't want a cross platform version, thank you very much. However, I don't see a reason why Apple wouldn't make a version for Linux if there was enough demand for it. Unfortunately, the level of demand for such a product is probably what is holding it back because, as you say, you are a minority and therefore unlikely to generate much of a return on the investment.
- Ellipsys, on 10/08/2008, -2/+6If Winamp/MediaMonkey/AmaroK and Thunderbird could sync with my iPhone 3G, I'd never use iTunes again. Ever. It is the most hated part of my "Apple Experience". Even better, they could just give us drag+drop mass storage access to the iPhone/iPodTouch. I have no desire to use iTunes. I will not buy anything from your crappy music store.
- GothAlice, on 10/08/2008, -3/+7Uh… it only displays a tiny arrow on the currently selected items. So, oh my god, they go away when you deselect your selection. That's a deal-breaker for me. Can't have a tiny icon appear at any time. Like, it's a violation of my privacy or something.
Complaint fail. - SGIsus, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4I agree with most of what you said, except number 9.
The argument was that if iTunes can provide 1GB+ movie files then it sure as hell should be able to provide 256kpbs+ MP3 files.
The point is, if you're paying for an album on iTunes, at the same price as the CD; You expect it to be at least DRM-free.
Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue for one of the biggest music apps and corporations in the business, quality should come first, not quantity. Besides, they provide the WHOLE app whenever you want to update it, instead of a 2MB file... can't they save bandwidth there?... and put it to good use? - karel747, on 10/08/2008, -1/+5That's my biggest problem with iTunes. Often time when my PC is running at 100% CPU for no reason, sure enough, it's iTunes runnig in the background, eating up 90% for NO ***** REASON. WTF is that? iTunes isn't open... I never opened it... yet there it is!
iTunes is garbage on PC. If I'd known about this *****, I never would have bought an iPod in the first place. - eruin, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4Java? No, just no.
- MacParrot, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4I agree about iMovie 08. A definite step backwards in usability. However iMovie 08 does one thing very nicely that has earned it a spot on my hard drive. Importing some of the new digital codecs from tapeless video cameras (like my Canon FS100). iMovie 06 doesn't do it nearly as well
- glenSM, on 10/08/2008, -1/+5well when you have 12000 songs i dont think you listened to them all, and since most albums have one or three hits on them and all the rest are ***** i think it does a pretty good job.
- inactive, on 10/08/2008, -0/+3I bet you are using an external drive for your library
- moisie, on 10/08/2008, -0/+3How exactly would it do different versions of files for different devices without keeping multiple versions of them? My Mac is nearly a year old, but I don't think that even the best of machines available now can transcode h.264 video files on the fly while you sync.
- dnachev, on 10/08/2008, -1/+4This is insane. I hate it. 99% of the time I have selected one more file below and 1% of time I remember that I want the file before the first selected one. I think that Apple designers were high when they design this behavior.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 181 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is