itunes is the microsoft of music downloads.
Well yes, but considering this is basic functionality of pretty much every other MP3-player management program (including 3rd-party iPod ones), it’s a touch lame that you can’t do it in iTunes. You can’t even copy non-DRM’d tracks to your local computer via iTunes (or at least, you couldn’t the last time I used it, swore at it, deleted it and installed ephPod instead). It’s also a touch alarming that those instructions begin with the words:
Yikes.
Edit: although this sort of syncing danger seems to be endemic, as I discovered when my Win Mobile phone deleted all of my contacts after I upgraded my computer and synced it, thinking they’d be downloaded from the phone. You’d think a little popup saying “hey, I’m about to delete literally everything on this motherfucker; is that okay with you?” would be nice. Thank god for my backups.
(bolding mine)
This.
I’ve had itunes for a while - at least since 2004 - and typically it works fine. But sometimes it mystifies me. Yesterday evening, it apparently decided that my library doesn’t exist. So, it imported an old “library” from 2004, which had all of one song on it. Please note that I did nothing to prompt itunes into doing this - no upgrades, no new software, no new settings, nothing.
A little bit of fiddling got everything back, with one minor twist. As it’s re-importing all my songs, a happy little window pops up and informs me that “some files could not be found.” Now, I have over 14 gigs of music, well over 3000 songs. I have no clue which files are lost - my music library isn’t particularly well organized. Most of that music came from copying my old cd collection over, but a significant part has come from emusic, amazon downloads and itunes downloads and are saved in random folders all over the place. Going through this and trying to figure out which of >3000 files didn’t make it is absurd. I’m just going to assume that if I don’t notice the files are missing, I don’t really need them. But still…WTF itunes?
I WILL NOT install iTunes on any computer on the home network, and have informed the other two users they do at their own peril—no support for you.
I suspect that the HP home media server will be almost as much fun…
I’m happily nestled in my cozy smug little nook of Apply happiness, but I have to agree that itunes is the worst of all possibly solutions to the problem of audio file management. It’s like Dorian Grey - all the evil and annoyance and frustration that has been eliminated from everything else Apple makes has been dumped into this program just to keep the universe in balance.
I figure this is the case. My 2nd gen iPod with the aforementioned hellware caused me all sorts of problems, up to and including that all the music on the thing no longer needed to be there and that the upgrade of the firmware which I never asked for or wanted had to go onto my iPod come hell or high water.
I tossed the little white box in the fire and bought a Zune, never looked back. The interface is intuitive and simple, I can add and sync and do everything I need to do wirelessly. Now as far as contacts and so forth? I use the blackberry. Also just dandy. Conceptually, I love apple, I really do, but the more interaction I have with them, the more I get the ‘all hat, no cattle’ feeling.
Are those of you having problems with iTunes using Windows or OSX? I only ask b/c I’ve been using iTunes on my Macs for about 10 years and haven’t had any problems. I’m no power user but have about 6,000 songs. Is this more of an issue with iTunes for Windows?
There is no way to sort music by filename and/or directory tree.
If I want to play only music by a specific artist or album, I have to create a whole playlist for it, which is then synced to my iPod, where it’s rendered redundant by the way the iPod navigation works.
A bunch of other crap I can’t remember off the top of my head that’s been driving me nuts since I was pretty much forced to start using iTunes when I bought an iPod.
OH, I just remembered another:
There’s no way to automatically delete from your library songs that have been moved or had their filename changed–you can’t even sort by that little “!” icon. You have to manually filter out every. single. fucking. one. (IIRC, Winamp had a great “crop dead files” option.)
Why are you syncing your iPod? This is the #1 source of iTunes hatred.
Because the entire point of my iPod (160 GB capacity) is to hold ALL of my music. I’ve still got stacks of albums to rip and old MP3s to move over from other storage media, but everything that’s on my computer is on my iPod.
What’s your point? The fact is, syncing your ipod with itunes is a source of massive trouble and confusion, as you’ve demonstrated. It’s a matter of hitting Cntl-A and dragging to get ALL of your music over to your ipod, and not have to mess with any of the playlists you may have set up.
Agreed. The first thing I did was enable manual management of files on my iPod, and that’s the only thing that’s kept it bearable. Well, that and the fact that I hardly ever listen to actual music.
I’ve got about 85,000 songs on my iTunes and I use a PC, and I don’t have any problems with it. My main complaint is that all iTunes downloads are in m4a form (or were - I’ve refused to buy anything from their store for years), so if you have an mp3 player that’s not an ipod (which all sane people should), you have to burn the fucking album (or song) to a CD and then import it as an mp3 to listen to it anywhere but your computer. Has iTunes finally gone along with the rest of the civilized world in making mp3s the default format for music files, or are they still being dicks and using m4as?
Why? Syncing doesn’t cause **me **any problems, and I want all of my other playlists to transfer over. Why should I have to manually add the new music every time I rip a new album?
Also, am I the only person who things that it should be spelled synch, not sync?
I downloaded my first/last song from iTunes just a few weeks ago. It’s still in m4a, but it’s unprotected, so you can retranslate it to an mp3, lossy conversion from a lossy format. I generally buy cd’s instead of single tracks anyway, but if my kids want a specific song, I’d rather get it from Amazon – it’s mp3 already and usually higher bitrate.
ETA: that was in response to woodstockbirdybird, of course.
Of course it causes you problems - why else would you be complaining about it?
Uh - you’re doing that anyway when you sync the music, and it takes longer in the process!
I use iTunes on a Mac, and have not had any significant problems with it. Little annoyances here and there, but nothing major.
The one thing that really irritates me, though: I listen to a number of podcasts. The podcasts are downloaded in itunes, transferred to my ipod, and I listen to them on the ipod. Every once in a while, iTunes will stop automatically downloading the individual podcasts, leaving a little ! next to the podcast. If I click on the !, it tells me it stopped downloading it because “you haven’t listened to any episodes recently.” Well, no, actually I listen to them regularly, just not within itunes. Please don’t make those decisions for me.
The only thing I’m complaining about is that the navigation difference between iTunes and the iPod causes me to upload redundant playlists. That’s not a synching problem–that’s a navigation design problem.
It syncs automatically–I plug the iPod in, and iTunes figures out what’s new and needs to be added. I don’t need to remember to upload new stuff, check to see whether or not I’ve uploaded it yet, re-upload things for which I’ve added album art, etc.