I personally find this offer intriguing, a gamble if you will, but either way I can get similar from the traps and chicks of /b/ for free.
Man, you’re all really harshing me off getting an iTouch when it comes out with a camera version. Sure, my Archos has 30gb and doesn’t get all techy about the dubious origins of most of my videos but does it have a glass shattering app? I think not-that’s worth a couple hun, right?
My Archos has its own playlist issues, but it doesn’t give me any lip about it.
Just voicing my agreement that for PC users, WinAmp’s iPod managing plug-in kick’s iTune’s ass. I deleted that crappy piece of Apple bloatware the instant I verified that the plug-in worked as it should. iPod = great machine with horrible default software.
What’s the name of the plug-in? I searched on “iPod” on WinAmp’s site and just got two visualization plug-ins.
ml_ipod. Remember, WinAmp really whips the llama’s ass.
Instructions are here.
http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page
I find this thread curious. I don’t have any personal experiences to share, as I own neither a Mac nor an ipod/mp3 player. But my wife and 3 kids (18-21) all have gone mac, each own at least 1 ipod, and manage their tunes through itunes. (Hell, I think the last 2 of them to buy macs got free ipod touches that they don’t use.) The youngest just got her mac over the weekend, and had previously been a HEAVY itunes user with a pc. I’m inheriting her old pc.
At dinner I told my wife and 2 youngest about this thread and asked if they had any problems. None of them did. I commented that some folk object to itunes dictating the organization of some material. They said they noticed that occasionally, but it was no big deal. And I commented about not being able to download from the ipod. And their response was pretty much, “Duh - that’s the nature of the beast.”
Just wanted to toss that out. I am a pretty low-level technology user. I use a pc at home because that is what I use at work. And I will probably get an ipod when I buy a new/old car in a year or so, and put in a stereo that will play mp3s.
Oh yeah - one final datapoint. We went to the Apple store at the mall on Sat. I waited outside on a bench while they did some business. The mall was relatively deserted, and it was very clear that the sole store that was seeing a steady stream of folk through its doors was the Apple store.
Yep, that’s the one. Simple interface without a huge heap of features, but it’s slim, efficient, and works great.
Thanks very much for this one, by the way–it must be something they added after I started using iTunes. I did a small dance of joy when I tried it and it worked. Please tell me you have easy solutions to the other complaints in the thread, too!
No problem. And feel free to send me a PM telling me to fuck off anytime. 
I think the problem is that your wife and kids just don’t have any experience outside of iTunes, so they have nothing to compare it to. I thought New Kids on the Block were awesome when I was seven, and I couldn’t figure out why Mom would just roll her eyes.
Sure. Very likely. Tho I am undoubtedly the most luddite of our clan, I fear none of us is exactly living on tech’s cutting edge. But I don’t believe any of them feel that they have any significant needs that are not being met by their current technology. Certainly not with respect to personal music, and especially none that would warrant the time, effort, and expense of acquiring and learning an alternative system in order to compare. For the somewhat casual user of technology, simplicity, compatability and reliability are HUGE, and I get the impression Apple products provide that.
No problem. How did getting the browser window to appear go? I see that hitting Cntl+B works for it as well.
From people who really complain about iTunes, I think the main problem is knowing too much about computers. 
I still don’t understand your need to reformat all of your album information. And if you’re willing to go through that much effort in non-iTunes, why not do the same with iTunes?
I appreciate the smiley, as well as the sentiment. It must be very difficult for computer designers to try to appeal to both heavy and casual users. As a casual user, I often feel that devices are designed in a manner that is too complicated for my limited use.
Often makes me think of a car. While I guess it would be desirable to be able to do some basic maintenance on the engine should I care to (which I generally don’t), my overwhelmingly main interest is simply that it start up when I turn the key and get me where I want to go with no surprises. If I were someone who derived considerable enjoyment from working on and/or customizing my vehicle, I can imagine looking for different things in addition to dependability and affordability.
I don’t get why people have the defense “oh, well, you’re just a power user” as a defense to the shittiness of iTunes.
First off, I have a 4 ghz dual core computer with 4 gbs of high speed ram and very fast hard drives. And yet iTunes randomly hiccups and stops working for .5-2 seconds regularly. My computer is probably over a thousand times more powerful than the computer that got us to the moon - but it can’t cope with the job of managing a media manager!
Random example of a problem: At some point I noticed one of my drives was filling up when it shouldn’t have been. So I searched for the culprit - aha! My podcast directory is 30gb. Except, I set up the option to delete podcasts after I’ve listened/viewed them. Hmm. Well, I need the space…
So, I look for the delete function. It only removes entries from your iTunes library, but doesn’t actually delete the file. Great. So I just go through and manually delete the files from my podcasts folder. Oops, now there are hundreds of entries in iTunes that have little (!) icons, meaning the file is gone, and when I try to sync my ipod it becomes hundreds of errors.
Okay, so I guess I can delete both the files, and then delete the entries from within iTunes. But… now those entries are gone. What if I want to redownload a podcast in the future? The entry doesn’t even exist anymore… well I later found out that if you hold shift while clicking the little expansion triangle next to the podcast, it repopulates the podcast list. That’s not intuitive, it’s not in the help menu anywhere.
That’s not a poweruser/casual thing, that’s a “this software isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, and the solution to the problem is a pain in the ass and totally counterintuitive” - and this is only one of about 1700 problems I’ve had with this shitty, shitty software.
Well, sure. It plays music, that much is sure, and it has some nice features. But this is a thread to bitch about the parts that don’t work.
Munch, you’re back! Do you have a magical way to crop dead files from my library yet?
Nope, no idea! I think someone did on the previous page though.
No, I’m fairly sure I would have noticed that. I’ve seen a couple other people bitch about it, though.
Uhh… Here’s the paragraph you quoted, deleted the first sentence, then asked “what software do you use?”:
I’m going to guess that he uses iTunes, since he said “I also love iTunes” and that he’s “never tried using any other program”.
What exactly did you check when you went back?
Maybe you’re just trolling, maybe not, I really hope you are, for the sake of the gene pool to which you may be breeding into. I did notice I had you confused with the poster I originally responded to. For that I apologize.
The dude says he never used anything other then itunes, but then complains of files losing artist information before using itunes.
Was it the magic track information deleting fairy?
Some weird malicious or buggy program he was using blanked that file data, even if he was ignorant about what it was doing.
My theory was that there never were ID3 tags recorded at all–he said he organized his files manually (i.e., he would name the files and directories himself). In which case, if iTunes were to for whatever reason try to reorganize things, it would rename the files as being unknown tracks by uknown artists. Is that “magical” enough for you, or should I break it down into smaller words?
Cool. As I readily admit, I am grossly ignorant in many aspects of technology. But this observation sort of emphasizes another aspect of the difference between how different people design and use technology. If I wanted an ipod, it would be because I wanted something that plays music. The nice features would be a plus. But I wouldn’t get too upset that it didn’t do various other things as well as the main thing I bought it for.
Sorry to hijack, as I do not have a strong opinion on the topic.
It’s not just that people want iTunes to turn down the bed and make their morning coffee–we want to be able to do simple things. Take the example of easily removing “dead” files (i.e., file that is in the library, but the name was changed or the file was moved or deleted, so iTunes doesn’t know where to find it anymore). It should be a very, very simple piece of functionality–software that is over 10 years old can do it. But there doesn’t appear to be any way to remove dead files from iTunes other than to manually delete every single one. You can’t even sort the files so that the dead ones all cluster together so you can shift-select big chunks.