Even so, it doesn’t cost anything to include a “Manual Override” option to keep the other 25% happy, does it? If the iTunes programme is as awesome as most of the people in this thread say it is, then users who want to do OCD stuff like organise their metadata etc are free to do that via iTunes if they choose, and users (like myself) who just want to put 4 or 8Gb of music on an MP3 player, set it to “random” and hit “play” can do so without having to use special software to do so.
I guess so, because I think we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree on this. I mean, like I said earlier, I can admit that yeah, sometimes it might be nice to have the option to just drag and drop to the iPod. But “visceral hatred” because you can’t? Anger because having to use an application to get music on to a device is “limiting your control”? No, I’m just not getting that. Like I’ve said, I’m NOT an Apple apologist. I will freely admit their faults and flaws. I’ve listed one thing in the thread that greatly angers me about iTunes. I could list a handful of other things I think they’ve screwed up on. But what you’re stating here as a reason for “visceral hatred” is something I really can’t wrap my head around.
IMO the success of the ipod was being first to introduce an ultra slim hi-storage media player. Being first out of the market brought a host of support products such as docking stations and car chargers. It was the most perfect product introduction I’ve ever witnessed. However, if someone had matched the initial product design at introduction it would have been a different story.
Maybe “visceral hatred” is overstating it, but I can empathize with Martini on this one. I’ve bought seven Apple products in the last four years, and one thing I can’t stand is the inability to just drag and drop things on and off my iPhone or (previously) iPod. It’s a pain in the ass and non-intuitive for me.
This is ridiculous. First off, WinAmp stomps the crap out of iTunes at any point in time. It’s fast, flexible, lightweight, and does everything you need. It’s customizable with lots of plugin functionality and not locked down. There are other media players that are probably way better than iTunes too that I’ve never used myself.
Because iTunes is the shittiest software ever to exist. I have never had as many problems with a piece of software as I have with iTunes. Not only is it ridiculously slow - I mean, ffs, I have a 4ghz processor, very fast hard drives, and lots of ram - and I get slow performance out of a MEDIA PLAYER? And it’s not just ugly and annoying and slow, I’ve had at least like 15 different issues with it getting it to work right in the past. Realplayer might’ve been worse software, but that’s all I can think offhand.
I’m not saying that as some sort of Apple basher - I’m only using iTunes because of my iPod touch - it doesn’t make much sense for me to praise the touch as the coolest gadget I’ve ever owned and iTunes as the shittiest software ever, if all I’m trying to do is bash Apple. They’re responsible for both.
Incidentally, in regards to the overall debate, Mac advocates still treat windows like it’s 1998 or something. HAHA YOU BLUE SCREEN ALL THE TIME, etc. Win2k onwards have been high quality, stable operating systems - I’m pretty sure most of the windows bashers here think we’re all still using windows 98 or something, they act like it.
Oh, and to all the people who said “I replaced my pentium 2 from 1996 with a brand new mac computer and it ran way better! mac rulz!!!” … come on.
That’s exactly what I am doing. I have a work-supplied Dell D630 with 4GB of RAM. According to Dell it supports Windows 7, so I installed it. The damn thing can’t even go to sleep or hibernate. It either hangs when trying to do it or manages it but blue screens on waking.
So yeah, I am waiting for the MacBook Pro refresh (crosses fingers any day soon) and then I am buying one out of my own pocket just for work. I just can’t take dealing with this crap laptop anymore. Anything that I absolutely have to do in Windows (which I think is just the VMware vSphere GUI these days) I can do in a virtual machine.
Regarding iTunes, I think a lot of Mac users don’t understand the Windows users’ hate as they have never used the Windows version. I don’t know why, but the Windows version is truly awful. Slow and unresponsive. The difference with the OSX version is like night and day.
Part of the reason iTunes for windows sucks is because they demanded that it look and function exactly like it does on a Mac. This means that it doesn’t take advantage of some of the built in, efficient, fast windows functions to draw the program and do stuff - instead they reinvented the wheel to do it the Apple Way, and as a result it’s not nearly as efficient.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to why it’s so, so bad - but that’s a big reason.
Nor does WinAmp but that has never felt slow.
Imagine this conversation. Pretend that I’m the lead iPod software Engineer, and some Apple Marketing Guy is talking to me:
AMG: We have received a number of requests to support Drag-and-Drop file management on the iPod.
Me: We already do.
AMG We do?
Me: Yes, you can drag music into iTunes.
AMG: Yeah, but that’s not what these people want - they want to do it directly from their computer.
Me: From the Finder?
AMG: Yes, and from Windows.
Me: Why?
AMG: I don’t know, they just want it.
Me: But, iTunes already does this.
AMG: Can it be done?
Me: Not easily - it would mean the the entire file system on the iPod would have to be changed. We would have to format the iPod differently for Mac users vs Windows, or move to some Windows format for the files system, which nobody here is going to want to do. We would have to document the file structure of the iPod, and then we would be locked into that format. We would have to field huge number of tech support calls from people who can’t get it to work. Why should we do this? iTunes already does this - if a person wants to manually manager their iPod, they just check that button. If they want to drag music from their computer to the ipod, they just drag it into the iTunes window. I don’t see why we should go through all of this effort. What capability does this give us?
AMG: I don’t know - these people just want it.
Me: You’re the marketing guy - this isn’t a technology issue - you need to do a better job of explaining why this a) isn’t ever going to happen ad b) why it’s a really bad idea in the first place.
I’ve read your point before, so you don’t need a hypothetical conversation to explain it to me. It just is one of the things about Apple that irritates me. The reason makes no difference, it’s still irritating. I also am not a fan of iTunes, either. Even simple stuff like getting photos or videos off my damn iPhone is more irritating than it should be.
Apple tried pulling the same shit with their first release of Aperture, where they insisted all photos be imported into own directory structure called libraries. So all your photos would be imported into this library structure, and it was hard to figure out where the actual damn files containing your photos were. They were in there, nested in a package, but the only quick way to get to them was through Aperture, unless you had a second copy of it. Photographers went ballistic and, in subsequent releases, Aperture has given you the option of keeping your own directory structure, keeping your files where you want them on whatever drives you want them, rather than forcing you into a library, which (at least at the time) had to reside on a specific disk. I, and many photographers, had switched to Adobe Lightroom by this time.
iTunes doesn’t need to import your music in order to manage it, so you can’t complain about that…
This is true, at least. One thing I can’t complain iTunes about.
Oh, I do have a question about iTunes, sorry for the hijack, is there any way to make it poll which files are actually online or not at any given time? For example, I have a media server. Some songs are on my local drive, some on my media server. But I can’t find any easy way of distinguishing which are where, so if my media server goes offline, I know which files not to try playing.
lol, I remember that stupid piece of crap back Win Amp back in 2001. It did zero sorting. There was just a list of songs with bizarre file names rather than song titles. Windows is always in the back imitating Apple. Then when they finally produce something, they make it so complicated with options that people end up with bizaar problems moving from one place to another. ie. My wife’s Windows XP machine not connecting to our wifi network. You know there’s a problem when the Windows user has call the Mac user over for help.
It seems like every operating system Microsoft comes up with is filled with crazy compatibility problems like this, and I have no reason to expect that Windows 7 will be any different. My wife is so confident that she is sticking with XP.
I know, you will say that this is the exact opposite of your experience. That’s why your a Windows user. The people that run into problems become Mac users. Just don’t try and pretend we are only Mac users for image.
Yeah, but i’m sure all those problems are somehow Microsoft’s fault.
Why is it that when Microsoft or any other software producer says, “Fuck what the user wants; we know what’s best for you,” it’s a bug, but when Apple says the same thing, it’s a feature?
I don’t know - that’s just the way it is.
Seriously - Apple makes plenty of bone-headed decisions. As a long-time Mac user, I can tell you plenty of them. However, THIS JUST ISN"T ONE OF THEM.
I simply cannot believe all the whining in this thread about not being able to manage your iPod from the desktop. I mean, if that was the extent of my complaints with a product, I would simply shut up and count myself as pretty damn lucky. You should SEE some of the awful crap that passes for software that I have to use on a daily basis (IDEs that can’t render fonts correctly, dongle-locked packages that require a reboot every time the machine is put to sleep, etc.).
this is becoming an ipod thread and I’m not sure it fully represents the Mac philosophy but I’m going to try to explain the whining. the more money I spend on something, the more I expect it to do what I want.
I expect nothing from my car stereo because I didn’t pay any extra for the USB port. Despite low expectations it reads MP3 or WMA files and folders in the order I create them. I can flip through it folder by folder or file by file. Sometimes I have the same song listed multiple times in different folders. everything is drag and drop and everything can be renamed so it displays the way I want it.
Ipods are a premium product that come with premium expectations. When users express a desire for options and are rebuffed then it opens up the market for competitors to include those options.
Thank you. Exactly. If I’m paying $200+ for something, I want to to have lots of features, and being told “you have to install proprietary software on your computer to make this work” isn’t one of them for an MP3 player.
Well, for one, if I didn’t have a macbook, and I did have an iPod or iPhone, there would be no way to move files around. As I said before in this thread; my free mp3 player I got 3 years ago can do that - it’s the most basic, underdeveloped peace of crap, but it plays MP3s, and I can actually use it under any OS that supports USB drives. There is literally no MP3 player besides Apple’s that I know of that doesn’t support that feature.
As my main computer is a desktop machine running Linux, I think that’s extremely annoying. I also think that’s a feature that’s only missing because of marketing reasons; namely, the desire to build a custom media player that crucially includes a shop. If itunes wasn’t there and people weren’t forced to use it, the itunes store would never have gotten as large as it has. Good on Apple, bloody annoying for me.
As for the selling of AAC, I don’t care. I don’t buy from itunes.
ETA: As I also said above, the problem isn’t really with the media files (you can still import whatever MP3s you like and share them etc). What really sucks is that the iPhone/iTouch apps are restricted even more; you can’t just make an app and share it. You have to first buy a development system and then you have to get your app approved by apple and then you can only install it if you sell it via Apple’s store. (Or you can register as a large business and set up your own “store”, which will only work within your organization). It’s just a stupid control trick.
This would be really interesting if MP3 players that came out before the iPod didn’t already allow some form of Drag-and-Drop. Apple made the decision from the beginning not to support this.
And the reason was simple: They don’t want to allow drag and drop because it makes it makes the iPod a commodity, just like every other MP3 player. And Apple doesn’t want that, just like they don’t want Macs to be just like every other PC. Their entire philosophy is based on the idea of convincing people that their stuff is different, and therefore better.
Also, it forces you to use their software. The software that they are using to sell you stuff. (Again the iTunes store is trying to be different from web based stores.) You have to have the program to use your iPod. And because that program happens to have a store button, it becomes easier for you to impulse buy.
All this said, there is software besides iTunes that work with iPods. If you’re dedicated to Linux, you can use this guide. It even mentions a multiplatform program called Yamipod. There are some features that requires iTunes, but those are features that most MP3 players don’t have.
That’s one thing that seems to be consistent: anything Jobs tries to lockdown, somebody figures out a way around.
ETA: @Superfluous: including jailbreaking.
As one of the Mac fanboys, I will readily admit that the lack of open development on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) does, in fact, really annoy me. I’d love to see a full SDK on them, and let all the clever folks on Sourceforge loose and see what they can come up with. On the other hand, it doesn’t effect me much directly, since I’m not in the market for either device anyway, and even if it did affect me, it wouldn’t have much impact on my opinion of the computers.