iTunes sells songs at 128kbps AAC. It’s not particularly great. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s just good enough on its own. You should notice the drop in quality.
I would use Itunes if it had a fingerprint service and could correctly rename my MP3’s with mangled file names and missing info. If Verizion has a service where a song playing is heard through your phone and identified why can’t Apple (or someone) offer the same?
a) I do not want an application to organize my music for me. I want an application that will let me easily organize my music for me. I do not particularly care about MP3 metadata tags. Just give me a freaking playlist window and I will drag files into it and save. I organize music on the basis of all kinds of esoteric stuff-in-common. I most vehemently do not want to spend my days editing MP3 metadata tags to get the right files in the same category with each other.
b) I like minimalism. Tiny little playback interface.. iTunes may or may not have some well-hidden setting to get the heck out of my way, but by default at least it’s sprawlingly huge and cumbersome.
c) I don’t own an iPod and don’t buy my music from the iTunes Music Store so those features are not selling points for me.
That’s the basics of it. Then on top of that you can add little annoyances like the Apple Software Updater refusing to take no for an answer for updating iTunes. I feel it’s been shoved down my throat so it’s just not gonna ever be my music app.
I don’t understand this. iTunes doesn’t move any of your files unless you tell it to. Copying files from your hard drive to an iPod does not take them out of their original folders.
What bugs me about iTunes is that you need to move songs through the library to get them onto your iPod.
Ideally, It would be great to dismiss the library entirely. I’d like my iPod to behave somewhat like a USB memory stick where it just shows up in windows explorer and I can drag and drop mp3s back and forth. No ID3 tags, no genres, no artists or years or ratings, etc.
I’m tired of the hoops I have to jump through so that I don’t have several different artists named “Guns and Roses”, “Guns & Roses”, “Guns ‘N’ Roses”, “Guns N Roses”, “GunsNRoses” or “Alannis Morrisette”, “Allannis Morrosette”, “Alanis Morissette”, etc… The interface is over-engineered.
Me: Hey, iTunes. All my music is in that folder there. Keep an eye on it and update your library when you spot any changes. Cheers.
iTunes: I don’t understand why you’d want to do that.
Me: Every other media library app does it. I get music, bung it in a folder, the app spots it and adds it to the library. It saves me time.
iTunes: I don’t understand why you’d want to do that.
Me, on the 'phone: Hey, Stevie-baby. How ya doing? Saw you at the Apple event. Looking good, m’man and not the least bit like Skeletor or a creepy cult leader. Anyhoo, that iTunes of yours. Is there any chance that it could have a ‘watch folder’ option sometime soon? Y’know, your music goes in a folder - or folders, for that matter - and iTunes keeps an eye on everything and updates its library and shit.
Jobs: I don’t understand why you’d want to do that.
Me: Nah, c’mon mush. Stop dicking around. You gonna do it or what?
Jobs: I don’t understand why you’d want to do that.
Me: You cun… :click:
a)You don’t have to use metadata, create playlists if that’s all you want to use it for. Using metadata doesn’t preclude being able to manually create playlists. Also smart playlists are a very powerful tool especially for grouping things in unusual ways.
b)It’s well-hidden in the upper left corner next to the ‘x’ just like every application ever written. I can conceded that it’s confusing for windows users that it’s in the left corner instead of the right. Also I’m guessing the hate would be serious if the mini player looked like it was inherited from Windows 3.1
If you set your iPod to manually update, you can double click it in the left nav and it will open separate playlist window where you can drag and drop files onto your ipod or select and/or delete them from your iPod.
If you select all the files that are misnamed (you can shift click and ctrl click to get them all) then once they’re all highlighted rick click on the list and choose get info. You can then rename them all in one operation. You could also use musicbranz (linked in this thread). I don’t think any other jukebox app deals with this either (and if it did that would contribute to the over-engineered hatred)
A better method would be to use virtual drives so you don’t have to use up a physical cd.
This program does it for you, but it’s not free: http://www.noteburner.com/
I’ve never used it myself, since I don’t use iTunes and thus have no need.
Are you talking about the Itunes Store or Itunes?
I have noticed that unless you are buying from the Itunes Store, the program seems to be searching some other database for album covers. And it does some kind of word search and frequently gets it wrong. For some reason, it kept wanting to put the cover of Best of Van Morisson, Vol. 3, on Best of Van Morisson, Vol. 1. And if it for some reason can’t match your album with an album cover in its database, it seems to do a Hail-Mary and give you just any old thing.
Again, I have to ask whether this question is about Itunes or the Itunes Store?
I have some specific complaints about Itunes and the Ipod software, but overall, I like the way it lets me manage my music database.
I installed it once, ages ago (on Windows). It didn’t behave like any other program that I own, nor did it looks like a standard Windows program. I have no time for that shit. Do things like everybody else does them, if you want me to use it.
Further, it was the sluggiest application I have ever had the misfortune of using. WMP gets a bad rap, but it’s about a billion times better than iTunes on Windows (or it was, when I installed it).
Assuming you like to manage your own media file and directory structure, here’s this geek’s toolkit for multimedia bliss:
CDEx to rip CDs: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=download
Does all the usual stuff including recognizing your CD and filling in the artist, album, and track names.
Coolplayer to play MP3s: HOME : Coolplayer.Sourceforge.net
Very small and simple MP3 player, just the basics.
VLC for video files: Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN
VLC is basically like Windows Media Player, but it supports about every video and audio format you can imagine. Even supports .FLV files downloaded from YouTube.
Anapod Explorer for drag & drop access to your iPod: http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/getanapod.php
This one isn’t free but has served me well. May not work with the newest iPods, check to be sure. Apple has complicated things with the newer Nanos and Classics.
RockBox for iPod and various other media players: Rockbox 3.15 Download
This one is geekier than most because you can mess up your player if everything doesn’t go well. RockBox is an alternative operating system for your iPod or other media player. If you hate the software necessary to get music onto your device, RockBox may be for you. Also, ignore the pretty pictures of the players and just follow the link near the top that says “Use the Rockbox Utility for easy install!”
Sheesh. I know that. (But it will happily delete files off the iPod without asking for confirmation. That’s a real genius move. Found that the hard way when the software didn’t realize the 2nd iPod I plugged in wasn’t the same as the first. Byebye all the songs on the 2nd iPod since they weren’t in the “library” of the first.)
I was talking about 1. A wasteful, idiotic search that accomplishes nothing. 2. I want to re-use an already existing organization. I don’t want to have to recreate an already existing structure. That’s what I want to preserve.
Dislikes:
Nag-ware that I can’t seem to turn off. No, for the millionth time, I do not want Quicktime.
Very slow to start up.
For reasons I can’t figure out, will often create duplicate files in playlists that I have to go manually delete.
Apple keeps changing its mind every iPod iteration on how to scramble up the indexing and formats…look, I just want to plug 'n play like a generic USB stick, don’t rename and scramble my files in cryptic directories and filenames.
Adding custom album artwork is screwy…sometimes it will only artwork tag one song on an album and leave the others blank, sometimes a whole album, just generally a poor interface for doing the job.
Likes:
It’s pretty.
It tracks playcounts and genres.
It allows non-DRM-cripple formats like mp3.
Library backups to DVD are easy.
[quote=“Absolute, post:1, topic:466008”]
People are always complaining about iTunes. I don’t understand this. iTunes, while not absolutely perfect, seems to do what it is supposed to do just fine. It organizes my music, lets me maintain playlists, lets me search through my music in various different ways, lets me easily keep my music library synchronized with my iPod - basically everything I’d want. It is a simple, effective, and easy-to-use consumer-level application.
I see the ads on tv. I don’t have a cell, or anything else. what’s the big deal? I don’t get it.
All of the music I buy is on CD and I want the original quality available in addition to a ripped format. I have songs loaded on my phone for mobile use and also on a memory stick for my car. I have no use for itunes.
I am not sure if it is mentioned; even if it is, I will just mention it because this is what make me loathed it.
I just want QuickTime, damnnit! I have other alternatives for playing music.
I find it funny that 75% of what has been mentioned in this thread (moving music files on you, nagging you about updates, manual vs. automatic library updates, controlling what moves on and off your iPod, etc.) is perfectly controllable via simple drop down and right click menus.
You wouldn’t have any reason to look for those settings until the problem or annoyance has already happened.
I think it all comes down to users that understand file and folder structure don’t like iTunes and the way files are copied to an iPod. We just want drag and drop of our existing file structure.