One Reason why I’m Not Such a Big Fan of iTunes
December 13, 2007
Ok, now I’m sure that some people aren’t going to be real happy about me saying this. But I have suffered in silence for long enough, and I think it’s time I get this off my chest.
iTunes is a bloated, sluggish, buggy, and ugly piece of programming. First off, Paul Thurrott gave the best description of iTunes that I’ve heard to date. It’s a spread sheet with music in it.
I have to apologize to all of the people who love Apple’s award winning design skills, but iTunes is ugly. I was surprised to download Safari recently, and realize that it looks exactly like iTunes. Does it look like this on MAC OS? What’s up with that?
The picture above illustrates why I was inspired to write this post. Why in the world does iTunes need 60 % of my CPU? I’m playing a itty bitty video, 320 x 240, about 6 minutes long.
I’m not running a Pentium II 450 Mghz, I have a 4Ghz P4. It shouldn’t need that much CPU time even if I was encoding the video.
I didn’t mention yet that iTunes is using about 100M of memory. Do you think that’s reasonable?
The picture to the left is just one example of the scrambled display that I get from time to time. I don’t mind that so much as I do the fact that iTunes is so terribly slow, especially over remote desktop.
Even when logged in locally, it is still painfully slow to resize windows.
Redeeming Qualities
OK, there are two reasons why I use iTunes. One, it is the only application that works with my iPod. I love my iPod, which has an excellent design.
If Apple wants to use their near monopoly over the MP3 player industry to push a sub standard music player and their own music store, I guess I can’t do anything about it.
The second reason is that iTunes supports podcasts. I wish Media player did this as well. I’ve heard that the Zune supports them now, but I haven’t verified that, and I don’t own a Zune anyway.
For now I’m stuck with the sluggish, bloated iTunes, and I don’t have much choice about it. I’ve heard that there are some Open Source alternatives out there. I should check them out. I’m not concerned with losing my music, since I haven’t bought one single song from the iTunes store.
Feel free to chime in if you have any experience with another iPod friendly app.
Also on Port 16:
Posted in iTunes, iPod, Apple, Applications
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December 14th, 2007 at 7:10 am
Hey Mike,
I don’t have an iPod but I still use Winamp. It has iPod support and I have found that it is still the best media manager that I’ve used. Not sure about podcasts though.
Back when I had my dellpod though I used this and it was brilliant:
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/
SB
December 14th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Well thanks for that Scott, I didn’t realize Winamp will sync to an iPod. I used to Love Winamp.
December 14th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Winamp has supported podcasts since 5.1.
http://www.winamp.com/player/features
December 14th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Sweet! I will absolutly have to take a look at it then!
December 17th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Hey Mike — Good one. Although my sons all have iPods, I wouldn’t know how to use one. I’m never anywhere that I need to listen to music privately, so it’s an expense for myself I’m not interested in. As far as ITunes goes, it’s just what happens to be on my Mac and when I remember, I play my playlists (all three of them) while I’m writing. Mine never scrambles like the screen shot you posted shows, though. I like the visual features of iTunes that remind me of a jukebox showing album covers, but I know that’s nothing to do with what you’re talking about. As far as memory goes, I’ve never thought about it before. But I do worry that with two of my boys filling their libraries with every CD they own, this computer is more of a database or dock for iPod at this point than anything else. I’m waiting for the crash. And I don’t use Safari. Since I’m interested in writing and uploading photos for my blogs, Safari is too slow, so I’ve gone completely to Firefox.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Thanks for the comment Kellypea! I bought the iPod mostly for the drive back and forth to work, and listening to Audio Books or Podcasts. The iPod remembers where I am, so that I can just pick up where I left off. I also use it at the Gym.
It just seems to me that Apple doesn’t put too much effort into porting their code over to Windows, which is a double dis-service. First, most iPod owners use Windows, and secondly, if they want to convert people from Windows to Mac, it’s less likely to happen if the software doesn’t work.
I know you can’t check it out because you are on a Mac, but Windows Media player looks way better than iTunes, and has a much wider selection of visualization options as well. I have always loved Winamp too, I just haven’t used it recently.
I have converted all of my CDs over to MP3s so that I can listen to them on the computer, so iTunes and my iPod are about the only way I interact with my music. I could always install another player for the computer though.
If your kids are putting all of their music on your Mac, just keep an eye on the hard drive space. We had talked about that big removable drive you have, it is pretty easy to move music to it, especially if you have it turned on all the time. Just copy the music over, and then add the folder to iTunes. You will end up with some duplicates though, I usually move the files, then delete them from iTunes, and then add them in again.