Good points. Apple is stuck with iTunes being the center of everything iPod, iPhone, and iPad since they need one software that works for both Mac and Windows.
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
I actually maintain two separate libraries because of this: One with many thousands of ALAC tracks, another with X-bitrate AAC--where X is the number that makes it all fit onto my iPod Classic 160GB.
(I've written custom scripts to automatically do this, so I'll be happy if iTunes does it for me.)
I wonder if Apple will offer video downsizing and bitrate conversion as well?
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
Do not mess with a bazillion dollar brand. They'll still call it iTunes when it manages your household appliances.
I must be a lucky one, because iTunes rarely ever beachballs for me and I can't remember the last time it crashed. That's with an entire library over 200GB. Sure there are refinements I'd love to see (Get music video's out of my music library!!!) but iTunes is far from a problem piece of software on my iMac.
How is obfuscating the difference between an Audio Book and a digital copy of a print edition even vaguely in the vein of "getting better and better" ? That just makes it even harder to find the content you were looking for.
Just like when Apple decided to arbitrarily include music videos in the Music category and it became a whole lot more difficult to find them when before it was a simple thing to go to videos and select "Music Videos" and be done.
That is just a sad commentary on the state of media players. iTunes still really sucks at handling multiple artists (WMP has handled this quite well for years). It still hides simple things about TV shows (Why can't I see the freaking episode number? Why CAN I see the useless Episode ID?) And as others have attested, it's become bloated as Apple has tried to shovel more and more crap into it. It is easily one of the worst performing applications on my iMac and very crash prone (even though it doesn't use Flash).
Itunes is easy to use. It has a great User Experience.
If you don't like it, just use something else. Problem solved.
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
As Isomorphic states, don't mess with what works. There is a long history of company and brand names that no longer have anything to do with the current product, but they are iconic and would only hurt sales if they changed it. However, iTunes is free and it could help rejuvenate the app if they did rename it to show a major overhaul has occurred, but that is the only reason to do it in this case, IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
It's time for Apple to rewrite iTunes - Who's with me?
I like the iTunes app, but it has become bloated, slow and quite beach ball-y.
I"m sure it's been in the works for years. Unlike QuickTime X which can run alongside QT7 and isn't a gateway to the iTS, iDevices, AppleTV, all the iTunes-to-iTunes sharing, and media organization the iTunes app needs to be pretty damn well complete when it pops out as a 64-bit Cocoa version. This isn't an easy rewrite but I have a feeling it will appear later this year.
Itunes is easy to use. It has a great User Experience.
If you don't like it, just use something else. Problem solved.
And I can't wait to buy and use iBooks. Who needs Amazon anymore- besides it always gives me the spinning beachball. Must be all that flash on Amazon. Never get a beachball on iTunes. Never.
Automatic transcoding is most welcome for those of us with lossless libraries. Now all I need is the option to store audio and video files on separate hard drives.
Second that. iTunes feels bloated on a Mac, but we actually have it good compared to iTunes PC.
An addition of a books section is pretty much guaranteed (I expect iBooks store to be added as well into the itunes store). I wonder if I'll be able to read those books i purchase right inside iTunes, without having to own the iPad.
I wish selecting movies section of iTunes to sync to a device would allow list view. The icon view sucks for movies with long titles (e.g., Looney Tunes Golden Collection disc 1). I tried submitting feedback to Apple but that just seems to go to /dev/null.
Apple should bring a new app, say call it iSync, dedicated to syncing iPhone OS devices. Similar interface, just not meant to be iTunes.
/Applications/iSync
iTunes makes the most sense. Sure the name should probably change (unfortunately iMedia is already taken) but iTunes does a fantastic job of synching everything from one place.
Now if iTunes allows for us to stick our own EPUB files into iTunes like we can with PDFs then it would be even more perfect.
I'm happily still using itunes 8.2, and not updating (I'm only interested in music).
I still get the old iTunes store format (more readable and usable to me), I still can use my shopping cart, and I don't have to have cookies enabled in Safari to buy something from the iTunes store (I don't think most people know iTunes 9 is doing this).
The update will also reportedly offer a number of other changes, including the ability to automatically convert songs to 128 Kbps AAC format when syncing to devices. That feature is currently only available for the iPod shuffle, but will be expanded to all devices.
About freaking time! I will have to dig out my CD's and re-rip in Apple Lossless now.
I hope they fix iTunes broken file system handling and allow it to respect aliases or natively split content across multiple drivers. Seriously, this is 2010 and media libraries can be huge. It's nuts that you can at least break out music from video and from podcasts.
Comments
Good points. Apple is stuck with iTunes being the center of everything iPod, iPhone, and iPad since they need one software that works for both Mac and Windows.
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
I actually maintain two separate libraries because of this: One with many thousands of ALAC tracks, another with X-bitrate AAC--where X is the number that makes it all fit onto my iPod Classic 160GB.
(I've written custom scripts to automatically do this, so I'll be happy if iTunes does it for me.)
I wonder if Apple will offer video downsizing and bitrate conversion as well?
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
Do not mess with a bazillion dollar brand. They'll still call it iTunes when it manages your household appliances.
I like the iTunes app, but it has become bloated, slow and quite beach ball-y.
How is obfuscating the difference between an Audio Book and a digital copy of a print edition even vaguely in the vein of "getting better and better" ? That just makes it even harder to find the content you were looking for.
Just like when Apple decided to arbitrarily include music videos in the Music category and it became a whole lot more difficult to find them when before it was a simple thing to go to videos and select "Music Videos" and be done.
That is just a sad commentary on the state of media players. iTunes still really sucks at handling multiple artists (WMP has handled this quite well for years). It still hides simple things about TV shows (Why can't I see the freaking episode number? Why CAN I see the useless Episode ID?) And as others have attested, it's become bloated as Apple has tried to shovel more and more crap into it. It is easily one of the worst performing applications on my iMac and very crash prone (even though it doesn't use Flash).
Itunes is easy to use. It has a great User Experience.
If you don't like it, just use something else. Problem solved.
I wonder if Apple will ever rename it iCenter, iMedia or something more relevant to its modern day role. Then again maybe Apple feels it is now too much of a household name to mess with.
As Isomorphic states, don't mess with what works. There is a long history of company and brand names that no longer have anything to do with the current product, but they are iconic and would only hurt sales if they changed it. However, iTunes is free and it could help rejuvenate the app if they did rename it to show a major overhaul has occurred, but that is the only reason to do it in this case, IMO.
It's time for Apple to rewrite iTunes - Who's with me?
I like the iTunes app, but it has become bloated, slow and quite beach ball-y.
I"m sure it's been in the works for years. Unlike QuickTime X which can run alongside QT7 and isn't a gateway to the iTS, iDevices, AppleTV, all the iTunes-to-iTunes sharing, and media organization the iTunes app needs to be pretty damn well complete when it pops out as a 64-bit Cocoa version. This isn't an easy rewrite but I have a feeling it will appear later this year.
Itunes is easy to use. It has a great User Experience.
If you don't like it, just use something else. Problem solved.
And I can't wait to buy and use iBooks. Who needs Amazon anymore- besides it always gives me the spinning beachball. Must be all that flash on Amazon. Never get a beachball on iTunes. Never.
This isn't an easy rewrite but I have a feeling it will appear later this year.
I have "a feeling" it won't.
Less bloat, more snappiness.
Second that. iTunes feels bloated on a Mac, but we actually have it good compared to iTunes PC.
An addition of a books section is pretty much guaranteed (I expect iBooks store to be added as well into the itunes store). I wonder if I'll be able to read those books i purchase right inside iTunes, without having to own the iPad.
Second that. iTunes feels bloated on a Mac, but we actually have it good compared to iTunes PC.
This is exactly how it is. Sheff gets it.
I want iTunes to go back to being iTunes.
Apple should bring a new app, say call it iSync, dedicated to syncing iPhone OS devices. Similar interface, just not meant to be iTunes.
/Applications/iSync
iTunes makes the most sense. Sure the name should probably change (unfortunately iMedia is already taken) but iTunes does a fantastic job of synching everything from one place.
Now if iTunes allows for us to stick our own EPUB files into iTunes like we can with PDFs then it would be even more perfect.
I still get the old iTunes store format (more readable and usable to me), I still can use my shopping cart, and I don't have to have cookies enabled in Safari to buy something from the iTunes store (I don't think most people know iTunes 9 is doing this).
The update will also reportedly offer a number of other changes, including the ability to automatically convert songs to 128 Kbps AAC format when syncing to devices. That feature is currently only available for the iPod shuffle, but will be expanded to all devices.
About freaking time! I will have to dig out my CD's and re-rip in Apple Lossless now.
I hope they fix iTunes broken file system handling and allow it to respect aliases or natively split content across multiple drivers. Seriously, this is 2010 and media libraries can be huge. It's nuts that you can at least break out music from video and from podcasts.
/Applications/iSync
That's exactly what I meant