iTunes Puts Me Off Buying a Mac
I have been considering buying a Mac for sometime now - I have been put off by the seemly annoying way in which the user interface works. My Mac loving friends and colleagues ensure me that once I have been using one for a while I will never want to go back. This I can buy, I had the same experience when I moved from Mac to Windows (c 1995) and from Windows to Linux (c 1998).
The only Apple based software that I use regularly is iTunes (on my work Laptop or within VMWare on my Linux desktop at home). I assume that iTunes is representative of the standard of other Apple Mac based software and quite frankly it is rubbish. These are the things I hate about iTunes.
- I have to give up my credit card details to Apple in order to get album art work
- There is no good user story around using multiple computers with one iPod or multiple iPods with one computer. If I set my iPod to sync my music collection and I connect it to my work laptop all my music is erased. I don’t have my music collection on my work laptop and don’t want to have to. If I don’t set it up to sync then it doesn’t store my play statistics and I lose a bunch of functionality.
- My subscribed podcasts are stored on the computer and not the iPod or online and so I have to manually sync my subscribed podcasts (this is the RSS feeds in the Library podcast view as opposed to the actual audio files)
- iTunes and the iPod firmware are a closed proprietary pieces of software
- iTunes and the iPod do not support ogg vorbis or flac or any other open standard
I just need to find a laptop that is as good value for money as the Mac Book Pro or buy one and install Linux on it… or just procrastinate a bit longer and save some money.
March 31st, 2007 at 9:57 pm
You should stop complaining and switch to an open source, non-proprietary alternative. Of course, by doing so, you’ll have nastier problems:
- No album art!
- No statistics tracking on devices or between machines!
- No automatic podcast syncing!
Fortunately, since it’s open source you can implement these features yourself! Although I’m not exactly sure where you’d get the album art from…
March 31st, 2007 at 10:09 pm
So Amarok supports Album art and it actually retrieves album art for all my albums which iTunes did not. For example iTunes has no album art for my Beatles albums or a number of my more obscure albums. Banshee also supports Album art… here is a video
http://linuxrevolution.blogspot.com/2006/12/3d-album-art-in-banshee.html
Amarok gets the album art from Amazon but I understand that is configurable.
Both support Album art much better than iTunes.
Both support automatic Podcast syncing with iPods and other media players.
However neither support statistics tracking.
You are right I should use an Open Source alternative and that is exactly what I will do because right now they are better than what the manufacturer provides.
I don’t think I should stop complaining, I like to think of it as constructive criticism and I only hope it has some positive effect on the software available both proprietary and FLOSS.
April 1st, 2007 at 6:16 am
Album Art!? Is that what differentiates mac and itunes to people now-adays?
Geez. most music library software i’ve used support album art. (that includes open source). The source for the album art is everywhere nowadays.
My favorite source: http://www.discogs.com/
Statistic tracking is a nice broad topic. Keep it vague, noone will challenge you. Well … even my ancient first gen NEOPlayer/MP3 HDD (Circa 1996) support’s # of plays by song / album / artist.
Welcome to 1990’s where your future awaits!
April 1st, 2007 at 9:48 am
Joakim is you aren’t a troll what I mean by statistics tracking (which isn’t vague at all in the context of iPod+iTunes) is the feature where iTunes tells me how many times I have played each track and when I last played it - but you seem to know that as indicated by your second to last sentence. That doesn’t work when auto sync is off. Please feel free to challenge me - I like to be challenged.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Solution: buy a Creative Zen - far more lovely than any iPod!